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Cormac McCarthy, the reclusive Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of all time, died Tuesday at his New Mexico home, his publisher announced. He was 89.
McCarthy’s death was confirmed by his son, John McCarthy. A specific cause of death was not immediately shared, but his publisher, Knopf, attributed it to natural causes.
The McCarthy canon consisted of 12 novels, two plays, five screenplays, and a handful of short stories. His stylistic bleakness—both in content and form, with the writer favoring apocalyptic backdrops, gruff protagonists, and aberrant punctuation—was instantly recognizable. Death and violence suffused his work, something he was almost always asked about when he granted rare interviews.