WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.279 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. This is the show 00:00:02.279 --> 00:00:04.059 where we take a huge stack of sources. We're 00:00:04.059 --> 00:00:06.740 talking articles, deep critical analyses, interviews, 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:09.900 and we try to build you a shortcut to, well, 00:00:10.019 --> 00:00:12.619 to really understanding a topic. And today we 00:00:12.619 --> 00:00:16.059 are stepping into a world that is, let's say, 00:00:16.100 --> 00:00:18.519 unrelenting. It's often terrifying, but it's 00:00:18.519 --> 00:00:20.940 always profoundly intellectual. We're talking 00:00:20.940 --> 00:00:23.199 about one of the absolute giants of American 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:26.129 literature. Cormac McCarthy. Right. Born Charles 00:00:26.129 --> 00:00:28.769 Gilson McCarthy Jr. Lived from 1933 to 2023. 00:00:29.949 --> 00:00:32.649 And McCarthy, I mean, he didn't just write novels. 00:00:32.750 --> 00:00:35.130 It feels like he forged myths. Right. Out of 00:00:35.130 --> 00:00:36.909 these extreme American landscapes. Absolutely. 00:00:36.969 --> 00:00:39.649 And he spanned genres that most writers wouldn't 00:00:39.649 --> 00:00:42.189 dare to touch, let alone master. You have the 00:00:42.189 --> 00:00:44.429 Southern Gothic, that kind of claustrophobic 00:00:44.429 --> 00:00:46.850 despair in a book like Child of God. And then 00:00:46.850 --> 00:00:49.729 you have the complete opposite, the vast mythic, 00:00:49.729 --> 00:00:52.429 brutal reality of the Western. in blood meridian 00:00:52.429 --> 00:00:54.170 and then of course the book many people know 00:00:54.170 --> 00:00:56.969 him for the stark chilling poetry of the post 00:00:56.969 --> 00:00:59.250 -apocalyptic in the road so our mission today 00:00:59.250 --> 00:01:01.829 is i'd say pretty ambitious we're going to try 00:01:01.829 --> 00:01:05.010 to unpack what feel like the three great paradoxes 00:01:05.010 --> 00:01:07.870 of his life and his work okay so first there's 00:01:07.870 --> 00:01:11.030 his prose style it is relentlessly unique i mean 00:01:11.030 --> 00:01:13.510 it's defined by an almost total rejection of 00:01:13.510 --> 00:01:15.469 what we think of as traditional grammar yeah 00:01:15.469 --> 00:01:17.469 we'll get into the semicolons and quote mark 00:01:17.469 --> 00:01:22.239 then second his themes they are just uncompromising. 00:01:22.239 --> 00:01:25.159 The philosophy of violence, this deep dive into 00:01:25.159 --> 00:01:28.359 morality, and the constant failure of authority 00:01:28.359 --> 00:01:30.620 in his world. And third, and this is the part 00:01:30.620 --> 00:01:32.500 that I find so fascinating, is the completely 00:01:32.500 --> 00:01:35.299 surprising turn his life took later on. His move 00:01:35.299 --> 00:01:37.819 toward the world of modern science and complex 00:01:37.819 --> 00:01:40.840 systems. This is long after he was already a 00:01:40.840 --> 00:01:43.819 giant in the literary canon. It's so true. When 00:01:43.819 --> 00:01:45.560 you pick up a McCarthy novel for the first time, 00:01:45.599 --> 00:01:48.459 you are immediately hit with these defining characteristics. 00:01:48.700 --> 00:01:51.420 There's the graphic, unflinching violence. And 00:01:51.420 --> 00:01:53.819 then there's the syntax. It is so sparse, it 00:01:53.819 --> 00:01:55.599 almost feels like a geological structure, like 00:01:55.599 --> 00:01:57.599 something carved out of rock. And the man behind 00:01:57.599 --> 00:02:00.260 it all, he was basically a phantom. A total phantom. 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:03.540 He deliberately avoided the public eye, refused 00:02:03.540 --> 00:02:07.579 the literary spotlight, and he had this stated 00:02:07.579 --> 00:02:09.979 aversion to the entire publishing and academic 00:02:09.979 --> 00:02:13.080 world. For a writer whose work is so monumental, 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:16.479 the man himself was just fiercely guarded. It 00:02:16.479 --> 00:02:18.960 is a spectacular contradiction, isn't it? Here's 00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:21.500 this figure revered all over the world for his 00:02:21.500 --> 00:02:24.400 absolute mastery of language, yet he refused 00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:27.039 to engage with the structures, both grammatical 00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:30.020 and social, that defined all of his peers. Yeah. 00:02:30.090 --> 00:02:32.590 He really cultivated this persona that suggested 00:02:32.590 --> 00:02:34.949 the work was everything. The author. The author 00:02:34.949 --> 00:02:37.610 was, you know, irrelevant. And nothing, I mean 00:02:37.610 --> 00:02:40.590 nothing, defines that iconoclasm better than 00:02:40.590 --> 00:02:43.310 this ultimate material paradox. You might think 00:02:43.310 --> 00:02:45.969 a writer of his stature, producing these masterpieces 00:02:45.969 --> 00:02:47.949 for half a century, would have been surrounded 00:02:47.949 --> 00:02:50.150 by the right tools. You'd picture a custom desk, 00:02:50.430 --> 00:02:52.870 first edition libraries, maybe an early Mac or 00:02:52.870 --> 00:02:55.409 something. Exactly. But no. Not at all. We have 00:02:55.409 --> 00:02:57.669 to talk about the story of the $50 typewriter. 00:02:57.810 --> 00:03:01.469 We have to. We'll confirm this. He produced millions 00:03:01.469 --> 00:03:04.330 of words of some of the most important fiction 00:03:04.330 --> 00:03:07.449 of the century. All his letters, even his screenplays. 00:03:07.629 --> 00:03:11.150 All on a single portable Olivetti letter of 32 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:15.310 typewriter. Which he bought for $50 at a Knoxville 00:03:15.310 --> 00:03:19.169 pawn shop back in the early 60s. And that little 00:03:19.169 --> 00:03:21.090 machine, I mean, it looked like it had survived 00:03:21.090 --> 00:03:23.729 a war. It became this sort of talisman for his 00:03:23.729 --> 00:03:26.689 uncompromising dedication. Okay, so let's just 00:03:26.689 --> 00:03:28.650 unpack that symbol right at the top because it's 00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:31.930 so important. The idea that these vast, complex, 00:03:31.990 --> 00:03:35.389 profound novels were typed out on a piece of 00:03:35.389 --> 00:03:37.530 equipment that he only maintained by, and this 00:03:37.530 --> 00:03:39.949 is a direct quote. I know this one. Blowing out 00:03:39.949 --> 00:03:42.039 the dust with a service station hose. It says 00:03:42.039 --> 00:03:43.740 everything. It says everything. It was never 00:03:43.740 --> 00:03:45.840 about the technology for him. It was about the 00:03:45.840 --> 00:03:48.259 purity of the craft. And as we're going to find 00:03:48.259 --> 00:03:51.319 out later, that little $50 typewriter, when it 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:54.520 was finally retired, well, it ended up funding 00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:56.819 his other great passion. So to really understand 00:03:56.819 --> 00:03:59.099 the writer, you have to start at the roots. Let's 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:02.020 get into section one, the Appalachian and Texas 00:04:02.020 --> 00:04:04.919 roots. This is his life before he really hit 00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:07.759 that major acclaim in the 90s. This is the origin 00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:10.580 story of the great American pessimist. He was 00:04:10.580 --> 00:04:13.180 born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr., Providence, 00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:16.300 Rhode Island, 1933. His family was successful, 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:20.060 Irish Catholic. His dad, Charles Sr., was a well 00:04:20.060 --> 00:04:22.079 -respected lawyer. But you almost never associate 00:04:22.079 --> 00:04:25.220 him with Rhode Island. No, never. The family 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:27.740 is overwhelmingly identified with Tennessee because 00:04:27.740 --> 00:04:29.939 they moved to Knoxville when Cormac was just 00:04:29.939 --> 00:04:32.959 four. His dad took a job as a lawyer for the 00:04:32.959 --> 00:04:36.000 Tennessee Valley Authority, the TVA. And that 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:38.600 detail, the TVA, it's actually really important. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:40.699 It places his family right in the middle of the 00:04:40.699 --> 00:04:42.939 infrastructure of the New South. They lived in 00:04:42.939 --> 00:04:45.300 a nice area, Sequoia Hills. It was considered 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:47.759 the affluent part of Knoxville. And McCarthy 00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:49.899 himself reflected on this. It gives you this 00:04:49.899 --> 00:04:52.339 insight into how he saw himself as an observer, 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:55.560 even as a kid. He noted that his family was, 00:04:55.600 --> 00:04:57.779 quote, considered rich because all the people 00:04:57.779 --> 00:05:00.319 around us were living in one or two room shacks. 00:05:00.459 --> 00:05:03.339 So that proximity, that closeness to intense 00:05:03.339 --> 00:05:07.930 poverty. but seen from a place of relative privilege 00:05:07.930 --> 00:05:11.129 that had to have shaped him. It absolutely did. 00:05:11.230 --> 00:05:13.569 It became the moral and the visual backdrop for 00:05:13.569 --> 00:05:16.410 so much of his early work, most obviously in 00:05:16.410 --> 00:05:19.490 the semi -autobiographical novel Sutry, which 00:05:19.490 --> 00:05:22.050 is set among the outcasts and derelicts living 00:05:22.050 --> 00:05:24.050 on the Tennessee River. But he wasn't, you know, 00:05:24.050 --> 00:05:26.629 a typical kid destined for literary greatness. 00:05:26.750 --> 00:05:29.009 He wasn't a conventional scholar. Not at all. 00:05:29.069 --> 00:05:32.329 He said that... As a child, he saw no value in 00:05:32.329 --> 00:05:34.449 school. His energy went into hobbies. He was 00:05:34.449 --> 00:05:37.110 famously obsessive about them. He joked that 00:05:37.110 --> 00:05:39.610 if he gave everyone he knew a hobby, he'd still 00:05:39.610 --> 00:05:42.569 have 40 or 50 to take home. That's amazing. And 00:05:42.569 --> 00:05:44.990 it points to this dedication to self -teaching, 00:05:45.029 --> 00:05:47.649 to personal mastery. It's a trait that clearly, 00:05:47.750 --> 00:05:49.490 you know, transferred directly to his writing 00:05:49.490 --> 00:05:51.790 career later on. So he enrolls at the University 00:05:51.790 --> 00:05:54.990 of Tennessee in 51, studying liberal arts. But 00:05:54.990 --> 00:05:57.230 he drops out after two years. He joins the Air 00:05:57.230 --> 00:06:00.779 Force. And that break was... It seems transformative. 00:06:01.120 --> 00:06:03.920 He was stationed in Alaska for four years. And 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:05.980 this is where he goes from a kid who's not really 00:06:05.980 --> 00:06:08.459 interested in books to someone who is just reading 00:06:08.459 --> 00:06:11.160 voraciously, consuming all the classics. So when 00:06:11.160 --> 00:06:14.319 he comes back to UT in 1957, he's focused. He 00:06:14.319 --> 00:06:16.420 majors in English. He publishes a couple of stories 00:06:16.420 --> 00:06:18.879 in the student magazine. And he wins the Ingram 00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:21.060 Merrill Award for creative writing. Not once, 00:06:21.079 --> 00:06:23.970 but twice. And this is where we find this really 00:06:23.970 --> 00:06:27.649 surprising, almost academic origin for his later 00:06:27.649 --> 00:06:30.410 revolutionary anti -establishment style. It's 00:06:30.410 --> 00:06:33.589 so ironic. It is. While he's at UT, a professor 00:06:33.589 --> 00:06:37.250 gives him this very specific task. Repunctuate 00:06:37.250 --> 00:06:39.990 a whole collection of 18th century essays for 00:06:39.990 --> 00:06:41.870 a textbook they were putting together. So the 00:06:41.870 --> 00:06:43.930 man who would later become famous for rejecting 00:06:43.930 --> 00:06:47.480 punctuation. His first deep dive was into its 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:51.500 precise historical function. Exactly. That detailed 00:06:51.500 --> 00:06:53.860 structural assignment sparked this deep interest 00:06:53.860 --> 00:06:57.220 in how punctuation shapes rhythm, flow, and ultimately 00:06:57.220 --> 00:07:00.259 meaning. It's an intellectual exercise that happens 00:07:00.259 --> 00:07:02.259 long before he's a novelist. And then, of course, 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:04.079 there's the name change. He was born Charles 00:07:04.079 --> 00:07:06.959 Joseph Jr., but he permanently adopts the name 00:07:06.959 --> 00:07:10.399 Cormac. And the sources give a couple of slightly 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:12.980 different reasons for this. Both of them are 00:07:12.980 --> 00:07:14.990 pretty resonant. Okay, so the first one is a 00:07:14.990 --> 00:07:17.209 more pragmatic one, the one he cited a lot. It 00:07:17.209 --> 00:07:19.569 was simply to avoid being constantly confused 00:07:19.569 --> 00:07:23.670 with that famous radio dummy. Charlie McCarthy, 00:07:24.069 --> 00:07:27.449 the ventriloquist dummy. Exactly, from Edgar 00:07:27.449 --> 00:07:30.230 Bergen. But there's another reason, maybe a more 00:07:30.230 --> 00:07:32.410 fitting one. It suggests he wanted to honor an 00:07:32.410 --> 00:07:35.209 Irish chieftain, Cormac McCarthy. So he's adopting 00:07:35.209 --> 00:07:38.709 this more dramatic, more historic, and distinctly 00:07:38.709 --> 00:07:41.350 Irish identity. Whichever it was, the identity 00:07:41.350 --> 00:07:44.279 of Charles Jr. was gone for good. He was Cormac. 00:07:44.399 --> 00:07:46.639 And this brings us to this really crucial phase, 00:07:46.860 --> 00:07:49.759 the absolute total commitment to writing full 00:07:49.759 --> 00:07:53.019 time. He has ended up so brutally. I always knew 00:07:53.019 --> 00:07:55.160 that I didn't want to work. That's it. And that 00:07:55.160 --> 00:07:57.560 one decision led directly to these legendary 00:07:57.560 --> 00:08:00.720 periods of, I mean, ascetic poverty. It really 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:02.910 did. But let me let me just play devil's advocate 00:08:02.910 --> 00:08:04.990 here for a second. Yeah. Because critics sometimes 00:08:04.990 --> 00:08:06.829 look at this period, you know, living in a shack, 00:08:06.930 --> 00:08:09.329 refusing lucrative speaking gigs. And they argue 00:08:09.329 --> 00:08:11.829 that for a man who came from a comfortable, well 00:08:11.829 --> 00:08:14.509 -to -do family in Knoxville, this whole aesthetic 00:08:14.509 --> 00:08:18.850 lifestyle was almost a performance. Was the extreme 00:08:18.850 --> 00:08:23.329 poverty truly necessary? Or was he sort of deliberately 00:08:23.329 --> 00:08:26.149 cultivating this persona of the uncompromising, 00:08:26.149 --> 00:08:29.529 uncommercial artist? That is a fair and a really 00:08:29.529 --> 00:08:32.610 complex question. The sources, I would say, lean 00:08:32.610 --> 00:08:35.470 pretty heavily towards sincerity or at the very 00:08:35.470 --> 00:08:38.309 least a deeply, deeply held belief that any kind 00:08:38.309 --> 00:08:40.789 of commercial pursuit inherently contaminates 00:08:40.789 --> 00:08:43.090 artistic purity. And we have the accounts from 00:08:43.090 --> 00:08:44.929 his first wife, Lee Hallman, to back this up. 00:08:45.009 --> 00:08:47.850 We do. She detailed their life in a shack just 00:08:47.850 --> 00:08:50.590 outside Knoxville. No heat. No running water. 00:08:50.809 --> 00:08:52.809 And the anecdote about him refusing money is 00:08:52.809 --> 00:08:55.970 just, it's the core proof of this artistic asceticism. 00:08:56.070 --> 00:08:58.230 It is. Holloman said that someone offered him 00:08:58.230 --> 00:09:00.570 $2 ,000, which was a huge amount of money in 00:09:00.570 --> 00:09:02.789 the 1960s, to come speak at a university about 00:09:02.789 --> 00:09:06.269 his books. $2 ,000. And they were broke. Completely. 00:09:06.269 --> 00:09:08.509 And he refused. He just said that everything 00:09:08.509 --> 00:09:11.210 he had to say was there on the page. And her 00:09:11.210 --> 00:09:13.769 punchline was, so we would eat beans for another 00:09:13.769 --> 00:09:16.769 week. Exactly. It wasn't about an inability to 00:09:16.769 --> 00:09:19.690 make money. It was a flat out refusal. He was 00:09:19.690 --> 00:09:22.850 putting this absolute unbridgeable distance between 00:09:22.850 --> 00:09:26.129 his artistic output and the whole mechanism of 00:09:26.129 --> 00:09:29.110 celebrity. And that refusal, it was paired with 00:09:29.110 --> 00:09:32.889 this kind of literary piety. There's this one 00:09:32.889 --> 00:09:35.789 remarkable piece of trivia from that time. The 00:09:35.789 --> 00:09:37.870 childhood home of another great Southern writer, 00:09:37.990 --> 00:09:40.610 James Agree. was being demolished in Knoxville. 00:09:40.710 --> 00:09:42.649 And McCarthy went to the site? He went to the 00:09:42.649 --> 00:09:44.809 site and salvaged bricks from the demolition. 00:09:45.269 --> 00:09:47.909 And he used those very bricks to build fireplaces 00:09:47.909 --> 00:09:50.730 inside his otherwise derelict shack. So he was 00:09:50.730 --> 00:09:53.090 literally building his early writing environment 00:09:53.090 --> 00:09:55.769 out of the salvaged history of the literary South. 00:09:55.909 --> 00:09:58.490 I mean, that's not just about poverty. That signals 00:09:58.490 --> 00:10:00.549 a profound reverence for the tradition that he 00:10:00.549 --> 00:10:03.279 was trying to join and maybe even conquer. So 00:10:03.279 --> 00:10:05.159 his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, comes out 00:10:05.159 --> 00:10:08.580 in 1965, and it's edited by the legendary Albert 00:10:08.580 --> 00:10:11.039 Erskine. Who had also edited William Faulkner. 00:10:11.100 --> 00:10:13.379 That's a huge deal. And Erskine would stay his 00:10:13.379 --> 00:10:15.519 editor for 20 years, which really speaks to the 00:10:15.519 --> 00:10:18.000 immediate critical validation McCarthy got, even 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.259 if the sales weren't there. And the book won 00:10:20.259 --> 00:10:22.519 the William Faulkner Foundation Award, which 00:10:22.519 --> 00:10:25.519 immediately drew those crucial comparisons to 00:10:25.519 --> 00:10:27.899 the giant of Southern literature. He followed 00:10:27.899 --> 00:10:31.279 that with these incredibly intense Southern Gothic 00:10:31.279 --> 00:10:35.039 works. Outer Dark in 68 and Child of God in 73. 00:10:35.799 --> 00:10:38.620 Both were praised by critics for their stark, 00:10:38.759 --> 00:10:41.860 brutal realism. But commercially, they were invisible. 00:10:42.019 --> 00:10:44.740 Totally invisible. They established him as this 00:10:44.740 --> 00:10:47.740 serious, dark horse rider, but one who was operating 00:10:47.740 --> 00:10:51.200 way, way outside the mainstream. Then in 1979, 00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:53.879 Sutry comes out. This was a semi -autobiographical 00:10:53.879 --> 00:10:55.919 novel he'd been working on for almost two decades, 00:10:56.159 --> 00:10:58.399 drawing heavily on his experiences living along 00:10:58.399 --> 00:11:00.820 the Tennessee River. And critics, they dubbed 00:11:00.820 --> 00:11:04.000 it a kind of doomed existentialist Huckleberry 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:06.799 Finn. It just further cemented his reputation 00:11:06.799 --> 00:11:09.620 for this dense, beautiful, and profoundly bleak 00:11:09.620 --> 00:11:12.639 prose. And then, here's where things get really 00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:15.059 interesting. This is where the funding that he 00:11:15.059 --> 00:11:18.580 so desperately needed finally arrived. In 1981, 00:11:18.820 --> 00:11:21.139 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. The famous 00:11:21.139 --> 00:11:25.600 Genius Grant. The Genius Grant. Worth $236 ,000, 00:11:25.899 --> 00:11:29.279 that infusion of capital was... absolutely key. 00:11:29.519 --> 00:11:31.659 It allowed him to dedicate himself completely 00:11:31.659 --> 00:11:34.220 to researching and writing his fifth novel, which 00:11:34.220 --> 00:11:36.340 would become Blood Meridian. This is when he 00:11:36.340 --> 00:11:38.759 moves to the American Southwest, living in what 00:11:38.759 --> 00:11:42.000 was described as a barely habitable stone cottage 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:44.460 in El Paso, just fully immersing himself in the 00:11:44.460 --> 00:11:46.460 history of the borderlands. Blood Meridian is 00:11:46.460 --> 00:11:49.659 published in 1985, and the sources all show its 00:11:49.659 --> 00:11:52.179 impact wasn't immediate, but in the long run, 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:55.360 it was just seismic. Yeah, the initial reception 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:58.500 was lukewarm, but its reputation just grew and 00:11:58.500 --> 00:12:01.460 grew year after year until it achieved this legendary, 00:12:01.559 --> 00:12:04.460 almost mythical status. The New York Times called 00:12:04.460 --> 00:12:06.639 it, and this is not an exaggeration, the bloodiest 00:12:06.639 --> 00:12:08.919 book since the Iliad. And the literary establishment, 00:12:09.139 --> 00:12:12.159 they went into overdrive. The critic Harold Bloom 00:12:12.159 --> 00:12:14.779 intensely praised it, calling it the greatest 00:12:14.779 --> 00:12:17.019 single book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. 00:12:17.320 --> 00:12:19.320 And many other critics and writers started to 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:21.759 suggest it was, if not the great American novel, 00:12:21.820 --> 00:12:24.440 then certainly a primary contender for the title. 00:12:24.639 --> 00:12:28.519 It's the book that really defines his early uncompromising 00:12:28.519 --> 00:12:31.320 genius. But, and this is the staggering part, 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:34.860 despite all that praise, the Faulkner comparisons, 00:12:35.139 --> 00:12:37.100 the genius grant, the declaration from Harold 00:12:37.100 --> 00:12:39.659 Bloom, the commercial reality of this entire 00:12:39.659 --> 00:12:42.960 period is just mind -blowing. The key data point 00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:46.429 is this. Before 1991, none of Cormac McCarthy's 00:12:46.429 --> 00:12:49.110 novels had sold more than 5 ,000 hardcover copies. 00:12:49.250 --> 00:12:51.629 5 ,000. And for most of that career, he didn't 00:12:51.629 --> 00:12:53.610 even have a literary agent. He handled everything 00:12:53.610 --> 00:12:55.710 himself. And that's exactly why he earned that 00:12:55.710 --> 00:12:58.029 label, the best unknown novelist in America. 00:12:58.289 --> 00:12:59.909 He was a writer's writer, deeply influential, 00:13:00.190 --> 00:13:03.190 but financially completely invisible. Which brings 00:13:03.190 --> 00:13:05.769 us perfectly into the next section. Because that 00:13:05.769 --> 00:13:08.289 financial invisibility, it wasn't a failure. 00:13:08.370 --> 00:13:10.850 It was really a testament to the uncompromising, 00:13:10.889 --> 00:13:13.029 self -contained architecture of his language. 00:13:14.340 --> 00:13:16.799 Okay, so that lack of commercial success, it 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:19.419 really suggests a writer who just refused to 00:13:19.419 --> 00:13:22.740 compromise his aesthetic vision for readability. 00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:26.019 Let's move into section two. The architecture 00:13:26.019 --> 00:13:29.259 of language, his style, themes. and work process. 00:13:29.720 --> 00:13:32.279 The structure of his prose is the most immediate, 00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:34.659 and for a lot of new readers, the most challenging 00:13:34.659 --> 00:13:36.899 takeaway. It really is. And we have to start 00:13:36.899 --> 00:13:38.960 with what you could call the syntax of omission. 00:13:39.039 --> 00:13:41.440 It's not just a stylistic quirk. For him, it 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:43.899 was a rigorously enforced set of rules that he 00:13:43.899 --> 00:13:45.700 followed, I mean, religiously throughout his 00:13:45.700 --> 00:13:47.480 career. Okay, so what are the rules? He used 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:50.320 capital letters, periods, the occasional comma 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:52.159 if a sentence was really complex, or a colon 00:13:52.159 --> 00:13:54.259 if he was setting off a list. But his most famous 00:13:54.259 --> 00:13:57.039 rejection? The semicolon, which he dismissed 00:13:57.039 --> 00:13:59.700 as idiocy. Just flat out idiocy. He felt it was 00:13:59.700 --> 00:14:02.059 a pointless intrusion, that it just blurred the 00:14:02.059 --> 00:14:04.600 clarity between a period and a comma. And then, 00:14:04.620 --> 00:14:07.320 of course, the signature element. His refusal 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:10.600 to use quotation marks for dialogue. This is 00:14:10.600 --> 00:14:12.100 where the structural commitment really turns 00:14:12.100 --> 00:14:14.379 philosophical. He just believed there was no 00:14:14.379 --> 00:14:17.340 reason to, quote, blot the page up with weird 00:14:17.340 --> 00:14:20.240 little marks. That's it. For him, quotation marks 00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:22.720 were an aesthetic intrusion. They interrupted 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:25.000 the purity of the narrative block on the page. 00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:27.659 And this absence of traditional attribution, 00:14:27.679 --> 00:14:31.039 it forces a very peculiar kind of immersion on 00:14:31.039 --> 00:14:35.059 you, the reader. One critic, Eric Haig, he notes 00:14:35.059 --> 00:14:37.720 that somehow, even without the quote marks, the 00:14:37.720 --> 00:14:39.779 reader remains oriented as to who is speaking. 00:14:40.350 --> 00:14:43.210 It turns the dialogue into this unbroken stream. 00:14:43.509 --> 00:14:46.549 It melds speech and action into a single accelerating 00:14:46.549 --> 00:14:49.710 chronicle. You're forced to pay much closer attention 00:14:49.710 --> 00:14:52.470 to the tone, to the context, just to figure out 00:14:52.470 --> 00:14:54.649 who's talking. And mechanically, he achieved 00:14:54.649 --> 00:14:57.549 this relentless momentum through a very specific, 00:14:57.690 --> 00:15:00.409 highly controlled rhetorical device. Polysyndeton. 00:15:00.919 --> 00:15:03.059 Polysynaton, this is the repetition of conjunctions, 00:15:03.059 --> 00:15:05.200 almost always the word and, to link a series 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:07.639 of clauses or actions instead of separating them 00:15:07.639 --> 00:15:10.000 with commas. So let's analyze how that actually 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:12.139 functions when you're reading it. When you read 00:15:12.139 --> 00:15:14.919 a list of events that are all linked by and. 00:15:15.450 --> 00:15:17.690 Instead of commas, the clauses just pile up on 00:15:17.690 --> 00:15:19.169 each other. There's no structural hierarchy. 00:15:19.529 --> 00:15:22.269 Right. The reader is given no natural place to 00:15:22.269 --> 00:15:25.309 pause, no place to breathe. It creates this relentless 00:15:25.309 --> 00:15:28.809 driving pace. We see this so clearly in his action 00:15:28.809 --> 00:15:30.830 sequences. There's a great example from No Country 00:15:30.830 --> 00:15:33.429 for Old Men. He goes, he left the beer on the 00:15:33.429 --> 00:15:35.549 counter and went out and got the two packs of 00:15:35.549 --> 00:15:37.289 cigarettes and the binoculars and the pistol 00:15:37.289 --> 00:15:40.830 and slung the .270 over his shoulder and shut 00:15:40.830 --> 00:15:43.440 the truck door and came back in. It's just one 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:46.019 thing after another after another. And that polysynaton, 00:15:46.179 --> 00:15:48.820 it becomes a structural metaphor for his central 00:15:48.820 --> 00:15:52.080 themes. Oh, so? Well, if everything is linked 00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:55.299 by an inevitable and, it suggests a narrative 00:15:55.299 --> 00:15:57.679 where one action leads inexorably to the next. 00:15:58.100 --> 00:16:01.019 Fate can't be escaped. The violence is just a 00:16:01.019 --> 00:16:03.620 relentless, deterministic march forward. The 00:16:03.620 --> 00:16:06.000 style perfectly mirrors the philosophy of his 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.919 world. Now, here is the most incredible counterpoint. 00:16:09.210 --> 00:16:12.549 This is what connects his sparse literary style 00:16:12.549 --> 00:16:15.629 back to the world of technical precision. That 00:16:15.629 --> 00:16:18.389 same drive for clarity, for minimal intrusion, 00:16:18.389 --> 00:16:21.649 that led him to reject quotation marks. It also 00:16:21.649 --> 00:16:24.110 defined his parallel career. As a copy editor 00:16:24.110 --> 00:16:27.289 for scientific texts. This is such a remarkable 00:16:27.289 --> 00:16:30.639 nugget of knowledge for you to take away. Cormac 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:33.679 McCarthy spent time removing commas and refining 00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:36.419 the prose in highly technical work. Including 00:16:36.419 --> 00:16:39.039 W. Brian Arthur's incredibly influential economics 00:16:39.039 --> 00:16:41.379 article on technology and increasing returns. 00:16:41.700 --> 00:16:43.639 It was published in the Harvard Business Review. 00:16:43.919 --> 00:16:46.240 And he also copyedited work for Nobel -level 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:49.279 physicists, people like Lawrence M. Krauss and 00:16:49.279 --> 00:16:51.539 the theoretical physicist Lisa Randall. Just 00:16:51.539 --> 00:16:53.820 think about what that requires. Copyediting a 00:16:53.820 --> 00:16:56.059 scientific paper demands absolute precision. 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:59.159 You have to remove all ambiguity. It's a relentless 00:16:59.159 --> 00:17:05.470 focus. So his stylistic rules in his fiction, 00:17:05.650 --> 00:17:08.450 no semicolons, no quote marks, they're fundamentally 00:17:08.450 --> 00:17:11.009 about achieving the maximum clarity through omission. 00:17:11.349 --> 00:17:14.950 And that same drive served both his sprawling 00:17:14.950 --> 00:17:18.390 Western epics and the most precise physical theories 00:17:18.390 --> 00:17:20.740 of our time. So let's pivot from the style to 00:17:20.740 --> 00:17:22.700 the themes, which are just inextricably linked 00:17:22.700 --> 00:17:25.079 to that starkness. The central brutal theme is 00:17:25.079 --> 00:17:28.180 bloodshed and morality. What did McCarthy, the 00:17:28.180 --> 00:17:30.799 philosopher, actually say about violence? His 00:17:30.799 --> 00:17:35.460 views were uncompromising and deeply pessimistic 00:17:35.460 --> 00:17:37.880 about the human condition. He stated it plainly. 00:17:37.980 --> 00:17:40.099 There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. 00:17:40.539 --> 00:17:43.920 He saw violence not as a societal failure, but 00:17:43.920 --> 00:17:46.359 as a core inherent condition of existence itself. 00:17:46.809 --> 00:17:48.609 And this leads to his most critical philosophical 00:17:48.609 --> 00:17:50.750 critique. He found the notion that the human 00:17:50.750 --> 00:17:52.970 species can be improved. Right. The idea that 00:17:52.970 --> 00:17:55.390 we could somehow evolve beyond our violent nature 00:17:55.390 --> 00:17:57.509 and live in harmony. He thought that was a really 00:17:57.509 --> 00:18:00.250 dangerous idea. He warned that the desire for 00:18:00.250 --> 00:18:03.049 that kind of utopian perfection would inevitably 00:18:03.049 --> 00:18:06.990 enslave you and make your life vacuous. This 00:18:06.990 --> 00:18:09.890 perspective immediately frames him as the great 00:18:09.890 --> 00:18:12.829 pessimist of American literature, a title that 00:18:12.829 --> 00:18:15.359 he was often given. And that's why works like 00:18:15.359 --> 00:18:17.200 Blood Meridian are so often characterized as 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:19.700 being nihilistic. The violence is overwhelming, 00:18:20.099 --> 00:18:22.140 it's often random, and it seems to be without 00:18:22.140 --> 00:18:26.160 any spiritual consequence. If God is absent from 00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:28.299 that world, and the character of Judge Holden 00:18:28.299 --> 00:18:31.380 operates completely outside of moral law, how 00:18:31.380 --> 00:18:33.680 can it be anything but nihilism? That interpretation 00:18:33.680 --> 00:18:36.079 is very common, but it's important for you, the 00:18:36.079 --> 00:18:38.299 listener, to understand the academic counterpoint 00:18:38.299 --> 00:18:41.019 to that. Some literary critics dispute the simple 00:18:41.019 --> 00:18:43.849 label of nihilism. They argue instead that Blood 00:18:43.849 --> 00:18:46.170 Meridian is a Gnostic tragedy. Okay, we need 00:18:46.170 --> 00:18:47.809 to define that for clarity. What does Gnostic 00:18:47.809 --> 00:18:50.769 tragedy actually mean in this context? Gnosticism 00:18:50.769 --> 00:18:53.529 in general involves the idea that the material 00:18:53.529 --> 00:18:56.690 world is inherently corrupt, that it's ruled 00:18:56.690 --> 00:18:59.890 by an inferior, maybe even evil deity, the Demiurge, 00:18:59.990 --> 00:19:02.009 or that it's just completely separate from the 00:19:02.009 --> 00:19:04.789 true transcendent God. So in a Gnostic tragedy, 00:19:05.049 --> 00:19:07.900 the moral struggle is internal. It's this desperate 00:19:07.900 --> 00:19:10.880 search for secret knowledge, for salvation, that 00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:12.880 is completely separate from the corrupt world 00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:15.000 and all of its institutions. So if the world 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:17.359 of Blood Meridian is relentlessly violent and 00:19:17.359 --> 00:19:20.460 lawless, and organized religion or society offers 00:19:20.460 --> 00:19:23.559 no comfort, no moral anchor, then the struggle 00:19:23.559 --> 00:19:27.359 to carry the fire defines some small, individual, 00:19:27.660 --> 00:19:31.000 secular morality. That is the tragic Gnostic 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:33.700 search for meaning in a fundamentally flawed 00:19:33.700 --> 00:19:36.740 reality. So it shifts the focus from just meaninglessness, 00:19:36.779 --> 00:19:39.369 which is nihilism. to a desperate individual 00:19:39.369 --> 00:19:42.589 moral resistance against what feels like an overwhelming 00:19:42.589 --> 00:19:46.150 cosmic evil. Exactly. And his later works, they 00:19:46.150 --> 00:19:49.130 clearly reflect contemporary anxieties, grounding 00:19:49.130 --> 00:19:52.269 this cosmic pessimism in very modern fears. The 00:19:52.269 --> 00:19:54.849 bleak outlook and the utterly inhuman deterministic 00:19:54.849 --> 00:19:57.869 villain Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. 00:19:58.049 --> 00:19:59.670 Critics often see that as a reflection of the 00:19:59.670 --> 00:20:02.809 post 9 -11 act. For sure. Chigurh's random coin 00:20:02.809 --> 00:20:05.089 toss justice. It symbolizes this existential 00:20:05.089 --> 00:20:07.609 dread where unpredictable violence. can just 00:20:07.609 --> 00:20:10.309 appear anywhere at any time, and it renders traditional 00:20:10.309 --> 00:20:12.809 law completely powerless. Which brings us to 00:20:12.809 --> 00:20:15.809 another one of his recurring themes, his deep, 00:20:15.829 --> 00:20:19.490 deep distrust of authority figures. He consistently 00:20:19.490 --> 00:20:22.769 features the ineptitude or inhumanity of those 00:20:22.769 --> 00:20:24.970 in authority. We see it with the murderous bounty 00:20:24.970 --> 00:20:26.690 hunters of the Glanton Gang in Blood Meridian. 00:20:27.049 --> 00:20:29.289 They're essentially state -sanctioned killers 00:20:29.289 --> 00:20:31.690 who just devolve into total chaos. And we also 00:20:31.690 --> 00:20:34.349 see it with the overwhelmed law enforcement in 00:20:34.349 --> 00:20:37.460 No Country for Old Men embodying by sheriff ed 00:20:37.460 --> 00:20:40.660 tom bell he's just too old too decent and too 00:20:40.660 --> 00:20:43.279 conventional to even comprehend the new level 00:20:43.279 --> 00:20:45.440 of brutality that he's facing and in all the 00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:47.980 pretty horses you get explicit examples of deeply 00:20:47.980 --> 00:20:50.619 corrupt police and officials in mexico it's this 00:20:50.619 --> 00:20:53.720 fundamental critique that goes beyond genre organized 00:20:53.720 --> 00:20:56.240 power structures are either incompetent corrupt 00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:59.740 or actively inhumane and yet Despite all of this 00:20:59.740 --> 00:21:02.819 overwhelming pessimism, The Road introduces this 00:21:02.819 --> 00:21:05.500 remarkable, almost tender shift toward kind of 00:21:05.500 --> 00:21:08.460 secular morality. The novel is intensely moralistic, 00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:10.680 even though society has completely and utterly 00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:13.880 collapsed. Exactly. The morality in that book 00:21:13.880 --> 00:21:17.279 is entirely secular. It originates purely from 00:21:17.279 --> 00:21:20.359 the individual, from the father's fierce, self 00:21:20.359 --> 00:21:22.559 -imposed code of protection and humanity for 00:21:22.559 --> 00:21:24.839 his son. The idea of carrying the fire. That's 00:21:24.839 --> 00:21:26.980 the father's secular mission statement. It is 00:21:26.980 --> 00:21:29.920 completely separate from any idea of God or organized 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:32.880 religion. It's a morality that is earned and 00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:35.000 fiercely guarded against the ultimate corruption 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:37.960 of cannibalism and despair. One last essential 00:21:37.960 --> 00:21:40.220 element of his craft that really sets him apart 00:21:40.220 --> 00:21:42.700 is his dedication to what you could call a bilingual 00:21:42.700 --> 00:21:45.859 narrative practice. McCarthy was fluent in Spanish. 00:21:46.039 --> 00:21:49.079 He lived for a while in Ibiza, Spain in the 60s, 00:21:49.079 --> 00:21:51.460 and then spent all that time in El Paso and Santa 00:21:51.460 --> 00:21:54.460 Fe. And his novels... especially the border trilogy, 00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:57.920 reflect that immersion profoundly. They are filled 00:21:57.920 --> 00:22:00.339 with abundant, untranslated Spanish dialogue. 00:22:00.579 --> 00:22:02.880 And this isn't just laziness or some kind of 00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:04.880 decoration. It is a deliberate technique that 00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:07.480 makes his work an inherently multicultural and 00:22:07.480 --> 00:22:09.960 bilingual narrative. By refusing to translate, 00:22:10.119 --> 00:22:13.099 he forces you... the reader, directly into the 00:22:13.099 --> 00:22:14.980 world of the characters. You have to figure out 00:22:14.980 --> 00:22:17.519 the context, the tone, the situation, just based 00:22:17.519 --> 00:22:19.579 on the flow of the conversation, much like a 00:22:19.579 --> 00:22:21.339 non -Spanish speaker would have to navigate that 00:22:21.339 --> 00:22:23.660 physical border space. And what's more, scholars 00:22:23.660 --> 00:22:26.400 have observed that key American characters, like 00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:28.940 the cowboy protagonist John Grady Cole, or even 00:22:28.940 --> 00:22:31.160 the fearsome Judge Holden in Blood Meridian, 00:22:31.529 --> 00:22:33.750 They're implied or confirmed to be native Spanish 00:22:33.750 --> 00:22:36.690 speakers, often operating in a political space 00:22:36.690 --> 00:22:39.390 where those language boundaries are totally meaningless. 00:22:39.690 --> 00:22:43.309 This vastly complicates the traditional, often 00:22:43.309 --> 00:22:45.890 monolithic narrative of the American Western. 00:22:46.049 --> 00:22:48.130 OK, so finally, let's just touch on his process. 00:22:48.809 --> 00:22:51.609 Despite the exhaustive historical research he 00:22:51.609 --> 00:22:54.369 did, I mean, meticulously detailing the settings, 00:22:54.490 --> 00:22:56.890 the environments, the specific historical events, 00:22:57.049 --> 00:22:59.750 and the meticulous revisions he did over years, 00:22:59.930 --> 00:23:03.069 even decades. He absolutely refused to outline 00:23:03.069 --> 00:23:05.650 his plots. It's a classic contradiction. He saw 00:23:05.650 --> 00:23:08.390 writing not as a planned architectural project 00:23:08.390 --> 00:23:10.150 where you map everything out chapter by chapter. 00:23:10.250 --> 00:23:13.490 He saw it as a subconscious process. Right. It 00:23:13.490 --> 00:23:16.089 required spontaneous inspiration. It needed time 00:23:16.089 --> 00:23:18.589 for the narrative to reveal itself to him. He 00:23:18.589 --> 00:23:20.109 said he had to wait for the narrative to catch 00:23:20.109 --> 00:23:22.509 up to his research. This reliance on the subconscious 00:23:22.509 --> 00:23:25.009 is a critical intellectual point that he's going 00:23:25.009 --> 00:23:27.269 to explore in much more depth later in his life 00:23:27.269 --> 00:23:29.589 when he connects with the scientists. Okay, so 00:23:29.589 --> 00:23:31.630 we've established the intense, highly disciplined 00:23:31.630 --> 00:23:35.950 world of the pre -1991 Cormac McCarthy. A master, 00:23:36.109 --> 00:23:38.789 acclaimed by critics, but commercially invisible. 00:23:39.750 --> 00:23:42.490 Now let's dive into section three. Crossover 00:23:42.490 --> 00:23:45.569 success and Hollywood adaptations. This is the 00:23:45.569 --> 00:23:47.549 period where he finally became a household name. 00:23:47.789 --> 00:23:50.289 The breakthrough, the absolute pivot point, came 00:23:50.289 --> 00:23:53.170 in 1992 with All the Pretty Horses. And this 00:23:53.170 --> 00:23:55.089 novel was just fundamentally different. While 00:23:55.089 --> 00:23:56.750 I was still concerned with his themes of loss 00:23:56.750 --> 00:23:59.130 and the harsh reality of the borderlands, it 00:23:59.130 --> 00:24:01.490 had this lyrical quality, a more traditional 00:24:01.490 --> 00:24:03.910 narrative structure than the dense, dark works 00:24:03.910 --> 00:24:05.849 that came before it. And the market just responded 00:24:05.849 --> 00:24:08.470 instantly. The sales figures tell the whole story. 00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:11.180 of that pivot from literary cult figure to mainstream 00:24:11.180 --> 00:24:14.660 success so after selling fewer than 5 000 hardcover 00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:17.559 copies of his first four novels all the pretty 00:24:17.559 --> 00:24:22.359 horses sold 190 000 hardcovers within six months 00:24:22.359 --> 00:24:25.539 wow it wasn't just a critical success i mean 00:24:25.539 --> 00:24:27.400 it won the national book award in the national 00:24:27.400 --> 00:24:31.140 book critics circle award it was a true commercial 00:24:31.140 --> 00:24:33.819 phenomenon And this novel was the first book 00:24:33.819 --> 00:24:36.539 in what became the Border Trilogy, which just 00:24:36.539 --> 00:24:39.740 solidified his mainstream fame. It was followed 00:24:39.740 --> 00:24:42.200 by The Crossing in 94 and Cities of the Plain 00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:45.500 in 98. The trilogy broadened his audience dramatically 00:24:45.500 --> 00:24:48.059 and finally brought financial stability to a 00:24:48.059 --> 00:24:50.220 man who had intentionally courted poverty for 00:24:50.220 --> 00:24:53.039 decades. He also continued his dramatic writing 00:24:53.039 --> 00:24:55.559 during this period. He published his second play, 00:24:55.740 --> 00:25:05.890 The Stone Mason, in 1995. And that efficiency 00:25:05.890 --> 00:25:08.710 of language leads us directly to No Country for 00:25:08.710 --> 00:25:11.250 Old Men, which was published in 2005. It's unique 00:25:11.250 --> 00:25:12.950 because it was originally conceived and actually 00:25:12.950 --> 00:25:14.990 drafted as a screenplay before he turned it into 00:25:14.990 --> 00:25:17.859 a novel. And that screenplay origin. It explains 00:25:17.859 --> 00:25:20.559 the book's highly stylized, minimalist nature, 00:25:20.680 --> 00:25:23.880 even for McCarthy. It has less of the sprawling, 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:26.720 descriptive geography of his other works. It's 00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:29.079 composed largely of dialogue. It's a structurally 00:25:29.079 --> 00:25:31.500 stripped down novel that translates almost perfectly 00:25:31.500 --> 00:25:33.640 to the screen. And the Coen brothers saw that 00:25:33.640 --> 00:25:35.759 potential immediately. Their film adaptation 00:25:35.759 --> 00:25:39.140 in 2007 was a cultural juggernaut. It won four 00:25:39.140 --> 00:25:41.980 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And that 00:25:41.980 --> 00:25:45.619 film. It brought his dark, uncompromising themes, 00:25:45.859 --> 00:25:48.160 the randomness of evil, the failure of modern 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:50.619 systems. It brought them into the global consciousness. 00:25:50.740 --> 00:25:53.160 For millions of people, the chilling figure of 00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:55.740 Anton Chigurh became the face of Cormac McCarthy's 00:25:55.740 --> 00:25:58.339 world. But the novel that truly defined his later 00:25:58.339 --> 00:26:00.900 literary legacy, and the one with this profoundly 00:26:00.900 --> 00:26:03.740 personal origin story, is The Road, published 00:26:03.740 --> 00:26:06.700 in 2006. The inspiration for this is incredibly 00:26:06.700 --> 00:26:08.720 poignant. It started with this late night moment 00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:11.259 he shared with his young son, John Francis. They 00:26:11.259 --> 00:26:13.440 were staying at a motel in El Paso. And McCarthy 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:15.779 looked out the window in the dead of night and 00:26:15.779 --> 00:26:18.700 just imagined the city utterly ruined. He saw 00:26:18.700 --> 00:26:21.279 fires up on the hill and everything being laid 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:24.960 to waste. That terrifying, desolate image, which 00:26:24.960 --> 00:26:27.700 he initially just jotted down in two pages, that 00:26:27.700 --> 00:26:29.940 became the seed for the whole post -apocalyptic 00:26:29.940 --> 00:26:32.519 narrative. Four years later, while he was in 00:26:32.519 --> 00:26:35.180 Ireland. He expanded that two -page idea into 00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:38.440 the full novel. And the core, terrifying horror 00:26:38.440 --> 00:26:40.680 of the cannibals, which is a defining threat 00:26:40.680 --> 00:26:43.059 in the book, that came from a discussion he had 00:26:43.059 --> 00:26:45.220 with his brother. But the truly personal touch 00:26:45.220 --> 00:26:47.319 and what gives that novel its emotional power 00:26:47.319 --> 00:26:49.819 is that many of the conversations between the 00:26:49.819 --> 00:26:52.299 lone father and his young son were verbatim discussions 00:26:52.299 --> 00:26:54.460 that McCarthy had had with his own son, John 00:26:54.460 --> 00:26:57.660 Francis. The emotional intensity is rooted in 00:26:57.660 --> 00:27:00.400 real life paternal anxiety. The road got immediate, 00:27:00.619 --> 00:27:03.279 overwhelming international acclaim. It won the 00:27:03.279 --> 00:27:05.700 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which is the 00:27:05.700 --> 00:27:07.859 highest honor in American letters. And in perfect 00:27:07.859 --> 00:27:09.920 McCarthy fashion, he did not accept the prize 00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:12.700 in person. He sent his editor, Sonny Mehta, to 00:27:12.700 --> 00:27:15.279 represent. him. The success of The Road led to 00:27:15.279 --> 00:27:18.660 something truly unimaginable. Cormac McCarthy 00:27:18.660 --> 00:27:21.319 agreed to do his first ever television interview. 00:27:21.559 --> 00:27:24.660 After decades of refusing the media, viewing 00:27:24.660 --> 00:27:27.279 interviews as just a distraction from the work. 00:27:27.500 --> 00:27:31.140 This was the Oprah interview in 2007. The Road 00:27:31.140 --> 00:27:34.019 was selected for Oprah's book club, and it offered 00:27:34.019 --> 00:27:36.539 this crucial, though very fleeting, glimpse into 00:27:36.539 --> 00:27:39.619 the intensely private man. And crucially, where 00:27:39.619 --> 00:27:42.230 the interview took place. It wasn't in a bookstore 00:27:42.230 --> 00:27:45.470 or a university or some Manhattan studio. It 00:27:45.470 --> 00:27:48.069 took place in the library of the Santa Fe Institute. 00:27:48.349 --> 00:27:51.109 And that location was a massive clue about his 00:27:51.109 --> 00:27:53.650 actual intellectual priorities. It was a huge 00:27:53.650 --> 00:27:56.440 signal. He spoke pretty candidly. He shared stories 00:27:56.440 --> 00:27:58.900 of the extreme poverty he'd endured early in 00:27:58.900 --> 00:28:01.380 his career, which validated all those anecdotes 00:28:01.380 --> 00:28:03.380 we discussed earlier. But the critical piece 00:28:03.380 --> 00:28:05.539 of information he used that platform to relay 00:28:05.539 --> 00:28:08.740 was about his intellectual allegiance. He explicitly 00:28:08.740 --> 00:28:11.039 stated that he did not know any other writers 00:28:11.039 --> 00:28:13.420 and that he much preferred the company and the 00:28:13.420 --> 00:28:16.019 conversation of scientists. In that public declaration, 00:28:16.339 --> 00:28:18.400 it just confirmed what his work had often implied. 00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:21.779 His true intellectual loyalty was not to the 00:28:21.779 --> 00:28:23.660 literary world that he dominated, but to the 00:28:23.660 --> 00:28:26.640 world of objective inquiry, of physics and complex 00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:29.319 systems. And this preference, it sets up the 00:28:29.319 --> 00:28:32.099 final, most intellectual, and arguably most surprising 00:28:32.099 --> 00:28:34.750 phase of his entire career. It's also worth noting 00:28:34.750 --> 00:28:36.990 he maintained his engagement with dramatic forms, 00:28:37.170 --> 00:28:39.390 which confirms his interest in that efficient 00:28:39.390 --> 00:28:43.069 dialogue driven storytelling. His 2006 play The 00:28:43.069 --> 00:28:45.549 Sunset Limited was adapted into a film in 2011. 00:28:45.750 --> 00:28:48.589 And he sold the original screenplay The Counselor 00:28:48.589 --> 00:28:50.990 in 2012, which was released as a film in 2013. 00:28:51.109 --> 00:28:53.210 So he's still very much active in that world 00:28:53.210 --> 00:28:55.730 as well. Yeah. So let's move now into section 00:28:55.730 --> 00:28:59.240 four. Science, language, and the Santa Fe Institute. 00:28:59.640 --> 00:29:02.359 This is the period from about 2014 until his 00:29:02.359 --> 00:29:05.059 death in 2023, where his scientific interests 00:29:05.059 --> 00:29:07.579 became explicit and really started to profoundly 00:29:07.579 --> 00:29:10.180 influence his final works. This is a phase that 00:29:10.180 --> 00:29:13.880 is just. It's unique for a writer of his stature. 00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:17.240 McCarthy became a highly engaged trustee at the 00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:20.619 Santa Fe Institute, SFI, and this is not a traditional 00:29:20.619 --> 00:29:23.220 university. It's a multidisciplinary research 00:29:23.220 --> 00:29:26.200 center focused on a field called complex adaptive 00:29:26.200 --> 00:29:28.700 systems. We should probably define that term 00:29:28.700 --> 00:29:31.119 for you, the listener. Complex adaptive systems, 00:29:31.200 --> 00:29:34.220 or CAS, is the study of systems that have many 00:29:34.220 --> 00:29:36.420 components that interact and adapt over time. 00:29:36.700 --> 00:29:39.700 Like what? Well, think of ant colonies, stock 00:29:39.700 --> 00:29:42.539 markets, the human brain, ecosystems, or even 00:29:42.539 --> 00:29:44.960 language itself. They're focused on emergent 00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:47.000 behavior and patterns that you can't predict 00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:49.859 just by analyzing the individual parts alone. 00:29:50.220 --> 00:29:53.299 And McCarthy, despite lacking any formal scientific 00:29:53.299 --> 00:29:56.400 background, was deeply integrated into this environment. 00:29:56.799 --> 00:29:58.779 He was eating lunch and having these long conversations 00:29:58.779 --> 00:30:01.359 with physicists, biologists, and computer scientists. 00:30:01.720 --> 00:30:04.420 The Nobel Prize -winning physicist Murray Gell 00:30:04.420 --> 00:30:06.579 -Mann noted how unusual but fitting the match 00:30:06.579 --> 00:30:15.500 was. He said, McCarthy didn't just admire science. 00:30:15.900 --> 00:30:19.279 He placed it at the absolute top of his intellectual 00:30:19.279 --> 00:30:22.539 hierarchy. He stated it very plainly. Writing 00:30:22.539 --> 00:30:25.220 is way, way down at the bottom of the list. I 00:30:25.220 --> 00:30:27.039 mean, that's incredible. If a man who dedicated 00:30:27.039 --> 00:30:29.599 his entire life to narrative places it at the 00:30:29.599 --> 00:30:32.160 bottom of his own intellectual totem pole, you 00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:34.119 know his admiration for science was absolute. 00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:37.500 And this perspective, it explains why, after 00:30:37.500 --> 00:30:40.559 a 50 -year career spent exclusively writing fiction 00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:43.279 and screenplays, he finally published his first 00:30:43.279 --> 00:30:46.980 and only piece of nonfiction in 2017, an essay 00:30:46.980 --> 00:30:51.079 titled The Kikule Problem. OK, we are now moving 00:30:51.079 --> 00:30:53.819 into some truly high level philosophy. This is 00:30:53.819 --> 00:30:56.240 the moment where McCarthy becomes less a novelist 00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:58.559 and more theoretical philosopher of mind. So 00:30:58.559 --> 00:31:00.940 what exactly is the Kikuli problem? It centers 00:31:00.940 --> 00:31:03.500 on the famous story of August Kikuli, the German 00:31:03.500 --> 00:31:05.859 chemist. Kikuli had been struggling to figure 00:31:05.859 --> 00:31:07.819 out the ring structure of the benzene molecule. 00:31:07.859 --> 00:31:10.410 Right. And the legend says he fell asleep by 00:31:10.410 --> 00:31:12.630 the fire and he dreamed of a snake eating its 00:31:12.630 --> 00:31:15.609 own tail, the Ouroboros, which gave him the breakthrough 00:31:15.609 --> 00:31:18.190 visual insight into the cyclical structure of 00:31:18.190 --> 00:31:21.069 benzene. And McCarthy analyzed this dream as 00:31:21.069 --> 00:31:23.609 a model for how the unconscious mind works and 00:31:23.609 --> 00:31:25.509 critically for the origin of language itself. 00:31:25.869 --> 00:31:29.269 He used this specific historical scientific anecdote 00:31:29.269 --> 00:31:32.069 to present his core theory about the separation 00:31:32.069 --> 00:31:34.690 of mind and language. And the theory is profound. 00:31:35.450 --> 00:31:38.130 McCarthy posited that the unconscious is a universal 00:31:38.130 --> 00:31:42.049 non -human machine for operating an animal. He 00:31:42.049 --> 00:31:44.130 believed that all animals have an unconscious 00:31:44.130 --> 00:31:48.549 that manages life functions, survival. This unconscious, 00:31:48.769 --> 00:31:51.210 this operating system, is essentially universal 00:31:51.210 --> 00:31:54.269 across all species. And here's the critical distinction 00:31:54.269 --> 00:31:57.130 that applies to his entire literary career. He 00:31:57.130 --> 00:31:59.789 theorized that language itself is not biologically 00:31:59.789 --> 00:32:02.329 determined. He argued that it's a purely human 00:32:02.329 --> 00:32:04.769 cultural creation. It's an invention, a tool, 00:32:04.890 --> 00:32:07.170 something acquired and passed down through culture, 00:32:07.289 --> 00:32:09.569 completely separate from that universal animal 00:32:09.569 --> 00:32:11.720 machine that dictates survival. and violence. 00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:14.279 The implications of that are huge. If language 00:32:14.279 --> 00:32:16.740 is a cultural invention and the unconscious is 00:32:16.740 --> 00:32:19.259 a universal survival machine, then the unconscious 00:32:19.259 --> 00:32:21.500 can't actually speak to us in full sentences. 00:32:21.900 --> 00:32:24.920 Exactly. Kigali's insight didn't come as words. 00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:28.420 It came as a symbolic image, the snake eating 00:32:28.420 --> 00:32:31.269 its own tail. So if the unconscious is a machine 00:32:31.269 --> 00:32:34.410 and language is a tool, then what we call writing 00:32:34.410 --> 00:32:37.309 is just the conscious mind struggling to interpret 00:32:37.309 --> 00:32:40.549 the pure nonverbal data or symbols it receives 00:32:40.549 --> 00:32:44.130 from the deep animal unconscious, which aligns 00:32:44.130 --> 00:32:46.190 perfectly with his earlier statement that writing 00:32:46.190 --> 00:32:48.349 was a subconscious process that couldn't be outlined. 00:32:48.710 --> 00:32:50.390 You know, it's interesting. Many literary figures 00:32:50.390 --> 00:32:53.069 kind of dismissed the Kikule essay. They saw 00:32:53.069 --> 00:32:55.269 it as a novelist waiting out of his depth. But 00:32:55.269 --> 00:32:57.279 if you think about his background. The relentless 00:32:57.279 --> 00:32:59.859 copy editing, the sparse prose, the rejection 00:32:59.859 --> 00:33:02.779 of blotting the page, it actually made him uniquely 00:33:02.779 --> 00:33:05.299 suited to dissect the origins of language. His 00:33:05.299 --> 00:33:07.799 whole career was an obsession with efficiency, 00:33:08.099 --> 00:33:10.880 with the minimal unit of meaning. He understood 00:33:10.880 --> 00:33:12.819 that symbols and direct visual representation, 00:33:13.160 --> 00:33:15.539 which is what the unconscious provides, are often 00:33:15.539 --> 00:33:18.180 more powerful than the cumbersome cultural tool 00:33:18.180 --> 00:33:22.259 we call grammar. His sparse prose, the polysententon, 00:33:22.259 --> 00:33:24.900 the lack of quote marks, they are all attempts 00:33:24.900 --> 00:33:27.619 to strip language back down to its most fundamental 00:33:27.619 --> 00:33:30.519 efficient components, almost mimicking the stark 00:33:30.519 --> 00:33:33.039 nonverbal input of that unconscious machine. 00:33:33.299 --> 00:33:36.500 And this scientific analytical lens clearly influenced 00:33:36.500 --> 00:33:39.329 his final literary output. His final two novels, 00:33:39.470 --> 00:33:41.430 which were published in quick succession in 2022, 00:33:41.849 --> 00:33:44.130 The Passenger and its companion novel, Stella 00:33:44.130 --> 00:33:46.509 Maris, were explicitly influenced by his time 00:33:46.509 --> 00:33:49.210 among the scientists at SFI. Stella Maris was 00:33:49.210 --> 00:33:51.490 notable. It was his first novel since Outer Dark 00:33:51.490 --> 00:33:53.730 back in 1968 to feature a female protagonist. 00:33:54.210 --> 00:33:56.250 She's a brilliant mathematician named Alicia 00:33:56.250 --> 00:33:58.690 Western, and her discussions of logic, math, 00:33:58.829 --> 00:34:01.490 and philosophy just dominate the text. And The 00:34:01.490 --> 00:34:03.849 Passenger was described by an SFI biologist, 00:34:04.029 --> 00:34:07.569 David Krakauer, as full -blown Cormac 3 .0, a 00:34:07.569 --> 00:34:10.369 mathematical and analytical novel. It delves 00:34:10.369 --> 00:34:12.309 into these incredibly complex topics like theoretical 00:34:12.309 --> 00:34:14.590 physics, mathematics, the ethics of scientific 00:34:14.590 --> 00:34:17.489 research, using the narrative form to explore 00:34:17.489 --> 00:34:20.389 ideas usually reserved for the laboratory. It 00:34:20.389 --> 00:34:23.469 really marks a final, profound evolution in his 00:34:23.469 --> 00:34:26.110 style. He moved from the mythic scope of the 00:34:26.110 --> 00:34:28.610 Western to something approaching, I don't know, 00:34:28.650 --> 00:34:31.650 philosophical mathematics. All right. So to wrap 00:34:31.650 --> 00:34:33.250 up this incredible journey, let's look at Section 00:34:33.250 --> 00:34:37.130 5, his legacy, critical acclaim, and the iconic 00:34:37.130 --> 00:34:39.969 Olivetti typewriter. We have to circle back to 00:34:39.969 --> 00:34:42.010 the typewriter because it is the perfect encapsulation 00:34:42.010 --> 00:34:45.150 of his minimalist, uncompromising approach. And 00:34:45.150 --> 00:34:47.820 it provides a final, perfect anecdote. It truly 00:34:47.820 --> 00:34:50.400 is an iconoclastic tool. He wrote virtually all 00:34:50.400 --> 00:34:52.360 of his fiction, all his correspondence between 00:34:52.360 --> 00:34:55.260 the early 60s and 2009 on that single Olivetti 00:34:55.260 --> 00:34:58.619 Letter 32. Bought for $50, the amount of output 00:34:58.619 --> 00:35:00.800 it generated, something like 5 million words 00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:03.699 of published fiction, is just astounding. The 00:35:03.699 --> 00:35:06.139 book dealer Glenn Horowitz, he summed up the 00:35:06.139 --> 00:35:08.920 significance of this machine perfectly. He said 00:35:08.920 --> 00:35:12.139 the modest typewriter acquired a sort of talismanic 00:35:12.139 --> 00:35:14.599 quality through its connection to McCarthy's 00:35:14.599 --> 00:35:17.539 monumental fiction, as if Mount Rushmore was 00:35:17.539 --> 00:35:20.239 carved with a Swiss army knife. So when he finally 00:35:20.239 --> 00:35:23.500 retired in 2009, it was auctioned at Christie's. 00:35:23.599 --> 00:35:26.519 And the experts, they were expecting maybe $20 00:35:26.519 --> 00:35:31.900 ,000. And it sold for a staggering $254 ,500. 00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:35.159 And the best part of the story, the perfect final 00:35:35.159 --> 00:35:38.760 detail of his anti -materialism. All the proceeds 00:35:38.760 --> 00:35:40.880 from that auction went directly to the Santa 00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:43.599 Fe Institute, funding the scientific research 00:35:43.599 --> 00:35:46.539 he so admired. And he replaced that priceless 00:35:46.539 --> 00:35:48.679 artifact with an identical functional model, 00:35:48.880 --> 00:35:51.719 which a friend of his bought for $11 plus shipping. 00:35:51.900 --> 00:35:54.539 It's a perfect, almost legendary loop of genius, 00:35:54.820 --> 00:35:57.840 self -effacement, and his institutional support 00:35:57.840 --> 00:36:00.420 for science. And his critical placement in the 00:36:00.420 --> 00:36:03.590 American literary canon is just. It's undeniable. 00:36:04.110 --> 00:36:07.070 The literary critic Harold Bloom, back in 2003, 00:36:07.349 --> 00:36:09.769 named McCarthy one of the four major living American 00:36:09.769 --> 00:36:12.329 novelists. He placed him in the highest company 00:36:12.329 --> 00:36:15.769 alongside Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip 00:36:15.769 --> 00:36:18.230 Roth. And Bloom didn't just offer faint praise. 00:36:18.349 --> 00:36:21.530 He included Child of God, Sutry, and Blood Meridian 00:36:21.530 --> 00:36:23.610 in his list of works that he predicted would 00:36:23.610 --> 00:36:26.820 endure and become canonical. And he reserved 00:36:26.820 --> 00:36:29.219 his highest praise for Blood Meridian, reiterating 00:36:29.219 --> 00:36:31.880 that it was the greatest single book since Faulkner's 00:36:31.880 --> 00:36:34.360 As I Lay Dying. Even earlier than that, the legendary 00:36:34.360 --> 00:36:37.860 novelist Saul Bellow praised his absolutely overpowering 00:36:37.860 --> 00:36:40.059 use of language, his life -giving and death -dealing 00:36:40.059 --> 00:36:42.760 sentences. McCarthy might have hated the literary 00:36:42.760 --> 00:36:44.940 scene, but the literary world certainly recognized 00:36:44.940 --> 00:36:47.760 his magnitude. We should also touch on the intensely 00:36:47.760 --> 00:36:50.019 private man and the mythology he cultivated. 00:36:50.519 --> 00:36:52.840 We know he was a teetotaler. He quit drinking 00:36:52.840 --> 00:36:56.360 in El Paso in 76, though a longtime friend later 00:36:56.360 --> 00:36:58.380 claimed he did resume drinking near the end of 00:36:58.380 --> 00:37:00.739 his life. And, of course, his famous and highly 00:37:00.739 --> 00:37:03.320 unusual aversion to other writers, preferring 00:37:03.320 --> 00:37:05.280 the company of physicists and mathematicians. 00:37:05.460 --> 00:37:08.739 And this personal secrecy, it created this very 00:37:08.739 --> 00:37:11.780 strange relationship with the digital age, even 00:37:11.780 --> 00:37:14.420 though he refused to use a computer. The irony 00:37:14.420 --> 00:37:16.940 is just delicious. He was constantly targeted 00:37:16.940 --> 00:37:19.449 by hoaxes. Twitter hoaxes about his death would 00:37:19.449 --> 00:37:21.869 spread, and one was even repeated by USA Today. 00:37:22.090 --> 00:37:24.570 It prompted the Los Angeles Times to write the 00:37:24.570 --> 00:37:27.570 headline, Cormac McCarthy isn't dead. He's too 00:37:27.570 --> 00:37:30.869 tough to die. Fake verified accounts would impersonate 00:37:30.869 --> 00:37:33.469 him multiple times. So the Luddite, who completely 00:37:33.469 --> 00:37:36.489 eschewed the digital sphere, became a constant 00:37:36.489 --> 00:37:39.469 source of digital misinformation, which... probably 00:37:39.469 --> 00:37:42.250 just validated his pessimistic views on the modern 00:37:42.250 --> 00:37:44.309 information environment. Cormac McCarthy died 00:37:44.309 --> 00:37:48.489 peacefully on June 13th, 2023. He was 89 in Santa 00:37:48.489 --> 00:37:50.949 Fe, and his physical legacy is now contained 00:37:50.949 --> 00:37:53.230 in the Whitliffe collections at Texas State University. 00:37:53.630 --> 00:37:57.309 It's 98 boxes, a total of 46 linear feet of papers, 00:37:57.510 --> 00:38:00.750 a tangible record of a life dedicated to meticulous 00:38:00.750 --> 00:38:02.849 craft and revision. His legacy is that of an 00:38:02.849 --> 00:38:04.869 author who really defined the extremes of the 00:38:04.869 --> 00:38:07.210 American experience, both historically and his 00:38:07.210 --> 00:38:09.190 portrayal of the frontier. and stylistically 00:38:09.190 --> 00:38:12.150 in his relentless demanding prose. So what does 00:38:12.150 --> 00:38:14.809 this all mean for you, the listener? McCarthy's 00:38:14.809 --> 00:38:17.570 genius, I think, lies in a powerful trifecta. 00:38:17.710 --> 00:38:20.949 First, his stark, unforgiving style, defined 00:38:20.949 --> 00:38:24.110 by that syntax of omission, no quotation marks, 00:38:24.269 --> 00:38:27.329 no semicolons, just pure declarative drive that 00:38:27.329 --> 00:38:29.690 creates a sense of narrative determinism. Second, 00:38:29.849 --> 00:38:32.789 his uncompromising philosophical themes, the 00:38:32.789 --> 00:38:35.110 nature of violence, morality, the inhumanity 00:38:35.110 --> 00:38:38.190 of authority, all of it often framed through 00:38:38.190 --> 00:38:41.260 that complex lens of a Gnostic tragedy. And third, 00:38:41.440 --> 00:38:43.860 and this is the most surprising part, his unique 00:38:43.860 --> 00:38:47.039 and impactful convergence of high literary artistry 00:38:47.039 --> 00:38:49.320 with deep scientific thought at the Santa Fe 00:38:49.320 --> 00:38:51.760 Institute. He wasn't just a writer. He was a 00:38:51.760 --> 00:38:54.219 thinker who used narrative to explore profound 00:38:54.219 --> 00:38:56.940 philosophical questions usually reserved for 00:38:56.940 --> 00:38:59.280 the sciences, like the origin of language and 00:38:59.280 --> 00:39:01.519 the nature of the unconscious. He saw violence 00:39:01.519 --> 00:39:03.579 not as an aberration that needed to be fixed, 00:39:03.619 --> 00:39:05.800 but as a condition of being an animal. He saw 00:39:05.800 --> 00:39:07.980 language not as instinct, but as a purely cultural 00:39:07.980 --> 00:39:10.440 tool. He made the frontier not just a physical 00:39:10.440 --> 00:39:12.940 place, but an intellectual one, pushing the boundaries 00:39:12.940 --> 00:39:14.920 of what the American novel could contain. So 00:39:14.920 --> 00:39:16.860 let's end with this final provocative thought. 00:39:17.780 --> 00:39:21.019 McCarthy described his final novel, The Passenger, 00:39:21.119 --> 00:39:24.760 as a mathematical and analytical novel. If we 00:39:24.760 --> 00:39:26.940 connect this intellectual return to the analytical 00:39:26.940 --> 00:39:29.639 scientific lens, the world of complex adaptive 00:39:29.639 --> 00:39:32.280 systems, with the bigger picture of his career, 00:39:32.519 --> 00:39:34.559 what does it suggest about the ultimate role 00:39:34.559 --> 00:39:37.269 of narrative? Does it imply that the greatest 00:39:37.269 --> 00:39:40.110 American stories, once you strip them of all 00:39:40.110 --> 00:39:42.670 sentimental punctuation and traditional morality, 00:39:42.969 --> 00:39:45.829 must ultimately be about the brutal, complex 00:39:45.829 --> 00:39:48.949 mechanics of the universe rather than just human 00:39:48.949 --> 00:39:51.690 society or politics or emotion? What stands out 00:39:51.690 --> 00:39:54.010 to you? The fusion he achieved, it suggests that 00:39:54.010 --> 00:39:56.929 literature, at its absolute highest level, strives 00:39:56.929 --> 00:39:59.250 to understand the same fundamental, unchanging 00:39:59.250 --> 00:40:01.710 laws as physics. He sought the truth of the universe. 00:40:01.969 --> 00:40:04.030 He just happened to use prose instead of equations. 00:40:04.210 --> 00:40:06.090 A deeply compelling thought to leave you with. 00:40:06.210 --> 00:40:08.170 That's been the deep dive into the world of Cormac 00:40:08.170 --> 00:40:08.409 McCarthy.