WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.099 I want you to imagine, for just a second, a writer, 00:00:04.740 --> 00:00:08.519 but not just any writer. Picture a guy who is 00:00:08.519 --> 00:00:11.500 so intensely, almost terrifyingly devoted to 00:00:11.500 --> 00:00:14.460 his craft that he's living in a literal dairy 00:00:14.460 --> 00:00:17.679 barn. Wow. Yeah, bathing in a nearby lake. He 00:00:17.679 --> 00:00:20.500 and his wife are basically eating beans to survive, 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:24.390 and the phone rings. Right. Someone is offering 00:00:24.390 --> 00:00:27.589 him $2 ,000 to just come speak at a university 00:00:27.589 --> 00:00:29.829 about his books, which, you know, back then is 00:00:29.829 --> 00:00:31.789 an absolute fortune when you're literally living 00:00:31.789 --> 00:00:34.070 in an unheated barn. Oh, absolutely. And he turns 00:00:34.070 --> 00:00:35.689 it down. He tells them, everything I have to 00:00:35.689 --> 00:00:37.850 say is there on the page. And they just go back 00:00:37.850 --> 00:00:40.250 to eating beans for another week. It's just it's 00:00:40.250 --> 00:00:42.409 the ultimate rejection of the literary spotlight. 00:00:42.509 --> 00:00:44.750 Yeah. You know, a complete and utter indifference 00:00:44.750 --> 00:00:47.299 to well. anything outside of the work itself, 00:00:47.799 --> 00:00:50.140 which is a level of discipline most people simply 00:00:50.140 --> 00:00:52.659 cannot comprehend. Exactly. So welcome to this 00:00:52.659 --> 00:00:55.859 custom deep dive. Today we're exploring the enigmatic 00:00:55.859 --> 00:00:59.700 life, the brutal, uncompromising themes, and 00:00:59.700 --> 00:01:02.820 the paradoxical genius of the man in that dairy 00:01:02.820 --> 00:01:06.079 barn, Cormac McCarthy. Okay, let's unpack this. 00:01:06.519 --> 00:01:08.780 Because we aren't just talking about a novelist 00:01:08.780 --> 00:01:10.980 today. We're looking at a man who lived a life 00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:14.739 of almost like monastic dedication to his art. 00:01:15.260 --> 00:01:17.719 He sacrificed practically everything for the 00:01:17.719 --> 00:01:20.079 written word. And that is exactly what makes 00:01:20.079 --> 00:01:23.120 him so compelling to study. Cormac McCarthy is 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:25.939 widely regarded today as one of the absolute 00:01:25.939 --> 00:01:29.400 greatest American novelists, a giant of literature. 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:31.840 Right, for sure. But his path to that status 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:35.980 was decades of obscurity, deliberate isolation, 00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:39.599 and an unwavering commitment to a very specific, 00:01:39.640 --> 00:01:41.939 very stark vision of the world. Well, and you'd 00:01:41.939 --> 00:01:43.959 naturally assume a guy who ends up bathing in 00:01:43.959 --> 00:01:45.819 a lake and living in a barn came from nothing, 00:01:45.859 --> 00:01:48.200 right? Well, he was born into deep poverty and 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:50.319 just never escaped it. Exactly. But he wasn't. 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:53.519 He was born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. And his 00:01:53.519 --> 00:01:55.620 father was actually a highly successful lawyer 00:01:55.620 --> 00:01:57.579 for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Yeah, they 00:01:57.579 --> 00:01:59.900 lived in an upscale subdivision. Right. He grew 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:03.299 up wealthy. So how does someone with that kind 00:02:03.299 --> 00:02:06.909 of safety net consciously choose to live in total 00:02:06.909 --> 00:02:10.569 destitution. By actively stripping away the comforts 00:02:10.569 --> 00:02:12.930 and expectations of his upbringing. He didn't 00:02:12.930 --> 00:02:15.810 just walk away from the money, he rejected the 00:02:15.810 --> 00:02:17.949 entire identity prepared for him. Right. You 00:02:17.949 --> 00:02:20.189 can even see that in his name. He changed his 00:02:20.189 --> 00:02:23.129 name from Charles to Cormac, partially to avoid 00:02:23.129 --> 00:02:25.930 being compared to the famous ventriloquist dummy 00:02:25.930 --> 00:02:29.879 of the time, Charlie McCarthy. Changing your 00:02:29.879 --> 00:02:32.439 name to avoid association with a ventriloquist 00:02:32.439 --> 00:02:36.400 dummy is such a brilliantly specific, stubborn 00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:39.259 detail. It really is. And that stubborn rejection 00:02:39.259 --> 00:02:42.599 of the expected path just like became the theme 00:02:42.599 --> 00:02:45.340 of his 20s. He enrolls at the University of Tennessee, 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:48.479 drops out, joins the Air Force, gets stationed 00:02:48.479 --> 00:02:50.699 in Alaska. And was actually up in Alaska serving 00:02:50.699 --> 00:02:52.659 in the military where he suddenly started reading 00:02:52.659 --> 00:02:54.860 voraciously. Yeah. It's like a switch flipped 00:02:54.860 --> 00:02:56.759 in the freezing cold. And then he returns to 00:02:56.759 --> 00:02:58.889 college after that. drops out a second time, 00:02:59.110 --> 00:03:01.229 and just completely commits to the page. Right. 00:03:01.270 --> 00:03:03.389 He decides he's simply not going to work a regular 00:03:03.389 --> 00:03:05.830 job. He actually told people he always knew he 00:03:05.830 --> 00:03:08.210 didn't want to work, that writing was his number 00:03:08.210 --> 00:03:11.370 one priority. And that decision didn't lead to 00:03:11.370 --> 00:03:14.729 sudden success. It plunged him into extreme poverty 00:03:14.729 --> 00:03:17.969 for a very, very long time. Decades, yeah. The 00:03:17.969 --> 00:03:21.469 details of this poverty are staggering. I was 00:03:21.469 --> 00:03:24.169 reading that he got evicted from a $40 a month 00:03:24.169 --> 00:03:26.469 room in the French Quarter of New Orleans because 00:03:26.469 --> 00:03:29.270 he couldn't scrape together the rent. Wow. And 00:03:29.270 --> 00:03:31.969 when he traveled, he carried a 100 watt light 00:03:31.969 --> 00:03:34.550 bulb in his bag. Wait, really? Just a loose bulb? 00:03:34.550 --> 00:03:36.909 Just a loose light bulb. So that no matter where 00:03:36.909 --> 00:03:39.669 he was sleeping, a cheap motel, a friend's couch, 00:03:39.949 --> 00:03:42.150 he could screw it into the lamp and ensure he 00:03:42.150 --> 00:03:44.110 had enough light to keep reading and writing 00:03:44.110 --> 00:03:46.270 deep into the night. That's incredible. It shows 00:03:46.270 --> 00:03:47.969 you how writing wasn't just something he did. 00:03:47.969 --> 00:03:51.270 It was an environmental necessity. like oxygen. 00:03:51.849 --> 00:03:53.550 Yeah. And then there's the dairy barn you mentioned 00:03:53.550 --> 00:03:55.990 earlier. He bought it in Tennessee with his second 00:03:55.990 --> 00:03:59.129 wife and Delisle, and he renovated it entirely 00:03:59.129 --> 00:04:01.710 himself. Literally did the stone work. Yeah. 00:04:02.210 --> 00:04:04.590 When the writer James Akey's childhood home was 00:04:04.590 --> 00:04:06.930 being demolished in Knoxville, McCarthy went 00:04:06.930 --> 00:04:09.710 out, salvaged the bricks from the rubble, and 00:04:09.710 --> 00:04:11.629 used them to build the fireplaces in his own 00:04:11.629 --> 00:04:15.389 shack. That is so symbolic. Right. He was physically 00:04:15.389 --> 00:04:19.370 building his environment by hand, stone by stone. 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:21.540 Brick by brick. In his personal life, I mean, 00:04:21.579 --> 00:04:24.100 it reflects that same unconventional restless 00:04:24.100 --> 00:04:27.839 energy. He was married three times. And the biographical 00:04:27.839 --> 00:04:29.920 record points out a relationship that started 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.680 when he was 42 years old. He met a young woman 00:04:32.680 --> 00:04:35.480 named Augusta Britt at a motel in Arizona. She 00:04:35.480 --> 00:04:38.560 was 16 at the time. Right. They hit it off. He 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:40.839 used their experiences as inspiration for his 00:04:40.839 --> 00:04:43.300 novel, Setree. And the next year, when she was 00:04:43.300 --> 00:04:45.740 17, they took a trip to Mexico where the relationship 00:04:45.740 --> 00:04:48.240 became physical. Yeah. And they ended up remaining 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:50.839 lifelong friends. Exactly. Exactly. And to be 00:04:50.839 --> 00:04:53.600 clear to you listening, our goal here is simply 00:04:53.600 --> 00:04:56.279 to impartially report the biographical facts 00:04:56.279 --> 00:04:58.720 as they exist in the text. We aren't taking a 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:01.019 moral stance or endorsing his personal choices. 00:05:01.180 --> 00:05:03.620 No, of course not. But it really underscores 00:05:03.620 --> 00:05:06.699 how entirely detached he was from any kind of 00:05:06.699 --> 00:05:09.879 societal norm. It absolutely does. He operated 00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:11.980 entirely on a different frequency than the rest 00:05:11.980 --> 00:05:14.899 of society, often at the great expense of conventional 00:05:14.899 --> 00:05:17.019 stability and those around him. I do have to 00:05:17.019 --> 00:05:18.819 push back a little on this though. We tend to 00:05:18.819 --> 00:05:21.480 romanticize the, you know, the starving artist 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:24.980 trope, but is this actually admirable dedication 00:05:24.980 --> 00:05:28.339 or is it just sheer selfish stubbornness? It's 00:05:28.339 --> 00:05:31.060 like he took a monastic vow of poverty, choosing 00:05:31.060 --> 00:05:33.800 to strip away every distraction, including basic 00:05:33.800 --> 00:05:36.220 comforts and sometimes his own family's financial 00:05:36.220 --> 00:05:38.500 stability, just to keep the creative channel 00:05:38.500 --> 00:05:40.920 pure. Well, what's fascinating here is you're 00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.120 entirely right to call it stubbornness. From 00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:46.360 the outside, it looks incredibly selfish to subject 00:05:46.360 --> 00:05:48.680 your family to that kind of precarity over a 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:51.360 $2 ,000 speaking fee. Yeah. But to understand 00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:52.980 him, you have to realize that writing wasn't 00:05:52.980 --> 00:05:56.279 the career trajectory for McCarthy. It was an 00:05:56.279 --> 00:05:59.600 all consuming priority. a biological compulsion. 00:05:59.819 --> 00:06:02.560 He wasn't playing the literary game. For his 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:05.319 first decades, he was known as the best unknown 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:09.540 novelist in America. Up until 1991, none of his 00:06:09.540 --> 00:06:12.079 books had sold more than 5 ,000 hardcover copies. 00:06:13.699 --> 00:06:16.379 Over decades of work, for a guy we now consider 00:06:16.379 --> 00:06:18.720 a legendary American author, you'd think after 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.420 10 years of selling barely any books, a normal 00:06:21.420 --> 00:06:24.600 person would pivot. They'd hire a PR team or 00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:26.579 write something more commercial. He just doubled 00:06:26.579 --> 00:06:29.079 down. A lack of commercial success did not alter 00:06:29.079 --> 00:06:32.620 his process one bit. And that absolute refusal 00:06:32.620 --> 00:06:35.240 to carry excess baggage in his life extended 00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:38.800 directly to the page. How so? Just like he didn't 00:06:38.800 --> 00:06:41.370 want the distraction of a comfortable home. He 00:06:41.370 --> 00:06:43.350 didn't want the distraction of traditional grammar. 00:06:43.970 --> 00:06:46.850 Oh, which brings us to how he actually wrote. 00:06:47.069 --> 00:06:49.350 If you pick up a Cormac McCarthy book, the very 00:06:49.350 --> 00:06:51.629 first thing you notice is what isn't there. Exactly. 00:06:51.730 --> 00:06:54.209 He had an absolute hatred for punctuation. He 00:06:54.209 --> 00:06:56.529 refused to use quotation marks for dialogue. 00:06:56.829 --> 00:07:00.170 He famously said there was no reason to blot 00:07:00.170 --> 00:07:02.269 the page up with weird little marks. Yeah, he 00:07:02.269 --> 00:07:05.029 thought some A -colons were idiocy. Idiocy. He 00:07:05.029 --> 00:07:07.129 relied almost entirely on simple declarative 00:07:07.129 --> 00:07:09.589 sentences, capital letters, periods, and the 00:07:09.589 --> 00:07:11.860 occasional comma. And instead of using commas 00:07:11.860 --> 00:07:14.639 to separate clauses, he utilized a grammatical 00:07:14.639 --> 00:07:17.410 technique called polysyndetum. Right. That's 00:07:17.410 --> 00:07:20.889 right. He would string together these long flowing 00:07:20.889 --> 00:07:23.089 biblical sounding sentences just using the word 00:07:23.089 --> 00:07:27.569 and like and they rode on and the wind blew and 00:07:27.569 --> 00:07:29.670 the sky turned dark. He actually went out of 00:07:29.670 --> 00:07:32.189 his way to aggressively edit other people's commas 00:07:32.189 --> 00:07:35.550 too. I read he copyedited an article for the 00:07:35.550 --> 00:07:38.029 Harvard Business Review. Oh yeah. And physics 00:07:38.029 --> 00:07:40.509 papers for scientists at the Santa Fe Institute 00:07:40.509 --> 00:07:42.629 just so he could go in and strip their commas 00:07:42.629 --> 00:07:45.069 out. It's a brilliant manifestation of his philosophy. 00:07:45.209 --> 00:07:47.910 You strip away the ornamental to reveal the structural. 00:07:48.110 --> 00:07:51.050 Wow. And considering he wrote millions of words 00:07:51.050 --> 00:07:54.110 this way, his physical tools matched that bare 00:07:54.110 --> 00:07:56.670 -bones philosophy perfectly. Wait, I was wondering 00:07:56.670 --> 00:07:58.790 about this. What kind of setup did he actually 00:07:58.790 --> 00:08:01.050 use for all those decades? Was he writing by 00:08:01.050 --> 00:08:03.870 hand? In the early 1960s, he bought a portable 00:08:03.870 --> 00:08:06.750 mechanical typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32, 00:08:07.129 --> 00:08:11.170 at a Knoxville pawn shop for $50. $50. And he 00:08:11.170 --> 00:08:13.899 proceeded to type every single draft. every single 00:08:13.899 --> 00:08:17.040 letter on that exact machine for nearly five 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:19.459 decades. We were talking roughly five million 00:08:19.459 --> 00:08:22.240 words. A mechanical typewriter for 50 years? 00:08:22.420 --> 00:08:24.420 I can't imagine how many times that thing must 00:08:24.420 --> 00:08:27.360 have broken down. How did he maintain it? His 00:08:27.360 --> 00:08:30.040 maintenance routine was literally taking it down 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:32.559 to the local gas station and blowing the dust 00:08:32.559 --> 00:08:35.440 out of the keys with an air hose. You're a king! 00:08:35.460 --> 00:08:39.980 That's it. And then in 2009, this $50 pawn shop 00:08:39.980 --> 00:08:42.379 typewriter goes up for auction at Christie's. 00:08:42.970 --> 00:08:45.889 They estimated it would get maybe 20 grand. It 00:08:45.889 --> 00:08:50.990 sold for $254 ,500, which he immediately donated 00:08:50.990 --> 00:08:53.210 to the Santa Fe Institute. A quarter of a million 00:08:53.210 --> 00:08:55.570 dollars. And then what did he write on? A friend 00:08:55.570 --> 00:08:58.029 bought him an identical replacement Olivetti 00:08:58.029 --> 00:09:02.009 typewriter for $11. That's amazing. Plus shipping. 00:09:02.470 --> 00:09:05.370 Oh, of course, plus shipping. That is just phenomenal. 00:09:06.070 --> 00:09:08.590 But let's dig into the why of this. Why does 00:09:08.590 --> 00:09:11.210 his syntax and his lack of punctuation actually 00:09:11.210 --> 00:09:13.809 matter? How does it change the experience for 00:09:13.809 --> 00:09:16.409 the reader? It's a good question. Because when 00:09:16.409 --> 00:09:18.289 I think about it, it's like taking a race car 00:09:18.289 --> 00:09:20.350 and ripping out the dashboard, the radio, and 00:09:20.350 --> 00:09:23.429 the seat belts just to make it go faster. By 00:09:23.429 --> 00:09:26.529 removing the quotation marks and the attributions, 00:09:26.730 --> 00:09:29.990 you know, the he said, she said, he removed the 00:09:29.990 --> 00:09:32.090 fences between the characters and the reader. 00:09:32.629 --> 00:09:35.009 Precisely. Think about how your brain processes 00:09:35.009 --> 00:09:38.220 reading. When you see quotation marks, your brain 00:09:38.220 --> 00:09:41.539 categorizes that as a specific type of information. 00:09:41.639 --> 00:09:44.120 It's a sign post. Right. When you remove those 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:47.019 sign posts, the reader can't passively consume 00:09:47.019 --> 00:09:49.720 the text anymore. It forces you to pay closer 00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:52.019 attention. You have to completely immerse yourself 00:09:52.019 --> 00:09:54.159 in the flow of the dialogue and the rhythm of 00:09:54.159 --> 00:09:57.379 his world to know who is speaking. Ah, I see. 00:09:57.740 --> 00:09:59.980 It induces a kind of hypnotic immersive state. 00:10:00.059 --> 00:10:02.279 Yeah. You are dropped directly into the environment 00:10:02.279 --> 00:10:04.480 without a safety net. And what an environment 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:06.879 it is, because that stripped down elemental engine 00:10:06.879 --> 00:10:09.419 of his prose was really the only way to drive 00:10:09.419 --> 00:10:11.299 through the worlds he was building, the worlds 00:10:11.299 --> 00:10:14.700 that were, to put it mildly, deeply brutal. The 00:10:14.700 --> 00:10:17.779 turning point for his career, where he finally 00:10:17.779 --> 00:10:19.779 gets some breathing room to build these worlds, 00:10:20.179 --> 00:10:23.419 comes in 1981. He's awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. 00:10:23.460 --> 00:10:26.679 The genius grant. Exactly. And he received this 00:10:26.679 --> 00:10:29.580 largely because literary heavyweights like Saul 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:32.220 Bellow and Shelby Foote forcefully recommended 00:10:32.220 --> 00:10:34.639 him to the committee. And he uses that money 00:10:34.639 --> 00:10:37.559 to travel the American Southwest to research 00:10:37.559 --> 00:10:40.460 his next book, which becomes Blood Meridian. 00:10:40.759 --> 00:10:42.860 Yes. It was initially snubbed by a lot of critics 00:10:42.860 --> 00:10:45.399 who didn't know what to do with it. But today. 00:10:45.740 --> 00:10:49.519 It is widely considered his magnum opus. The 00:10:49.519 --> 00:10:52.059 literary critic Harold Bloom called it the greatest 00:10:52.059 --> 00:10:54.879 single book since Faulkner's asylee dying. Some 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:56.799 academics even argue it's the great American 00:10:56.799 --> 00:10:59.539 novel. But it is incredibly relentlessly violent. 00:10:59.779 --> 00:11:01.899 The New York Times called it the bloodiest book 00:11:01.899 --> 00:11:04.179 since the Iliad. And this is a crucial point. 00:11:04.399 --> 00:11:07.000 This wasn't violence for shock value. It wasn't 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:10.100 like Hollywood action. It was deeply intrinsically 00:11:10.100 --> 00:11:12.940 tied to McCarthy's worldview. He was quoted in 00:11:12.940 --> 00:11:15.500 an interview saying, there's no such thing as 00:11:15.500 --> 00:11:17.779 life without bloodshed. He actually went further 00:11:17.779 --> 00:11:20.590 than that. He said, The notion that humanity 00:11:20.590 --> 00:11:23.149 can be improved, that everyone could eventually 00:11:23.149 --> 00:11:26.590 live in perfect harmony is a, quote, really dangerous 00:11:26.590 --> 00:11:29.610 idea. Yeah. He believed that desiring that kind 00:11:29.610 --> 00:11:32.549 of utopian harmony will enslave you and make 00:11:32.549 --> 00:11:35.570 your life vacuous. Which is a remarkably bleak 00:11:35.570 --> 00:11:38.370 outlook. He views violence as an elemental force 00:11:38.370 --> 00:11:40.470 of nature, like a hurricane or an earthquake. 00:11:40.549 --> 00:11:42.820 You can't reason with it. Right. After Blood 00:11:42.820 --> 00:11:45.519 Meridian, he finally breaks through to massive 00:11:45.519 --> 00:11:48.279 mainstream success with all the pretty horses, 00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:51.480 which wins the National Book Award. And then 00:11:51.480 --> 00:11:54.759 comes No Country for Old Men, which gets adapted 00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:57.659 by the Coen brothers into an absolute cinematic 00:11:57.659 --> 00:12:00.159 masterpiece, winning best picture at the Oscars. 00:12:00.220 --> 00:12:02.240 Right. And what's fascinating about No Country 00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:04.360 is that it was originally written as a screenplay, 00:12:04.700 --> 00:12:07.179 which perfectly explains why the book is so heavy 00:12:07.179 --> 00:12:10.559 on rabbit fire dialogue and so sparse on setting 00:12:10.559 --> 00:12:12.700 description. Ah, that makes total sense. The 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:15.360 strip -down style fit the screenplay format perfectly, 00:12:15.519 --> 00:12:18.840 and a huge theme in that story is the sheer ineptitude 00:12:18.840 --> 00:12:21.460 of authority and law enforcement. The good guys, 00:12:21.899 --> 00:12:24.799 like Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, are completely overwhelmed. 00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:27.679 Exactly. They realize that the rules and laws 00:12:27.679 --> 00:12:31.399 they represent are just an illusion, a thin veneer 00:12:31.399 --> 00:12:34.100 over the chaotic elemental violence represented 00:12:34.100 --> 00:12:36.980 by the killer, Anton Chigurh. It's the realization 00:12:36.980 --> 00:12:39.659 that you cannot police human nature. And then 00:12:39.659 --> 00:12:43.179 he strips away society entirely, and we get to 00:12:43.179 --> 00:12:46.279 the road. The road, yeah. He's staying in a motel 00:12:46.279 --> 00:12:48.600 in El Paso with his young son. He looks out the 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:50.659 window at the city at night, and he just starts 00:12:50.659 --> 00:12:53.139 imagining what it will look like in 50 or 100 00:12:53.139 --> 00:12:55.700 years. He pictures fires up on the hill. Right, 00:12:55.879 --> 00:12:58.029 and everything being laid to waste. That late 00:12:58.029 --> 00:13:00.690 night vision turns into this Pulitzer Prize winning 00:13:00.690 --> 00:13:03.570 novel about a father and son walking through 00:13:03.570 --> 00:13:06.789 a freezing apocalyptic wasteland hunted by cannibals. 00:13:06.929 --> 00:13:09.669 It's terrifying. And what grounds that unimaginable 00:13:09.669 --> 00:13:11.850 horror is that many of the conversations between 00:13:11.850 --> 00:13:13.750 the father and son in that book were verbatim 00:13:13.750 --> 00:13:15.610 conversations McCarthy actually had with his 00:13:15.610 --> 00:13:18.470 own son. That intimate connection is what anchors 00:13:18.470 --> 00:13:20.850 the narrative. It grounds the bleakest landscape 00:13:20.850 --> 00:13:23.509 imaginable in this profound, desperate, very 00:13:23.509 --> 00:13:26.529 real love between a parent and a child. Here's 00:13:26.529 --> 00:13:29.690 where it gets really interesting. Because you 00:13:29.690 --> 00:13:33.129 have this extreme violence and bleakness in his 00:13:33.129 --> 00:13:36.149 work. And in one of his rare interviews, McCarthy 00:13:36.149 --> 00:13:38.289 said he didn't understand writers like Marcel 00:13:38.289 --> 00:13:40.929 Proust or Henry James because they didn't deal 00:13:40.929 --> 00:13:43.990 with, quote, issues of life and death. Right. 00:13:44.250 --> 00:13:47.629 So I have to ask you, does his absolute obsession 00:13:47.629 --> 00:13:50.850 with violence and survival make him a nihilist, 00:13:51.370 --> 00:13:54.799 a pessimist? Or is he actually a highly moralistic 00:13:54.799 --> 00:13:57.419 writer just searching for light in the darkest 00:13:57.419 --> 00:13:59.960 possible places? Well, that is the exact debate 00:13:59.960 --> 00:14:02.080 academics have been having about his work for 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:04.360 decades. It's heavily contested. I bet. Some 00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:07.220 critics... absolutely label his work as nihilistic, 00:14:07.580 --> 00:14:09.759 pointing to the senseless, unpunished slaughter 00:14:09.759 --> 00:14:12.919 in Blood Meridian or the terrifying, unstoppable 00:14:12.919 --> 00:14:15.259 nature of the killer in No Country for Old Men. 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:18.080 Yeah, they call him the great pessimist of American 00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:20.840 literature, arguing he sees humanity as fundamentally 00:14:20.840 --> 00:14:22.740 doomed. But there is a totally different way 00:14:22.740 --> 00:14:25.919 to read him. Yes. Other scholars argue that Blood 00:14:25.919 --> 00:14:28.940 Meridian is actually a gnostic tragedy, a deep 00:14:28.940 --> 00:14:32.000 spiritual exploration of evil. Yeah. And when 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:34.460 you look at the road, many academics point out 00:14:34.460 --> 00:14:38.360 that it depicts a deeply individual secular morality. 00:14:38.559 --> 00:14:41.419 How so? The father and the son in that book are 00:14:41.419 --> 00:14:43.820 constantly talking about carrying the fire. They 00:14:43.820 --> 00:14:46.200 are keeping morality and human goodness alive 00:14:46.200 --> 00:14:48.580 within themselves when the rest of the world 00:14:48.580 --> 00:14:51.139 has completely abandoned it. Oh, yeah. It's a 00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:53.980 very stark, stripped down kind of morality, but 00:14:53.980 --> 00:14:56.899 it is undeniably fiercely present. He strips 00:14:56.899 --> 00:14:58.840 down his life, he strips down his punctuation, 00:14:59.220 --> 00:15:01.840 and he strips down human morality to its absolute 00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:05.039 barest element. A father protecting his son at 00:15:05.039 --> 00:15:07.200 the end of the world. Exactly. So he writes the 00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:09.259 road, he wins the Pulitzer Prize, he has Oscar 00:15:09.259 --> 00:15:11.139 -winning movies, Oprah Winfrey picks his book 00:15:11.139 --> 00:15:13.580 for her club, and he actually does a rare TV 00:15:13.580 --> 00:15:16.320 interview with her. He has finally achieved the 00:15:16.320 --> 00:15:18.919 absolute pinnacle of literary fame. He has money, 00:15:19.120 --> 00:15:21.600 he has universal acclaim. So what does he do 00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:23.980 next? He completely rejects the literary world. 00:15:24.139 --> 00:15:26.720 At MacArthur Fellowship Reunions, he literally 00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:29.200 shuns the other famous author so he can go hang 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:32.019 out with whale biologists and physicists. He 00:15:32.019 --> 00:15:34.340 had a profound aversion to the literary establishment. 00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:36.740 He much preferred the company of scientists, 00:15:37.059 --> 00:15:39.360 people who were dealing with hard facts and the 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:41.919 physical universe. Right. He became a trustee 00:15:41.919 --> 00:15:44.279 at the Santa Fe Institute, which is a highly 00:15:44.279 --> 00:15:46.580 prestigious multidisciplinary research center 00:15:46.580 --> 00:15:49.820 focused on complex adaptive systems, things like 00:15:49.820 --> 00:15:53.139 economies, ecosystems, the human brain. And he 00:15:53.139 --> 00:15:55.820 didn't even have a formal scientific background. 00:15:56.340 --> 00:15:58.460 The physicist Murray Gell -Mann said something 00:15:58.460 --> 00:16:01.539 to the effect of, there's no place like the Santa 00:16:01.539 --> 00:16:04.340 Fe Institute, and there's no writer like Cormac, 00:16:04.580 --> 00:16:07.220 so they fit together perfectly. He was just absorbing 00:16:07.220 --> 00:16:10.220 all this high -level theoretical physics and 00:16:10.220 --> 00:16:12.919 math. And his time there actually led to his 00:16:12.919 --> 00:16:15.259 first piece of published nonfiction in his entire 00:16:15.259 --> 00:16:18.200 50 -year career, an essay called The Kick -A 00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:21.250 -Lay Problem. Oh, right. He writes this essay 00:16:21.250 --> 00:16:23.889 analyzing a dream by a 19th century chemist, 00:16:24.149 --> 00:16:26.350 August Kikolay. But what he's really doing is 00:16:26.350 --> 00:16:28.649 exploring the human unconscious and the origins 00:16:28.649 --> 00:16:31.809 of language. McCarthy's theory was that the unconscious 00:16:31.809 --> 00:16:35.330 mind is simply a machine for operating an animal. 00:16:35.559 --> 00:16:38.779 It's an ancient biological system. And he argued 00:16:38.779 --> 00:16:41.639 that language is not biological. It's a purely 00:16:41.639 --> 00:16:44.799 human cultural invention. That's a huge distinction. 00:16:44.919 --> 00:16:48.019 Yeah. He said the unconscious mind predates language 00:16:48.019 --> 00:16:51.200 entirely, which is why our subconscious communicates 00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:54.320 with us in dreams and images, not in words. It 00:16:54.320 --> 00:16:56.960 shows how deep his intellectual curiosity ran. 00:16:57.460 --> 00:16:58.980 He wasn't just interested in telling stories. 00:16:59.039 --> 00:17:01.320 He was trying to drill down into the fundamental 00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:04.279 mechanics of human consciousness. Yeah. And you 00:17:04.279 --> 00:17:06.119 see the influence of these scientists heavily 00:17:06.119 --> 00:17:09.299 in his final two novels, The Passenger and Stella 00:17:09.299 --> 00:17:11.519 Maris, which were published just a year before 00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:14.099 his death. And Stella Maris, notably, was his 00:17:14.099 --> 00:17:16.859 first novel since the 1960s to feature a female 00:17:16.859 --> 00:17:19.539 protagonist. Right. And both of these books are 00:17:19.539 --> 00:17:22.420 deeply analytical, grappling with quantum mechanics, 00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:24.839 mathematics, and the nature of reality. There's 00:17:24.839 --> 00:17:27.319 a quote from him that just floors me. After all 00:17:27.319 --> 00:17:29.980 the literary awards, all the masterpieces, McCarthy 00:17:29.980 --> 00:17:32.819 stated, writing is way, way down at the bottom 00:17:32.819 --> 00:17:35.400 of the list of his interests. Unbelievable. So 00:17:35.400 --> 00:17:37.579 what does this all mean? How do we synthesize 00:17:37.579 --> 00:17:39.980 a man who writes the great American novel, but 00:17:39.980 --> 00:17:42.309 claims he cares more about theoretical physics. 00:17:42.990 --> 00:17:45.250 Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, 00:17:46.009 --> 00:17:48.869 McCarthy's ultimate pursuit was never literary 00:17:48.869 --> 00:17:52.750 fame. It wasn't about being a writer in the societal 00:17:52.750 --> 00:17:55.789 sense of the word. His pursuit was a relentless, 00:17:56.269 --> 00:17:58.910 uncompromising quest to understand the mechanics 00:17:58.910 --> 00:18:01.829 of reality. Whether he was exploring that through 00:18:01.829 --> 00:18:04.230 the bloody, instinctual history of the American 00:18:04.230 --> 00:18:07.170 West, or the post -apocalyptic survival of a 00:18:07.170 --> 00:18:09.710 father and son, or the evolutionary origins of 00:18:09.710 --> 00:18:11.750 human language at the Santa Fe Institute, he 00:18:11.750 --> 00:18:14.430 was always asking the exact same foundational 00:18:14.430 --> 00:18:17.309 questions about what it means to be alive, to 00:18:17.309 --> 00:18:19.930 survive, and to be conscious. The typewriter 00:18:19.930 --> 00:18:22.470 was just the tool he used to explore those questions. 00:18:22.759 --> 00:18:24.539 So let's bring this all together for you listening. 00:18:24.759 --> 00:18:26.519 We've journeyed through the life of a man who 00:18:26.519 --> 00:18:28.799 sacrificed every conventional comfort for his 00:18:28.799 --> 00:18:31.500 craft, who ripped the commas and quotation marks 00:18:31.500 --> 00:18:33.400 out of his sentences to pull you deeper into 00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:37.099 his worlds, who stared unflinchingly at the darkest, 00:18:37.220 --> 00:18:39.740 most violent aspects of human nature to find 00:18:39.740 --> 00:18:43.339 a sliver of meaning, and who, in the end, sought 00:18:43.339 --> 00:18:45.720 his answers in the company of scientists rather 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:49.190 than fellow novelists. In an era defined by constant 00:18:49.190 --> 00:18:52.329 self -promotion and a desire for immediate recognition, 00:18:53.109 --> 00:18:55.910 McCarthy's commitment is a radical act. He did 00:18:55.910 --> 00:18:58.410 the work purely for the work's sake. Which brings 00:18:58.410 --> 00:19:00.990 me back to that opening image. The man in the 00:19:00.990 --> 00:19:03.369 dairy barn choosing the lake and the beans over 00:19:03.369 --> 00:19:05.950 the $2 ,000 speaking gig because everything he 00:19:05.950 --> 00:19:08.690 had to say was there on the page. Right. He believed 00:19:08.690 --> 00:19:11.130 the work should speak entirely for itself. But 00:19:11.130 --> 00:19:13.869 there is one final fascinating detail we have 00:19:13.869 --> 00:19:16.130 to leave you with. Oh, this is great. When Cormac 00:19:16.130 --> 00:19:19.369 McCarthy died in 2023 at the age of 89, he left 00:19:19.369 --> 00:19:22.049 behind a personal library of roughly 20 ,000 00:19:22.049 --> 00:19:24.650 books. And over 2 ,000 of those books contain 00:19:24.650 --> 00:19:27.710 his own handwritten annotations. Right now, the 00:19:27.710 --> 00:19:30.430 Cormac McCarthy Library Project is working to 00:19:30.430 --> 00:19:34.289 digitize all of this. So for a man who famously 00:19:34.289 --> 00:19:36.829 stubbornly refused to explain his work or talk 00:19:36.829 --> 00:19:39.900 about his influences, What hidden keys to his 00:19:39.900 --> 00:19:42.380 genius are sitting in the margins of those pages, 00:19:42.759 --> 00:19:45.099 just waiting to be decoded by anyone curious 00:19:45.099 --> 00:19:47.640 enough to look? It's the ultimate final mystery 00:19:47.640 --> 00:19:50.279 from a writer who masterfully guarded his inner 00:19:50.279 --> 00:19:52.400 world. Everything he had to say was on the page. 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:55.079 But maybe, just maybe, the secrets of how he 00:19:55.079 --> 00:19:57.059 said it are hiding in the margins. Thanks for 00:19:57.059 --> 00:19:58.259 joining us on this deep dive.