Books Are Made Out of Books: A Guide to Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Influences by Michael Lynn Crews

Cormac McCarthy grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father was a lawyer and Chief Counsel for the TVA. His first four novels were set in East Tennessee, but he moved to El Paso in 1976 and completed his Border Trilogy of novels set in the West in 1992. They received significant critical and popular attention, and his 2005 novel, No Country for Old Men was made into an award-winning movie. McCarthy returned to an Appalachian setting for his post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, published in 2006. It became the second Appalachian novel to garner a Pulitzer after A Death in the Family by James Agee, also of Knoxville, received it posthumously in 1957.  A very private person, McCarthy granted his second interview to Oprah Winfrey on the occasion of winning the Pulitzer. The New York Times Magazine published an article based on his first interview in 1992 entitled “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction” by Richard B. Woodward. In it Woodward quotes McCarthy as saying, "the ugly fact is book