He wears a denim shirt and desert soil brown pants. Somehow he settles into the chair, as if the seat were made for him alone. She is 74 years old, yet her energy and presence suggest someone much younger. Cormac McCarthy. His first television appearance happened in 2007, moments that offered a window into the vast universe he carries with him everywhere.
The interviewer came across as quietly modest, almost shy. Oprah Winfrey. She seems to sense she is talking to a living miracle. The first question asks why this is his first media appearance. Does the author have a media allergy? McCarthy laughs and says no. He believes talking about the process might be bad for the mind. “I just think it isn’t good for your head”, he adds.
Winfrey suggests that McCarthy spends too much time writing to waste energy on discussing how the work was done. She implies that he should keep writing. At that moment, McCarthy has just received the Pulitzer Prize for Path. He explains to Oprah that The Highway is not quite the same. It is a tale about a father and a son. When he reflects, he recalls being in El Paso, Texas, with his four-year-old son staying in a motel. Early morning, the boy sleeps, the world outside quiet. A train hums in the distance. “I dreamed a fire burning on the hill, what about that boy?” Oprah asks. She is seventy years old and realizes she will leave her son a world he cannot see.
McCarthy has not shunned interviews, though he has often chosen to stay out of the limelight. He remains a figure known to the public in his own way, much like the writer Thomas Pynchon who tends to blur into the background despite broad acknowledgement.
Raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, Oprah serves as a doorway to a different realm where her latest double novel, El pasajero/Stella Maris, is set. Her hypnotic voice guides readers on a journey, just as McCarthy’s writing invites readers to travel. His work tends to be expansive as it unfolds; the author does not always know where the story will lead, yet the narrative grows and reveals itself in striking, often surprising ways. He has said he prefers the company of scientists over writers, a remark that feels like a wink to the broader Western landscape and its questions about knowledge and existence.
dusty casinos
The Passenger features the Western as its central figure. He studies with his father, Albert Einstein, and there are sharp conversations about string theory set against the dusty backdrops of various casinos. The story also features an underwater plane, a missing passenger, and a girl who seems to linger in another world, surrounded by a community of strangers who feel like family. McCarthy reflects on the source of a book, noting that the work emerges from somewhere beyond conscious planning, and that the pursuit of perfection is always slightly out of reach. The process is enough even when the result remains imperfect, and that acceptance is part of the craft. This sentiment is shared during a library speech tied to a visit to the Santa Fe Institute.
He also notes that writing is more than a task; it is a way of living. He endured a period of hardship and scholarship before publishing his first novel, Guardian of the Garden, in 1965. He was thirty-two, living in Chicago, navigating a late marriage and a move that would eventually connect him to Europe. A voyage to Ireland brought a second marriage while he was leading a tour of half of Europe. They spent time in Eivissa, where he completed his second novel, La oscuridad outer, before returning to Texas and settling in Louisville. The birth of their son, John Francis, in 1999 completed a chapter that would echo through later works.
a hose
Today McCarthy is eighty-nine years old. John Francis is twenty-three. Both appear within The Passenger/Stella Maris, a dual narrative that weaves lived experience and felt perception into a singular, relentless current. McCarthy’s storytelling becomes a whirlwind of everything experienced and felt, a candid invitation to readers to witness the journey. Since that library encounter at the Santa Fe Institute, occasional interviews have offered glimpses into his thinking. The core takeaway remains the same: the journey into the infinite through literature is a long, ongoing conversation with readers. The voice at the center of these conversations emphasizes the discipline of daily writing and the stubborn clarity of purpose. The question Oprah asks—what does it feel like to finally reach a widely shared moment—receives a steady answer. The sense of purpose endures: to sit down every day and write the best thing that can be written, and to keep showing up for the work. It is a practice, a vow, and a path that continues to define the author’s relationship with his audience.