Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of titles like "Blood Meridian" and "The Road," has died at his home in New Mexico, according to a statement from his publisher Penguin Random House. McCarthy was 89 years old.
McCarthy's mix of sparse punctuation and occasionally sprawling sentences gave his writing a unique voice. His stories were often violent and bleak, but they captured critical attention.
His 1985 Western "Blood Meridian" eventually won acclaim as one of the greatest American novels of all time, and McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Road" in 2006, a story following a father and son across the U.S. in the wake of a nameless global disaster.
Several of McCarthy's novels have also been adapted to film. In 2007 the Coen Brothers adaptation of "No Country for Old Men" won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. "The Road" was adapted in 2009.
McCarthy was said to live frugally as a full-time writer. He gave very few interviews, and his three marriages ended in divorce.
Later in life he spent time at the Santa Fe Institute, a theoretical research institute in New Mexico that studies "complex systems" like genetic algorithms and chaos theory. McCarthy's scientific interest informed his last two books, "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris," both published in 2022.
Penguin Random House did not disclose a cause of death.
McCarthy is survived by his son John.
