Finished off with one of his twinkly-eyed laughs, this mealtime anecdote has a more jocular tone than McCarthy's venomous fiction, but the same elements are there.
Each of his five previous novels has been marked by intense natural observation, a kind of morbid realism.
A cult figure with a reputation as a writer's writer, especially in the South and in England, McCarthy has sometimes been compared with Joyce and Faulkner.
Says the historian and novelist Shelby Foote: "McCarthy is the one writer younger than myself who has excited me.
I told the MacArthur people that he would be honoring them as much as they were honoring him."
Persons:
McCarthy, wildness, blurbed, Joyce, Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Shelby Foote, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Hemingway
Organizations:
MacArthur
Locations:
hovels, East Tennessee, American, England, Texas, Mexico