Cormac McCarthy, originally named Charles McCarthy, was born in Rhode Island, USA on the 20th of July 1933. He has 2 brothers and 3 sisters, and is the eldest child. Through his life, he was raised as a Catholic and went to Catholic High School in Knoxville, then spent a year in University of Tennessee from 1951-52. He left to be in the U.S Air Forces, then returned publishing two stories - 'A drowning Incident' and 'Wake for Susan'. McCarthy had 3 wives who he had divorced - Lee McCarthy (one son - Cullen McCarthy), Anne DeLisle and Jennifer Winkley (one son - John Frances McCarthy). McCarthy is currently 80 years old, and he has written 10 novels including 'The Orchard Keeper', 'No Country For Men', 'Suttree', 'Child of God' and 'The Road'. From this, he has won a few awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, for the Road. Whilst having his interview with Oprah Winfrey, they talk about The Road and what inspired McCarthy to write it. He said that he was on a trip somewhere with his son John, they stayed in a hotel and whilst his son was sleeping, he looked out the window. McCarthy saw a completely silent landscape with only the wind whistling, from this, he thought about how this place would look like within 50-100 years, possibly with fire and ash. His destination was Ireland, and by the time he got there, he had written a whole story about an unnamed man and son with their journey in a dystopian land. In his success, 'All the Pretty Horses', 'The Road' and 'Child of God' has now been adapted as motion pictures. Moreover, 'The Road' was put in first place in the 100 best fiction as well as the 100 best non-fiction books in the past 10 years by The Times in 2010. Recently, McCarthy has been frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Cormac McCarthy is now currently working on three new novels, one of them which has a prominent female character which is about a young man who has to deal with his suicidal sister. This is set in the 1980s in New Orleans, and McCarthy claims that this novel would be 'long'.
In this interview with Oprah Winfrey, Cormac McCarthy talks about how he got inspiration of The Road from his son whilst being on a trip somewhere, and he imagined what life would be like in 50-100 years in a particular place.