Cormac McCarthy has been hailed as one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. His work has been compared to that of Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and William Shakespeare. McCarthy was awarded both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses (1992), the first book of his Border Trilogy (1999). His narratives have been lauded for their stark depiction of nature as well as for their sheer stylistic beauty, which entwines the lushness and fecundity of Faulkner's prose with the trenchant austerity of Ernest Hemingway's. Although McCarthy's writing has been universally recognized for its more evocative passages--which in their subtlety rise to the level of poetry--his brutal and exacting depictions of violence and the seamier side of life in the South and in the West have drawn both praise and revulsion from readers and critics.

Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr...