Cormac McCarthy: Tributes to 'unique' author of The Road and No Country for Old Men

Despite global fame, Cormac McCarthy was said to be a very private man

Tributes have been paid to US Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, who has died at the age of 89.

McCarthy's novels included The Road and No Country for Old Men, both of which were turned into successful films.

Fellow author Stephen King called him "maybe the greatest American novelist of my time".

Booker-Prize-winner John Banville, a friend of McCarthy's, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was a "great loss" and he was a "giant figure".

"He was unique," Banville said. "He stood out - he jutted out from the literary landscape like a monolith."

Blood Meridian, McCarthy's 1985 dark epic set in the American West in the mid-19th Century, was his "masterpiece", Banville said.

"Sometimes, reading Cormac's prose, especially in Blood Meridian, you say to yourself, 'This is just so far over the top that it's unreal'," he said. "And yet it was extraordinarily compelling. I mean, nobody wrote the way he did."

Samuel L Jackson (left) and Tommy Lee Jones (right) starred in 2011's The Sunset Limited, written by McCarthy

Many of his novels were violent tales describing the American frontier and post-apocalyptic worlds. In real life, he was said to be a very private man.

Banville noted his fellow writer did have "a very bleak view of life".

"You did not have many laughs with Cormac," he said. "He didn't see the world as a particularly comic place, which I do. But we got on well. I liked him enormously."

In his tribute, King added: "He was full of years and created a fine body of work - but I still mourn his passing."

McCarthy had died of natural causes, at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Tuesday, Penguin Random House said.

The publisher's chief executive, Nihar Malaviya, said McCarthy had "changed the course of literature".

'Emotional truths'

"For 60 years he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word," Mr Malaviya said.

"Millions of readers around the world embraced his characters, his mythic themes and the intimate emotional truths he laid bare on every page in brilliant novels that will remain both timely and timeless for generations to come."

His UK publisher, Picador, described McCarthy as "one of the world's most influential and renowned writers".

The company's boss, Mary Mount, hailed his "extraordinary body of work", saying he was "a writer of great vision and great beauty".

Grim story

His greatest books included The Road, McCarthy's 10th novel, which was published in 2006 and won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. It describes a father and son's arduous journey as they struggle to survive in the US after the apocalypse.

His 2005 novel, No Country for Old Men, a grim story of a drug deal gone wrong in the Texas desert, was adapted for the screen by Joel and Ethan Coen.

Starring Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones, the thriller went on to win four Oscars, including best picture.

There have been a string of attempts to adapt Blood Meridian for the cinema. In April, Deadline reported The Road director John Hillcoat would become the latest to tackle it.

McCarthy's "career spanned nearly six decades and several genres, including fiction and drama", publisher Pan Macmillan said in its tribute

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1933, in an Irish Catholic family, McCarthy was one of six siblings.

He spent most of his childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father worked as a lawyer. His first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965.

McCarthy's last two books - The Passenger and Stella Maris - were published at the end of last year. As well as his novels, he also wrote screenplays and short stories.

During his long career, his media interviews or appearances on the red carpet were a rarity.

In 2007, McCarthy told US talk-show host Oprah Winfrey: "I don't think [interviews] are good for your head.

"If you spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn't be thinking about it, you probably should be doing it."