Murray Carpenter in Literary Hub:
Knopf announced March 8 that it will publish two novels by Cormac McCarthy this fall, his first in 16 years, but don’t expect a book tour. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author lives an entirely private life.
“He doesn’t give interviews, doesn’t give lectures, and doesn’t do book signings,” Michael Hall wrote in Texas Monthly in 1998. “He doesn’t like to talk about writing or his life, which, of course, makes other writers, his fans, and even non-fans more curious.”
There have actually been a few interviews—The New York Times Magazine in 1992, Vanity Fair in 2005, Oprah Winfrey in 2007, and The Wall Street Journal in 2009. McCarthy did a reading in Santa Fe in 2015, and offered science writing tips in the journal Nature in 2019. But that’s been about it. Some authors do more publicity in a week.
So I was skeptical when David Sudak told me he’d received details about the craft of writing directly from McCarthy. But Sudak is a teacher who is passionate about good writing, the sort of person who just might have the goods. He told a tale as convincing as it was improbable.
More here.