Tuesday, August 12. My photograph adjunct Chika and I get astatine the Santa Fe Institute, Cormac’s location distant from home, and load instrumentality into the library. Cormac is early, chatting up the room staff. We present ourselves. Cormac is possibly 5’6” tall, and I’m 6’2”, but his beaming “pleased to conscionable you” makes the greater content connected everyone successful the country arsenic helium shakes our hands. Before we proceed to the library, I enactment the daylight coming done a broadside window. Cormac understands and obliges. He is arsenic benignant and accommodating successful idiosyncratic arsenic I hoped he’d beryllium erstwhile we archetypal spoke 3 Tuesdays before.
Cormac McCarthy Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan www.beowulfsheehan.com
The prima is hard and coarse. In an adjoining courtyard, I notation the enigma and play I spot successful the play of airy and shadiness there, and I inquire Cormac if he’s unfastened to being portion of it. Yes. And how. My banter with Cormac focuses connected the institute, what compels him to beryllium here. “My friends are here. We emotion the aforesaid things. We argue.” What draws him to science? “It’s fun.” What drew him to Santa Fe? “It’s home.” We locomotion to and enactment successful antithetic corners of the library. Beyond the room is simply a balcony, and beyond it a astir unfastened sky. I invitation Cormac to measurement to the balcony’s borderline and instrumentality successful “home.”
At our past institute location, a agelong exterior partition of adobe isolated from its entrance, Cormac yet offers more: “Do you cognize the communicative of my typewriter?” No, I reply, conscionable successful lawsuit the communicative he’s astir to archer is antithetic from the 1 I know. He tells Chika and maine that helium donated his Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter to an auction to payment the Santa Fe Institute. It fetched $250,000. A person past went connected eBay and bought a caller 1 for him for a fewer dollars. A arrogant grin rests connected Cormac’s face. It mightiness not person travel if I’d said yes.
Cormac McCarthy Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan www.beowulfsheehan.com
“Do you privation to travel to my location and marque much pictures?”
I can’t wait. We battalion portion Cormac retreats to his friends.
*
Cormac’s motortruck is weathered, rusted, dinged, casual to find successful a crowd. We travel him done the postulation lights and intersections, retired to wherever streetlights crook into thoroughfare signs and abutted buildings crook into yarded homes. Farther still, arsenic the roadworthy straightens and lengthens, the presumption is of unfastened space. Then, connected the right, a two-story, possibly 4,000-square-foot adobe location rises into view. Numerous vehicles beryllium sprawled nether tarps crossed his dusty driveway and land. Following Cormac’s pb outside, I inquire him astir the cars he’s collected. Pointing to one, helium says, “That’s a Corvette Stingray. I drove it backmost aft I partied with Johnny Carson successful Fort Lauderdale,” laughing to himself. My hometown.
Cormac McCarthy Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan www.beowulfsheehan.com
Inside, successful the mediate of his expansive surviving room, stands a pristine billiards table. Of course, I think. That helium financed his mode done his aboriginal beingness by playing excavation is lore. I don’t inquire astir the table, and helium doesn’t connection comment. Instead, helium invites Chika and maine upstairs. The lavation of Cormac’s stairwell walls is arsenic beauteous arsenic an Irving Penn backdrop cloth. I photograph him on it, the prima pouring done his skylight, defining the abstraction astir him, redefining the signifier of his face. Atop the stairs, Cormac asks what we deliberation of the location truthful far, already knowing our answers. I inquire him to basal beardown and gangly similar the columns earlier him. After a fewer frames, helium invites america to his bedroom, but archetypal helium wants to amusement america his son’s room.
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From The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy by Beowulf Sheehan. Copyright © 2026. Available from Autofocus Books.
English (US) ·