Late twentieth century novelist, Cormac McCarthy, was born on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island, being the third of six children born to Charles Joseph McCarthy and Gladys Christina McGrail McCarthy. In 1937, his family moved to Knoxville Tennessee, where he attended Knoxville Catholic High School and in 1951 he enrolled at the University of Tennessee as a liberal arts major. Two years later he left the university to join the air force. After serving two years in air force he returned to the university to continue his studies; however, he never obtained a degree and left with his wife and children to move to Chicago. There he worked as an auto mechanic and began his first novel which was published in 1965. His early success obtained him a travel fellowship from American Academy of Art and Letters in 1965. He subsequently traveled continuing to write many best sellers during his career gaining recognition in the writing world. In 1992, his novel All The Pretty Horses acclaimed "high praise from reviewers- and also became his first best seller, with 190,000 hard covered copies purchased in six months (Shimal 961-962). .
This national book award winner is an epic tale and the launch of a new style for the author focusing on a matured young man with a passion for horses joining with his friends to overcome loss and betrayal.
Mr. McCarthy's novels have always revolved around the character of the solitude man (Blair 1). However, All The Pretty Horses seems to work in a different way (Blair 1). "All The Pretty Horses details a journey that is both literal and, at least to some extent, a bildungsroman, a movement from innocence to experience, from purity to knowledge, from the known world into the unknown world--and the unknown world in this novel is Mexico-(Blair 1). As in contrast to Mr. McCarthy's other books with his signature lone character, the main character of this book, John Grady Cole, experiences his journey in the company of his friend Lacey Rawlins, along with another fellow cowboy, as well as sometimes being in solitude.
