The Road, graphic novel, adapted by Manu Larcenet, first American edition. Abrams ComicArts, New York, 2024. First American edition, first printing with full number line (10987654321) on the copyright page, bound after the contents pages. Hardcover, 26.5 x 21.8 cm, 164 unnumbered pages. Publisher’s grey thick cardboard covers lettered in white on the spine.
Blood Meridian, first Modern Library edition Random House, New York, 2001 Blood Meridian, first Modern Library edition, first printing with a complete number line (246897531) on the copyright page. Hardcover, 19.1 x 12.7 cm, V-XIII + 335 numbered pages.
La Route (The Road), graphic novel, adapted by Manu Larcenet, second limited edition. Dargaud, Paris, 2024. Second limited edition, only printing. Hardcover, without a dustjacket as issued, 34 x 27.4 cm, 190 pages. Publisher’s gray thick cardboard covers, featuring two illustrations by Larcenet, differ from those of the first trade and first limited editions.
This is neither a Cormac McCarthy bibliography, as I am not a bibliographer, nor a critical essay, as I am not a scholar. The project started three years ago when I retired. Having more free time, I thought it would be good to catalogue my collection of McCarthy books. However, as I delved into them, I realized that many details about publication, first print runs, different issues, and so on were unknown, not based on strong sources, or even definitely wrong. Moreover, some of the people to whom the books were inscribed were similarly little known and had interesting stories worth telling.
So, I started digging into relevant archives mainly in the United States and England, speaking with McCarthy’s friends, publishers, and scholars, reading critical and biographical essays. What you find on this website is part of this research outcome. It aims just to share with McCarthy lovers, collectors, scholars and book dealers, information which sheds light on some little known aspects of McCarthy’s books history and about people whose lives crossed that of the author of Blood Meridian.
This is obviously a work in progress. In the next weeks, I will add information on all the over 250 items included in my McCarthy collection. Register with your email address to receive notifications about new contents added.
Lastly, English is not my mother tongue, so please be forgiving of any errors you may find in the text. Happy reading.
Some months ago, Peyton Gupton, a collector from Knoxville, sent me photos of a first edition of Suttree gorgeously inscribed by McCarthy to his friend Jim Long. The book had been acquired by the University of Tennessee in November, 2023 from Jim Long’s widow, Elaine. The inscription is one of the best I have ever seen and plays on the year McCarthy and Long first met and on the title of Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” published in the same year: “For Jim Long / without whose friendship / this book would not exist. / All best to you,...
All the Pretty Horses, early uncorrected proof. Knopf, New York, 1991. Early uncorrected proof of the first edition. Softcover, 28 x 21.7 cm, 298 numbered pages consisting of a photocopy of the first-pass pages in clear plastic front cover, black plastic back cover, and black spine.
The books by Cormac McCarthy entered the rare books trade and the collecting world very early. As far as we know, McCarthy’s friend Gary Goodman was among the first to trade signed copies of The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark.
On February, 1971 Goodman, having noted a few copies of The Orchard Keeper offered by second hand bookstores for more than the original price, purchased from Random House forty-five copies of Outer Dark and five copies of The Orchard Keeper (probably from the second printing) at a reduced price. He got them signed by McCarthy and resold them at $ 12.50 each. McCarthy was known to a narrow circle at the time and modern firsts market was just starting. Nominal prices were many hundred times lower than those usual today.
It is, in my opinion, a beautiful portrait. It was taken in the second half of the 80s in El Paso by Cynthia Farah Haines, photographer, writer and Cormac McCarthy’s friend. It was not included though in her book “Literature and Landscape” which collects 50 portraits of southwestern writers and was saved in Cynthia Farah Photograph Collection Writers of the Southwest held at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
The first graphic novel based on a Cormac McCarthy’s novel is already available. The Road was adapted by Manu Larcenet and has been published in French as “La Route” on March, 29 both in hardcover by Dargaud and paperback by Points. It was followed on April, 12 by the Italian version published by Coconino Press. The English version is expected to be out in hardcover on September, 17 (Abrams ComicArt).
Not just one, but two McCarthy’s biographies are expected to be published in 2025. Laurence Gonzales, author of best sellers like “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why” and “Flight 232” and Mccarthy’s friend at Santa Fe Institute, is working on another biography which want to be “about Cormac as a person more than the literary giant he was”.
The annual conference about McCarthy will be hold in Knoxville, Tennessee, the city where Cormac grew up, on October 3-5, 2024. The conference place is the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Knoxville and author Ron Rash will be the keynoter. For every information go to https://www.cormacmccarthysociety.com .