This chapter offers a critical overview of all of McCarthy’s works with a special emphasis on the relationship of those works to events in his life. Born in 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island, McCarthy moved to Knoxville, Tennessee as a child when his father took a job as a lawyer for the Tennessee Valley Authority. He attended the University of Tennessee for a time (majoring in Liberal Arts), where he discovered his ambition to write. His early novels explore the environment around Knoxville and are portentous inquiries into the traumas related to historical change and the nature of evil. In later years, he moved west, and from 1992 onward his work is generally set in the American West. He continues with many of the same thematic concerns as he explores major philosophical and religious themes more deeply. Through his affiliation with the Santa Fe Institute, he developed an interest in scientific inquiry, and this has become a major preoccupation in his work, especially in later years.

Cormac McCarthy’s interest in science and association with the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute is well remarked. Scholars less regularly explore how scientific theories inform his work, with critics more often noting his generally negative figuration of advanced technologies. On April 20, 2107, after decades of publishing only fiction, plays, and screenplays, McCarthy contributed an essay on linguistics, dream, and the unconscious to the online science journal Nautilus. “The Kekule Problem” occasioned notable critical reactions online, with McCarthy responding in a second essay. This chapter considers these essays while providing an overview of the influence of science and technology on his creative work. McCarthy’s interest in scientific theories promises rich territory for future scholarship, particularly to complement attention to dreams and to figurations of technology. Ultimately, McCarthy’s speculation on lingusitics proves less valuable to that field, of course, than as insights into his own writing process. Open scientific inquiry and speculation run alongside the power of dreams and tecnological skepticism throughout his creative work.