An audiobook or audio book is a recording of a text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine.

Spoken audio has been available in school and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops for a long time. It was not until the 1980s that the medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays.

Formats

Audiobooks are distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, downloadable digital formats (e.g., MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), and Advanced Audio Coding (.aac)).

In 2005 cassette-tape sales were 16% of the audiobook market, with CD sales accounting for 74% of the market and downloadable audio books accounting for approximately 9%. In the United States, a sales survey (performed by the Audio Publishers' Association in the summer of 2006 for the year 2005) estimated the industry to be worth 871 million US dollars. Current industry estimates are around two billion US dollars at retail value per year. In recent years, the Internet has introduced another powerful means of delivery for audiobooks and many titles are now available on-line, as downloads and as audio streams.

Sometimes audiobook format is available simultaneously with book publication. There are 50,000 titles on cassette, CD or digital format.

Unabridged audiobooks are word for word readings of a book, while abridged audiobooks have text removed by the abridger. Abridgements may be wanted to reduce the cost or for other reasons, but are also criticized for being incomplete versions of the original work. The increasing use of digital formats for audiobook recording has led to much less abridgment of texts, the most common reason cited for abridgment was the cost of production and with digital recordings being stored as data rather than on discs or tapes, the differential in cost of producing the full text was minimised. Audiobooks may come as fully dramatized versions of the printed book, sometimes calling upon a complete cast, music, and sound effects. Each spring, the Audie Awards are given to the top nominees for performance and production in several genre categories. Relatedly, a dramatized audio adaptation of a book is one form of an audio drama.

Occasionally there are radio programs serializing books, sometimes read by the author or sometimes by an actor, with most of them on the BBC.

History

United States

In 1931, Congress established the talking-book program, which was intended to help blind adults who couldn’t read print. This program was called "Books for the Adult Blind Project." The American Foundation for the Blind developed the first talking books in 1932. One year later the first reproduction machine began the process of mass publishing. In 1933 anthropologist J.P. Harrington drove the length of North America to record oral histories of Native American tribes on aluminum discs using a car battery-powered turntable. Audiobooks preserve the oral tradition of storytelling that J.P. Harrington pursued many years ago. By 1935, after Congress approved free mailings of audio books to blind citizens, the Books for the Adult Blind Project was in full operation. In 1992 the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Challenged (NLS) network circulated millions of recorded books to more than 700,000 Physically challenged listeners. All NLS recordings were created by professionals.

Though spoken recordings were popular in 33-1/3 vinyl record format for schools and libraries into the early 1970s, the beginning of the trade acceptance of this medium can be traced to the introduction of the audio cassette and, most importantly, to the prevalence of these cassette players as standard equipment (rather than as options which older drivers did not choose) in imported (Japanese) automobiles, which became very popular during the 1979 energy crisis. Thereafter, consumers and authors slowly accepted the medium. Into the early 1980s there were still many authors who refused to have their books created as audiobooks, so a good many of the audiobooks were original productions not based upon printed books.

With the development of portable cassette recorders, audiotapes had become very popular and by the late 1960s libraries became a source of free audiobooks, primarily on vinyl records but also on cassettes. Instructional and educational recordings came first, followed by self-help tapes and then by literature. In 1975, Olympic gold medalist, Duvall Hecht founded Books on Tape, Inc. as a direct to consumer mail order rental service for unabridged audiobooks and expanded their services selling their products to libraries and audiobooks gaining popularity with commuters and travelers. By the middle of 1980s the audio publishing business grew to several billion dollars a year in retail value.

Caedmon was the first to work with integrated production teams and professional actors, while Nightingale Conant featured business and self-help authors reading their own works first on vinyl records and then on cassettes.

The Audio Publishers Association was established in 1986 by six competitive companies who joined together to promote the consumer awareness of spoken word audio. In 1996 the Audio Publishers Association established the Audie Awards for audio books, which is equivalent to the Oscar for the talking books industry. The nominees are announced each year in January. The winners are announced at a gala banquet in the spring, usually in conjunction with BookExpo America.

While music fans rapidly accepted CDs, audiobook listeners were slower. One reason may have been that a cassette tape by nature retains its position when the player is turned off, but many early CD players did not retain the playing position of CDs when turned off. Also, it was not until cassette players were replaced by CD players in most automobiles that this format eventually took hold.

With the advent of the Internet, broadband technologies, new compressed audio formats and portable media players, the popularity of audiobooks has increased significantly. This growth was reflected with the advent of audiobook download subscription services.

Use, distribution and popularity

Recent technology has encouraged the proliferation of free audiobooks that take works from the public domain and enlist volunteers to read them. Audiobooks also can be created with text to speech computer software, although the quality of synthesised speech may suffer by comparison to recordings by a human voice. On the other hand, computer-voiced reading enables the proliferation of more works faster through automation, than if read by humans.

Audiobooks in the private domain are also distributed online by for-profit companies. It is believed that most major audiobook publishers insist that their works, when sold as downloads, be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM), but this is not the case. Companies such as Apple Inc. have licensed their proprietary FairPlay DRM system (for DRM protection of iPod files in the .aa file format) to only one company.. Because of the major publishers' insistence on DRM, this has effectively created a monopoly in the sale of the works of major publishers to iPod users, who make up the majority of the portable audio market. However, with the release of new sites such as We Read 4 You, which releases all of its content as DRM-free .mp3 files, there may be a slow conversion by other companies, such as Apple and Amazon to a DRM-free format.

Audiobooks on cassette or CD are typically more expensive than hardbacks because of the added expense of recording and the lack of the economy of scale in high "print" runs that are available in the publishing of printed books. Preloaded digital formats are similar in price to their CD counterparts. The audio content is preloaded on a small and simple player, which removes the need for a separate piece of technology such as a CD player or an MP3 player.

Downloadable audiobooks tend to cost slightly less than hardbacks but more than their paperback equivalents. For this reason, market penetration of audiobooks is substantially lower than for their printed counterparts despite the high market penetration of the hardware (MP3 and WMA players) and despite the massive market penetration achieved by audio music products. Given the elasticity of demand for audiobooks and the availability of cheaper alternatives, slow and steady growth in sales seems more likely than a mass market explosion.

However, economics are on the side of downloadable audiobooks in the long run. They do not carry mass production costs, do not require storage of a large inventory, do not require physical packaging or transportation and do not face the problem of returns that add to the cost of printed books. Received wisdom of market forces suggests that significant price reductions to customers, while cutting into per unit profit margins, will be offset by increased volumes of sales. This will increase absolute profits to the industry while bringing audiobooks to a wider public.

One of the factors holding back price competition is the fear that low-price audiobooks might simply take business away from more traditional forms of publishing. This is especially significant in the case of publishers who have interests in both print and audiobook publishing. However, most major book publishers now actively participate in audiobook publishing and see it as a complement to their publishing operations.

Resellers of audiobooks that acquire much of their content from major publishers, must price their content at such a level as to take account of their cost of goods as well as operating costs. On the other hand, audiobook sellers that sell their own content or publish lesser known authors have lower operating costs and can therefore sell at lower prices using a "lower-margin-higher-sales" business model. However, they still have to meet the costs of writer's royalties, performers fees and production facility costs. The shift from CDs and cassettes to downloadable audiobooks, whilst doing nothing to reduce initial recording and editing costs, creates further downward pressure on price, by removing some of the other costs, such as production, packaging and physical distribution.

Audiobooks have been used to teach children to read and to increase reading comprehension. They are also useful for the blind. The National Library of Congress in the U.S. and the CNIB Library in Canada provide free audiobook library services to the visually impaired; requested books are mailed out (at no cost) to clients.

About forty percent of all audiobook consumption occurs through public libraries, with the remainder served primarily through retail book stores. Library download programs are currently experiencing rapid growth (more than 5,000 public libraries offer free downloadable audio books). Libraries are also popular places to check out audio books in the CD format. According to the National Endowment for the Arts' recent study, "Reading at Risk", audio book listening is one of very few "types" of reading that is increasing general literacy.

Listening practices

Audio books are considered a valuable learning tool because of their format. Unlike traditional books or a video program, one can learn from an audiobook while doing other tasks, although it should be noted that this can detract from the primary task, assuming the learning is not the main activity. Such multitasking is feasible when doing mechanical tasks that do not require much thought and have only little or no chance of an emergency arising. Such tasks include doing the laundry and exercising indoors, among others. The most popular general use of audiobooks by adults is when driving an automobile or traveling with public transport, as an alternative to radio. Many people listen as well just to relax or as they drift off into sleep.

Common practices include:

Replaying: Depending upon one's degree of attention and interest, it is often necessary to listen to segments of an audio book more than once to allow the material to be understood and retained satisfactorily. Replaying may be done immediately or after extended periods of time.

Learning: People may listen to an audio book (usually an unabridged one) while following along in an actual book. This helps them to learn words that they may not learn correctly if they were only to read the book. This can also be a very effective way to learn a new language.

Audiobook charities in the UK

Listening Books is an audiobook charity in the UK providing an internet streaming and postal service to anyone who has a disability or illness which makes it difficult to hold a book, turn its pages, or read in the usual way. They have audiobooks for both leisure and learning and a library of over 4,000 titles which are recorded in their own digital studios or commercially sourced.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is a UK charity which offers a Talking Books library service. The audio books are provided in DAISY format and delivered to the reader's house by post. There are over 18,000 audio books available to borrow, paid for by annual subscription. RNIB subsidises the Talking Books service by around £4 million a year.

See also

Simply Audiobooks

Children's gramophone records

DAISY Digital Talking Book

Educational software

LibriVox

Playaway

Radio drama

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic

Text-to-speech

Wikibooks

Wikisource

Books for the Blind

National Audio Theatre Festival, a national audio arts organization and workshop, which includes training for aspiring audiobook artists/producers.

References

External links

Category:Accessible information Category:Blindness equipment

Name	James Patterson
Birthdate	March 22, 1947
Birthplace	Newburgh, New York, United States
Occupation	Novelist
Genre	Thriller
Notableworks	Alex Cross seriesMaximum Ride seriesThe Women's Murder Club seriesDaniel X series
Website	http://www.jamespatterson.com

James B. Patterson (born March 22, 1947) is an American author of thriller novels, largely known for his series about American psychologist Alex Cross. Patterson also wrote the Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch & Wizard series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, nonfiction and romance novels.

Biography

He retired from advertising in 1996 and devoted his time to being a writer. The novels featuring his character Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist formerly of the Washington D.C. Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation who now works as a private psychologist and government consultant, are the most popular books among Patterson readers and the top-selling US Detective series in the past ten years. Patterson has written 65 novels over his 33 years as an author. To date, James Patterson has had 19 consecutive #1 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds The New York Times record for most bestselling hardcover fiction titles by a single author, a total of 56, which is also a Guinness World Record. The world's best-selling author, his novels account for one in 17 of all hardcover novels sold in the United States; in recent years his novels have sold more copies than those of Stephen King, John Grisham and Dan Brown combined.

He has won awards including the Edgar Award, the BCA Mystery Guild’s Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and has often said that collaborating with others brings new and interesting ideas to his stories. He is currently collaborating with Swedish mystery writer Liza Marklund on a book called The Postcard Killers, which was released August 2010. The story is set in Stockholm, Sweden, and tracks the investigation of young couples' murders across Europe. The book will be released first in Sweden (January 2010) and the US version arrived in bookstores in August 2010. In September 2009, Patterson signed a book deal to write or co-write 11 books for adults and six for young adults by the end of 2012. Forbes reported the deal was worth at least $150 million, but Patterson said the estimate isn't close.

He also founded the James Patterson PageTurner Awards in 2005 to personally give away over US$850,000 to reward people, companies, schools, and other institutions that find original and effective ways to spread the excitement of books and reading. The PageTurner Awards were put on hold in 2008 to focus on Patterson's new initiative, ReadKiddoRead.com, which helps parents, teachers, and librarians find the very best children’s books for their children. There is also a social networking site for ReadKiddoRead, which is hosted by Ning.

Criticism

Horror novelist Stephen King has dismissed Patterson's bibliography as being made up of dopey thrillers, and in one interview called him a terrible writer. In a 10 Questions interview in the July 5, 2010, issue of Time magazine, Patterson was asked, "What do you say to critics like author Stephen King who say you're not a great prose stylist?" Patterson responded, "I am not a great prose stylist. I'm a storyteller. There are thousands of people who don't like what I do. Fortunately, there are millions who do."

In his 2009 book Junk Fiction: America's Obsession with Bestsellers, critic S. T. Joshi analyzes The Lake House, Honeymoon, and The Big Bad Wolf and criticizes Patterson for absurd plotting, facile trickery and prose that is simply dreadful [sic].

Patterson also received criticism for his continued work with collaborators. His prolific output is partially owed to the relationship he has with his many co-authors who share an authorship credit on the cover. The authors, in their agreement with Patterson, have agreed not to disclose the terms of their working relationship, including how much involvement Patterson has on each co-authored book. In the same Time magazine 10 Questions interview, he responded to a question about his collaborations: "If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.")

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (2001)

The Beach House (2002) (with Peter De Jonge)

The Jester (2003) (with Andrew Gross)

The Lake House (2003) (sequel to When The Wind Blows)

Sam's Letters to Jennifer (2004)

Honeymoon (2005) (with Howard Roughan)

Lifeguard (2005) (with Andrew Gross)

Beach Road (2006) (with Peter De Jonge)

Judge and Jury (2006) (with Andrew Gross)

The Quickie (2007) (with Michael Ledwidge)

You've Been Warned (2007) (with Howard Roughan)

Sundays at Tiffany's, (2008) (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)

Sail (2008) (with Howard Roughan)

Swimsuit (2009) (with Maxine Paetro)

The Postcard Killers (2010) (with Liza Marklund)

Don't Blink (2010) (with Howard Roughan)

Toys (March 14, 2011) (with Neil McMahon) Title & Release Date subject to change

Now You See Her (June 27, 2011) (with Michael Ledwidge) Title & Release Date subject to change

(June 27, 2011) (with Chris Tebbetts, Illustrated by Laura Park) Title & Release Date subject to change

Kill Me If You Can (August 22, 2011) (with Marshall Karp) Title & Release Date subject to change

''Christmas Wedding (October 17, 2011)

Non-fiction

(October 20, 2008) (with Hal Friedman)

The Murder of King Tut (September, 2009) (with Martin Dugard)

Filmography

{| class=wikitable |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Novel Adapted |width="10%"|Year of Adaptation |width="10%"|Film / TV |width="60%"|Extra Information |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Child of Darkness, Child of Light |width="10%"|1991 |width="10%"|TV |width="60%"|Child of Darkness, Child of Light was adapted from the novel Virgin. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Kiss the Girls |width="10%"|1997 |width="10%"|Film |width="60%"|Forensic detective/author Alex Cross investigates the disappearance of his niece from her North Carolina campus, and learns seven other women are also missing. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Miracle on the 17th Green |width="10%"|1999 |width="10%"|TV |width="60%"|A 50 year old adman (Robert Urich) loses his job. Rather than facing trying to find a new job, he decides to try to make it on the senior golf tour. This causes him to neglect his wife (Meredith Baxter) and family. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Along Came a Spider |width="10%"|2001 |width="10%"|Film |width="60%"|Washington, D.C. homicide detective Alex Cross is through playing mind games with criminals—that is until a methodical predator, Gary Soneji kidnaps the young son of a United States senator and the daughter of a famous actress from an elite school and lures Cross into the case. Soneji's not out for ransom, he wants something much bigger—a place in the history books. His every move is planned with the precision of a spider spinning his web, and Cross and secret service agent Jezzie Flannigan are in a race against time to stop him. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|1st to Die |width="10%"|2003 |width="10%"|TV |width="60%"|Based on James Patterson's bestseller, this three-hour thriller is about a homicide inspector—Lindsay Boxer (Tracy Pollan) -- who teams with three other professional women to catch an ingenious serial killer targeting newlyweds on their wedding nights. But while Boxer is trying to solve the biggest case of her career, she is also falling in love with her partner (Gil Bellows) -- and privately waging her own battle with a life-threatening illness. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas |width="10%"|2005 |width="10%"|TV |width="60%"| |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Women's Murder Club |width="10%"|2007 |width="10%"|TV |width="60%"|Based on James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series. This TV series revolved around San Francisco homicide Inspector Lindsay Boxer (Angie Harmon) and her three friends: Assistant District Attorney Jill Bernhardt, Medical Examiner Claire Washburn, and reporter Cindy Thomas. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|James Patterson's Sundays at Tiffany's |width="10%"|2010 |width="10%"|TV |width="60%"|Alyssa Milano stars as a successful businesswoman who, as a young girl, would accompany her mother Vivian (Stockard Channing) to Tiffany’s in New York every Sunday and bring along an imaginary friend, Michael. She is set to marry her handsome fiancé (Ivan Sergei), until her childhood imaginary friend (Eric Winter) reappears to warn her about the path her life is on. Initially shocked and in disbelief, she slowly realizes he may be her one true love. Based on the best-selling book. |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Maximum Ride |width="10%"|2013 |width="10%"|Film |width="60%"|James Patterson has had an "online rally" which has led him to arrange to have a movie based on his best selling teen series; Maximum Ride. The movie will be based on the first three books, but it is unknown whether it will also be based on the fourth and fifth novels and newly released sixth novel, . |-valign="top" |width="20%"|Cross |width="10%"|2011–2012 |width="10%"|Film |width="60%"|James Patterson confirmed in an online newsletter from his website that this will be the 3rd Alex Cross movie. It will be based on the book of the same name. Although no studio has as yet picked up the treatment, it is being shopped around (Paramount is the only studio that has not been included) and Lloyd Levin has signed on as producer. |}

References

External links

Official James Patterson US web site

Official James Patterson UK web site

James Patterson at the Internet Book List

2010 Time Magazine's 10 Questions for James Patterson

Category:1947 births Category:American novelists Category:American thriller writers Category:Edgar Award winners Category:Living people Category:Manhattan College alumni Category:Vanderbilt University alumni

Name	Donna Tartt
Birthdate	December 23, 1963
Birthplace	Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
Occupation	novelist
Influences	J. M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Willie Morris, George Orwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hunter S. Thompson, Evelyn Waugh, Barry Hannah
Period	1992—present

Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002). She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.

Early life

The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and raised in the nearby town of Grenada. At age five, she wrote her first poem, and she was first published in a Mississippi literary review when she was 13.

Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted Tartt into his graduate short story course. Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, meeting then-students Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt.

The Secret History

Tartt began writing her first novel, originally titled "The God of Illusions" and later published as The Secret History, during her second year at Bennington. She graduated from Bennington in 1986. After Ellis recommended her work to literary agent Amanda Urban, The Secret History was published in 1992, overwhelming the 75,000 copies in the first printing to become a bestseller. It was later translated into 24 languages.

The Secret History is set at a fictional college that closely resembles Tartt's alma mater. The plot concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The first-person narrative is flavored heavily by the differences within the group. These include: social class, privilege, intellect and sexual orientation. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group.

The fact of the murder, the location and the perpetrators are revealed in the opening pages, upending the familiar framework and accepted conventions of the murder mystery genre. Critic A.O. Scott labeled it "a murder mystery in reverse."

The book was wrapped in a transparent acetate book jacket, a retro design by Barbara De Wilde and Chip Kidd. According to Kidd, "The following season acetate jackets sprang up in bookstores like mushrooms on a murdered tree."

The Little Friend

The Little Friend, Tartt's second novel, was published in October 2002. It is a mystery centered on a young girl living in the American South in the late 20th century. Her implicit anxieties about the long-unexplained death of her brother and the dynamics of her extended family are a strong focus, as are the contrasting lifestyles and customs of small-town Southerners.

Other writing

In 2002, it was reported that Tartt was working on a retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus for the Canongate Myth Series, a series of novellas in which ancient myths are reimagined and rewritten by contemporary authors.

In September 2008, it was announced that Tartt would publish her third novel with Little, Brown and Company. The new novel, as yet untitled, is a story of loss and obsession about a young man, guilt-stricken and damaged after the death of his mother, and the growing power that a stolen piece of art exercises over him, drawing him into an underworld of theft and corruption where nothing is as it seems. Publication is scheduled for 2012.

Audio

Tartt has recorded several audiobooks:

The Secret History

The Little Friend (abridgment)

True Grit (with afterword expressing her love of the novel)

Winesburg, Ohio (selection)

Bibliography

Novels

The Secret History, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

The Little Friend, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Short stories

“Tam-O'-Shanter”. The New Yorker April 19th 1993, p. 90.

“A Christmas Pageant”. Harper’s 287.1723. December 1993, p. 45+.

“A Garter Snake”. GQ 65.5, May 1995, p. 89+.

“The Ambush”. The Guardian, June 25th, 2005.

Nonfiction

“Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeine.” Harper’s 286, July 1992, p. 60-66.

“Basketball Season.” The Best American Sports Writing, edited and with an introduction by Frank Deford. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

“Team Spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team.” Harper’s 288, April 1994, p. 37-40.

Awards

2003 WH Smith Literary Award (The Little Friend)

shortlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize for Fiction (The Little Friend)

References

Sources

Tracy Hargreaves, Donna Tartt's "The Secret History", New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001 ISBN 0-8264-5320-1

Adrian McOran-Campbell, The Secret History (August 2000)

Danny Yee, "Studying Ancient Greek Warps the Mind of the Young?" (January 4, 1994)

Listen to

NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt interviewed by Lynn Neary (November 5, 2002)

NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt and Anne Rice interviewed by Ray Suarez (October 30, 1997)

Donna Tartt reads The Secret History (pages 1-9) at Salon

Donna Tartt reads The Little Friend at a Jackson, Mississippi bookstore (November 13, 2002)

External links

"The Little Friend" by Donna Tartt: Links

Donna Tartt interviewed by Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com

Tartt on reading and her Scottish grandmother

Tartt in Vogue on her teenage worship of Hunter S. Thompson

The Secret History community on LiveJournal

Category:1963 births Category:American novelists Category:Bennington College alumni Category:Living people Category:Writers from Mississippi Category:People from Greenwood, Mississippi Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American Roman Catholic writers Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism

Name	Cormac McCarthy
Birthname	Charles McCarthy
Birthdate	July 20, 1933
Birthplace	Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Novelist, Playwright
Genre	Southern Gothic, Western, modernist
Notableworks	Blood Meridian, Suttree, The Border Trilogy, No Country for Old Men, The Road
Influences	Herman Melville, Flannery O'Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, William Butler Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, William Shakespeare, MacKinlay Kantor, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett
Website	http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/cormacmccarthy/
Children	Cullen McCarthy, son (with Lee Holleman)

Cormac McCarthy (born Charles McCarthy; July 20, 1933) is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road. His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He received a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1992 novel, All the Pretty Horses.

His previous novel, Blood Meridian, (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and placed joint runner-up in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth, calling Blood Meridian "the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying." In 2010 The Times ranked The Road first on its list of the 100 best fiction and non-fiction books of the past 10 years. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. McCarthy is increasingly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the influential and well informed Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

Writing career

McCarthy's first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published by Random House in 1965. He decided to send the manuscript to Random House because "it was the only publisher [he] had heard of." At Random House, the manuscript found its way to Albert Erskine, who had been William Faulkner's editor until Faulkner's death in 1962. Erskine continued to edit McCarthy's work for the next twenty years.

In the summer of 1965, using a Traveling Fellowship award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, McCarthy shipped out aboard the liner Sylvania, hoping to visit Ireland. While on the ship, he met Anne DeLisle, who was working on the ship as a singer. In 1966, they were married in England. Also in 1966, McCarthy received a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, which he used to travel around Southern Europe before landing in Ibiza, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark. Afterward he returned to America with his wife, and Outer Dark was published in 1968 to generally favorable reviews.

In 1969, McCarthy and his wife moved to Louisville, Tennessee, and purchased a barn, which McCarthy renovated, even doing the stonework himself. One is set in 1980s New Orleans and follows a young man as he deals with the suicide of his sister. According to McCarthy, this will be his first work to feature a prominent female character. He also states that the new novel is "long". The Texas State University-San Marcos recently acquired McCarthy's papers.

Personal life

He attended the University of Tennessee from 1951-52 and 1957-59 but never graduated. While at UT he published two stories in The Phoenix and was awarded the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960.

McCarthy now lives in the Tesuque, New Mexico, area, north of Santa Fe, with his wife, Jennifer Winkley, and their son, John. He guards his privacy. In one of his few interviews (with The New York Times), McCarthy reveals that he is not a fan of authors who do not "deal with issues of life and death," citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples. "I don't understand them," he said. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange." As a result, McCarthy agreed to his first television interview, which aired on The Oprah Winfrey Show on June 5, 2007. The interview took place in the library of the Santa Fe Institute; McCarthy told Winfrey that he does not know any writers, and much prefers the company of scientists. During the interview he related several stories illustrating the degree of outright poverty he has endured at times during his career as a writer. He also spoke about the experience of fathering a child at an advanced age, and how his now-eight-year-old son was the inspiration for The Road. McCarthy noted to Oprah that he prefers "simple declarative sentences" and that he uses capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but "never a semicolon." He does not use quotation marks for dialogue and believes there is no reason to "blot the page up with weird little marks."

According to Wired magazine, McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter was put up for auction at Christie's. The Olivetti Lettera 32 has been in his care for 46 years, since 1963. He picked up the used machine for $50 from a pawn shop in Knoxville, Tennessee. McCarthy reckons he has typed around five million words on the machine, and maintenance consisted of “blowing out the dust with a service station hose”. The typewriter was auctioned on Friday, December 4, 2009 and the auction house, Christie’s, estimated it would fetch between $15,000 and $20,000; it sold for $254,500. The Olivetti’s replacement for McCarthy to use is another Olivetti, bought by McCarthy’s friend John Miller for $11. The proceeds of the auction are to be donated to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit interdisciplinary scientific research organization.

Family

;Children:

Cullen McCarthy, son (with Lee Holleman)

John Francis McCarthy, son (with Jennifer Winkley)

;Marriages:

Lee McCarthy, née Holleman, (1961) divorced

Annie DeLisle, (1967 - divorced 1981)

Jennifer Winkley (married as of 2007)

Published works

Novels

The Orchard Keeper (1965) ISBN 0-679-72872-4

Outer Dark (1968) ISBN 0-679-72873-2

Child of God (1974) ISBN 0-679-72874-0

Suttree (1979) ISBN 0-679-73632-8

Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) ISBN 0-679-72875-9

All the Pretty Horses (1992) ISBN 0-679-74439-8

The Crossing (1994) ISBN 0-679-76084-9

Cities of the Plain (1998) ISBN 0-679-74719-2

No Country for Old Men (2005) ISBN 0-375-70667-4

The Road (2006) ISBN 0-307-38789-5

The Passenger (working title, TBA)

Screenplays

The Gardener's Son (1976) ISBN 0-88001-481-4

Plays

The Stonemason (1995) ISBN 978-0-679-76280-5

The Sunset Limited (2006) ISBN 0-307-27836-0

Film and television adaptations

The Gardener's Son was part of a series for PBS and aired in January 1977. McCarthy wrote the screenplay upon request for director Richard Pearce.

In 2000, McCarthy's novel All the Pretty Horses was made into a film directed by Billy Bob Thornton, starring Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz.

McCarthy's 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted into a 2007 Academy Award-winning film directed by the Coen Brothers and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem.

A film based on the novel The Road began development in 2007. John Hillcoat directs this adaptation by Joe Penhall. The lead role of the father is played by Viggo Mortensen. Charlize Theron is the wife and Robert Duvall is the old man. The film opened on November 25, 2009 to mostly positive reviews. An adaptation of McCarthy's 2006 play The Sunset Limited will air on HBO beginning in February 2011. It will star Tommy Lee Jones (who also directs) and Samuel L. Jackson. A film adaptation of Blood Meridian has been rumored for years. The names of James Franco , Todd Field, and Scott Rudin have been connected to the project, which has fallen through more at least twice.

Awards

1959, 1960 Ingram-Merrill awards

1965 Faulkner prize for a first novel for The Orchard Keeper

1965 Traveling Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

1969 Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing

1981 MacArthur Fellowship The acquisition of the Cormac McCarthy Papers resulted from years of ongoing conversations between McCarthy and Southwestern Writers Collection founder, Bill Wittliff, who negotiated the proceedings. The Southwestern Writers Collection / Wittliff collections also holds The Wolmer Collection of Cormac McCarthy, which consists of letters between McCarthy and bibliographer J. Howard Woolmer, and four other related collections.

References

External links

The Cormac McCarthy Society

"Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" - 1992 interview with McCarthy from The New York Times.

1995 Essay

Cormac McCarthy Concordances and Vocabulary Studies - From John Sepich - Author of Notes on Blood Meridian

Alkek Library and Southwestern Writers Collection at the Witliff Collection, Texas State University- Cormac McCarthy Papers

About The Road

About "The Border Trilogy" (Italian).

Category:1933 births Category:American novelists Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American Roman Catholic writers Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Living people Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:People from El Paso, Texas Category:People from Knoxville, Tennessee Category:People from Santa Fe, New Mexico Category:Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners Category:United States Air Force airmen Category:Western (genre) writers Category:Writers from New Mexico Category:Writers from Tennessee Category:Writers from Texas Category:21st-century novelists