Cormac McCarthy – shining a light on the USA’s dark side

Pulitzer prizewinner Cormac McCarthy, deemed one of America’s finest novelists for his gritty portrayal of the backwoods of the US and the outcasts who operated beyond the mores of respectable society. Some criticised his work as too macho, violent and nihilistic, feeling that his books “floodlit the dark underside of the American dream”.

  In his personal life he was reclusive and austere, driving away his first two wives because of his obsession with writing over earning money.

  He was best known for The Road and No Country for Old Men – in the latter, which was turned into a Coen movie, his cowboy hero was a Vietnam War veteran turned drifter who stumbles on a large sum of money in the desert, a discovery that brings into play a psychotic hitman, a sheriff straight out of High Noon and a bounty hunter. ‘If it doesn’t concern life and death,’ Mr. McCarthy once told Rolling Stone, ‘it’s not interesting.’

  He was born 20 July 1933 and despite writing continuously since his twenties didn’t come to public acclaim until he was 60, after which it all took off.

  He was born 20 July 1933 Providence, Rhode Island, and was a Sun Pluto in Cancer square Uranus – creative, controlling, rebellious, not destined for a conventional life. His Saturn in Aquarius opposed his Venus and Mercury in Leo, squelching any inclination he might have had to the high life or playing to an audience.

   It is a chart that really needs a birth time to make sense of his life.

  When he finally broke through in 1992 he was on his Second Saturn Return and a Jupiter Return; with his Solar Arc Pluto conjunct his Jupiter and tr Pluto conjunct his SA Jupiter. He got it together courtesy of the fates of good fortune in a major way.

  His writer’s 21^st Harmonic is strong.