Page "American literature" Paragraph 81

Writing in a lyrical, flowing style that eschews excessive use of the comma and semicolon, recalling William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway in equal measure, Cormac McCarthy's body of work seizes on the literary traditions of several regions of the United States and spans multiple genres.

He writes in the Southern Gothic aesthetic in his distinctly Faulknerian 1965 debut, The Orchard Keeper, and Suttree ( 1979 ); in the Epic Western tradition, with grotesquely drawn characters and symbolic narrative turns reminiscent of Melville, in Blood Meridian ( 1985 ), which Harold Bloom styled " the greatest single book since Faulkner ’ s As I Lay Dying ," calling the character of Judge Holden " short of Moby Dick, the most monstrous apparition in all of American literature "; in a much more pastoral tone in his celebrated Border Trilogy ( 1992 – 98 ) of bildungsromans, including All the Pretty Horses ( 1992 ), winner of the National Book Award ; and in the post-apocalyptic genre in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road ( 2007 ).

His novels are noted for achieving both commercial and critical success, several of his works having been adapted to film.