News / Entertainment
Oprah gets author Cormac McCarthy to open up
Oprah Winfrey proves again that the one thing she is best at is getting people to talk. Novelist Cormac McCarthy hates to talk about his work, and that’s exactly what Oprah got him to do on her show on Tuesday.
"You probably shouldn't be talking about it, you probably should be doing it," McCarthy told Oprah on the TV interview.
Oprah proves how much McCarthy hates to talk about his work by sharing a store about him. She told a story about how many years ago he had no money but refused to speak at an event that would have paid him $2000.
Oprah chose the 73-year old authors book "The Road" in March for her book club. He told Oprah that he first got the idea for "The Road" when he and his young son took a trip to El Paso, Texas four years ago. He said that he was looking out the window while his son slept and he began thinking about what El Paso would look like in 50 to 100 years.
"I just had this image of these fires up on the hill ... and I thought a lot about my little boy," he said. He did not start writing the book until a few years later when he was in Ireland.
"There was a book, and it was about that man and that little boy," McCarthy said.
"The Road" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year. "The Road" is about a father and son who wander through a post-nuclear area. McCarthy said that he would not have written the book if he had not had a son.
McCarthy has written 10 novels, one screenplay and one play. Some of his work includes "Suttree", "Blood Meridian" and "All the Pretty Horses."
McCarthy told Oprah he hardly ever did interviews and he had never done a TV interview.
"I don't think it's good for your head," he said.
McCarthy told how before writing made him money, he lived in poverty. He told about how he was thrown out of a hotel in New Orleans because he didn’t have that month’s rent of $40. He also told about a time in Tennessee when he was living in a "shack" and he did not have the money to buy toothpaste once he ran out. He said that he went to check the mail and found a free sample of toothpaste in his mailbox.
"Just when things were really, really bleak something would happen," he said
Oprah seemed amazed that he cared little about success. When asked if he cared that millions of people were reading his books he said "In all honesty I have to say I really don’t."
