It’s the birthday of Cormac McCarthy, dammit, so cowboy up. McCarthy (b. 1933) is known for hard prose and hard storylines and hardened criminal characters, and after reading the briefest of summaries of several of his novels, I feel a little like curling up in a fetal position and keening. But McCarthy has won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award and a National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and at least one of his books (No Country for Old Men, 2005) has been made into a movie by the Coen brothers, so we have to listen to him.

McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the third of six children, but the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when McCarthy was four, which is probably why he’s allowed to be called a writer in the Southern Gothic tradition. McCarthy studied at the University of Tennessee from 1951-52, then served in the Air Force for four years, then returned to the university for two years, then left it for good. His first novel, The Orchard Keeper (1965), is about two Tennessee men who mentor a young man whose father one of them has killed in self-defense, like you do. To summarize: shrines, bootleg whiskey, charges of insanity, and you can’t go home again.

His next novel, Outer Dark (1968), takes on the cheerier topics of incest, child abandonment, and cannibalism. Then there was Child of God (1974, serial killer in Appalachia), Suttree (1979, suicide, misfits, relationships ending in landslides and such), and Blood Meridian (1985, a western about scalp hunters now considered one of the greatest American novels).

Several more novels ensued, including All the Pretty Horses (1992), which won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and is supposed to be less bleak than McCarthy’s other novels, although—let’s face it—that’s not saying much.

McCarthy’s 2006 postapocalyptic novel, The Road, won the Pulitzer. There appear to be whole forums online where one can comment on the similarities between The Road and the television series The Walking Dead.

Have a safe, sound, and mentally well Friday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.