The September / October issue of Smithsonian Magazine has a fantastic article by Richard Grant¹ on Cormac McCarthy’s library. Over the years, I’ve read just three of McCarthy’s books: No Country for Old Men in 2018, and more recently the dual novel / novella The Passenger and Stella Maris, both of which were among my best reads of 2023.

I’m a sucker for libraries, and I love to read about the personal libraries of other people. Grant’s article was all about McCarthy’s library, two years after his death. That library contains an estimated 20,000 books²!

Some people collect books to preserve them in pristine condition, elevating their value. With few exceptions, I don’t do that, and it turns out, McCarthy is a kindred spirit:

His books, many of which are annotated with margin comments, promise to reveal far more about this elusive literary giant than the few cagey interviews he gave when he was alive.

I am also fascinated by polymaths, and according to Grant,

McCarthy was a genius-level intellectual polymath with an insatiable curiosity.

If I could go back in time to when I was 6 or 7 years old and adults would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, instead of saying “astronomer,” I would say “genius-level intellectual polymath with an insatiable curiosity.” Maybe it would have focused me more.

McCarthy’s library is eclectic, much like my own, and his interests spanned over everything. “‘Seventy-five titles by or about Wittgenstein’,” writes Grant, “‘And most of them are annotated, meaning Cormac read them closely.’”

Later in the article, Grant notes:

Then I learned he had an eidetic memory and could remember nearly everything he had read or heard, including the lyrics to thousands of songs.

If I could go back in time to when I was 6 or 7 years old and adults would ask me what superpower I would want, I’d say an eidetic memory. I’ve known only one person who I was almost certain had an eidetic memory, and it was impressive!

There were other similarities I saw in the article:

McCarthy often had a pencil when he was reading and would make tiny vertical marks next to sentences that interested him and add comments in the margins in small print handwriting.

Or,

He never left the house without a book.

One place where we differed was in our opinions of Moby Dick. According to McCarthy’s brother, it was Cormac McCarthy’s favorite book. I enjoyed it, but saw it mostly as a travelogue.

His library was largely in disarray, but the sheer size and variety of it made my mouth water as I read the article. I sat in my reading chair, surrounded by more than a thousand of my own books, thinking, Gee, I wish I had a library of my own!

For book lovers, and includes fantastic photos of McCarthy’s library by Wayne Martin Berger. This is a great piece and I highly recommend it.

1. Grant is probably my favorite feature writer for the magazine. In a little squib about him for the article, it mentions that he is working on a book about McCarthy. ↩︎
2. I’m in the process of updating the catalog of my own library, which contains considerably fewer than 20,000 volumes. ↩︎