The Making of Blood Meridian
Drafts & Delineations of Cormac McCarthy's Masterpiece
The new trove of Cormac McCarthy’s personal papers that the Wittliff Collections acquired last year1—and made available this October—has provided a wealth of never-before-seen documents for McCarthy scholars.
Texas State University—whose library houses the Wittliff Collections—announced the acquisition which more than doubled the Cormac McCarthy Archive this fall: “The revelatory new addition consists of 36 banker’s boxes and contains deeply personal material that McCarthy held back during his lifetime. Included are his private journals and early writings, rare photographs and family memorabilia, and correspondence with close friends who inspired elements of his work. The files also hold manuscripts for unpublished novels and trace the decades of effort that went into his final two books, The Passenger and Stella Maris.”2
(Cormac McCarthy in his Air Force uniform. Alaska, 1953)
I understand that few of those reading this will be able to make the pilgrimage to San Marcos, so I wanted to share few photos of notes, drafts, and manuscript pages McCarthy produced while working on Blood Meridian.
Here is a list of of reference materials McCarthy compiled for his masterpiece:
I was excited to see Oakley Hall’s Warlock, a Western inspired by Wyatt Earp’s violent in Tombstone, Arizona in the 1880s. I highly recommend it to fans of Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy.
