From the moment he read 鈥淎ll the Pretty Horses,鈥� James Wade knew he was a fan for life and that his aspirations, as an author of Westerns, would never be the same.

鈥淗e really broke free from the traditional Western,鈥� says Wade, a two-time winner of the Spur Award for outstanding Western writing whose novel 鈥淎ll Things Left Wild鈥� was billed as 鈥渁n illustration of the violence and corruption prevalent in our fast-expanding country鈥� 鈥� a description that could have been applied to much of McCarthy鈥檚 work.

鈥淗e included all those elements from traditional Westerns, like cowboys and horses, but he also almost single-handedly brought the Western into the literary realm,鈥� Wade said. 鈥淎s Western writers we can now take chances on more metaphysical topics, and not just heroes and villains.鈥�

McCarthy has been widely praised as a descendant of and among others, excavators of the American spirit whose biblically influenced prose raised their narratives to tragic and poetic heights. His admirers can be found throughout the literary world and beyond, from such prize-winning fiction writers as and to actor and who faithfully adapted his 鈥淣o Country for Old Men鈥� into an Oscar-winning movie.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like he was writing meta-Westerns,鈥� says Kushner, author of 鈥淭he Flamethrowers鈥� and other novels. 鈥淗e writes about people gripped by existential compulsion, who don鈥檛 know why they do the things they do.鈥�

鈥淗e was so fiercely dedicated to his own vision that he gave you permission to pursue yours,鈥� says Whitehead, whose books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning 鈥淭he Underground Railroad鈥� and 鈥淶ero One,鈥� a zombie apocalypse inspired in part by McCarthy鈥檚 鈥淭he Road,鈥� winner of the Pulitzer in 2007. 鈥淚 read 鈥楾he Road鈥� and thought, 鈥業f Cormac can do 鈥淢ad Max,鈥� I can do 鈥淣ight of the Living Dead.鈥濃�欌��

For novelists of Westerns, he holds the kind of stature 鈥� as a master in the field whose work also transcended, and even reinvented it. The Western, a genre some feared was outdated, seemed new again. Authors remember encountering his work, from his Border Trilogy to 鈥淭he Road鈥� and 鈥淏lood Meridian,鈥� as exhilarating and sometimes intimidating.

鈥淚 read 鈥楤lood Meridian鈥� in college and was utterly baffled. I didn鈥檛 possess the literary vocabulary at that point to understand what he was doing,鈥� Spur-winning novelist David Heska Wanbli Weiden says of McCarthy.

Weiden 鈥� an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation whose debut novel, 鈥淲inter Counts,鈥� centers on a Native vigilante at odds with the American legal system 鈥� came to appreciate the 鈥渁udacity and ambition鈥� of McCarthy and how he opened the genre to new kinds of stories.

鈥淢ost critics focus on his majestic, resplendent prose, but I see McCarthy鈥檚 influence on the genre to be his alternative mythology of the West, his aesthetic vision, and the detached, dispassionate presentation of the brutal violence that was (and is) a part of the Western frontier,鈥� he says. 鈥淲henever my own work is criticized for being overly violent, I recommend readers check out some of McCarthy鈥檚 later work.鈥�

Kathleen Morris, whose novels include 鈥淟ily of the West,鈥� also read 鈥淏lood Meridian鈥� years ago and remembered being 鈥渁wed鈥� and 鈥渟lightly terrified鈥� by his prose and his storylines. McCarthy became a kind of literary conscience, an author she would find herself summoning 鈥� 鈥淲hat would the man think of that?鈥� 鈥� while working on her own books.

Like Weiden and Morris, author Rudy Ruiz didn鈥檛 immediately find McCarthy pleasurable or even understandable. He would end up rereading the same page multiple times, making sure he hadn鈥檛 missed something, and thought the despair and the loneliness of McCarthy鈥檚 books 鈥渕ade them hard sometimes to engage with.鈥�

For Ruiz, whose 鈥淰alley of Shadows鈥� is set along the Texas-Mexico border in the 19th century, McCarthy鈥檚 influence would become literary and geographical. Ruiz is a Brownville, Texas, native who completed McCarthy鈥檚 Border Trilogy 鈥� 鈥淎ll the Pretty Horses,鈥� 鈥淭he Crossing鈥� and 鈥淐ities of the Plain鈥� 鈥� and responded to how it captured his own feelings about his native region.

鈥淚 was just really influenced by the way he captured the duality of the gritty realism alongside the stark beauty and power of the landscape, how a place can belong to a person as much as a person can belong to the place,鈥� he says. 鈥淢cCarthy shows these timeless concerns about identity and belonging, and how we define ourselves. That is very palpable in the Southwest.鈥�

Gordy Sauer, whose debut novel 鈥淐hild in the Valley鈥� came out in 2021, says that McCarthy鈥檚 presence among contemporary writers of Westerns is so strong that you don鈥檛 have to read him to be influenced by him 鈥� 鈥淎nyone coming after that has to contend at least in theory with what he did and what he meant to the genre,鈥� Sauer says.

He remembers working on a story in graduate school about 15 years ago and being told by a fellow student that it reminded him of McCarthy鈥檚 work, which he鈥檇 yet to read. When he did pick up 鈥淏lood Meridian,鈥� the effect was 鈥渢ransformative,鈥� he said, as if he would divide his life between before 鈥淏lood Meridian鈥� and after.

鈥淗e broke down the Western and remade into an image of America unlike anything we had seen,鈥� Sauer said. 鈥淗e stripped away the romance and the idea of romance. He forced us to look beyond the fabric of the genre and into the stitching, to understand how it was made.鈥�