Cormac McCarthy archive goes on display in Texas
Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos includes four screenplays and an unfinished novel
Alison Flood writing in the guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 May

Those keen for a glimpse into the writing life of the notoriously reclusive author Cormac McCarthy may just have to plan a trip to Texas. McCarthy's entire writing career, from his debut The Orchard Keeper to an unfinished novel The Passenger, is meticulously documented in a new archive that goes on display today in a Texas university.

The Pulitzer prize-winning author's notes, handwritten drafts and correspondence for each of his 10 novels are included in the archive at the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos. Also featured in the 98-box archive, which spans McCarthy's literary career from 1964 to 2007, is his 1994 play The Stonemason, about an African-American family in Louisville, Kentucky, and four screenplays, including No Country for Old Men – which McCarthy started as a screenplay in 1984 and adapted into a novel 20 years later.

The author, who guards his privacy carefully, admitted in a rare interview with the New York Times in 1992 that he'd sent his debut The Orchard Keeper to Random House because "it was the only publisher I had heard of". Letters in the archive show McCarthy expressing his gladness that the "book is acceptable to [Random House]", and discussing inconsistencies and changes that needed to be made to the book.

The full story at The Guardian online.