William J. Cobb

I first heard of Cormac McCarthy when I was in graduate school in the late eighties, and he pointed my writing in a new direction. At that time Minimalists, such as Raymond Carver, were all the rage, writing mainly about relationships and drinking problems and domestic strife. McCarthy's Blood Meridian, published in 1986, is a classic novel, horrifying and hallucinatory, set in Texas from the 1840s to the 1880s. It's rich in detail, spare in motivation, and based on historical characters. The Judge is a larger-than-life character akin to Melville's Ahab. Since beginning to read Cormac McCarthy, who recently published the best novel of the 21st century, The Road, my writing has taken a more expansive turn.