Cormac McCarthy had relationship with 16-year-old ‘muse’ when he was in his 40s

[Artaxerxes II]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/co ... r-AA1uwpQj:

Cormac McCarthy reportedly had a 16-year-old muse who inspired several of his novels.
The late author, regarded as one of the greatest American novelists, began a relationship with the teenager in the 1970s when he was 42, Vanity Fair reported.
Augusta Britt told the magazine that she approached McCarthy at a motel in Arizona after recognising him as the author of a book she was reading.

“He was so shocked. He said he was surprised that anyone had read that book, let alone a 16-year-old girl,” she said. “But he said he would be delighted to sign it.”
McCarthy, the author of The Road and No Country for Old Men, first had sex with her when she was 17 and he was 43.
At the time, he was married to the singer Annie DeLisle.
The pair fled to Mexico after McCarthy altered her birth certificate on a typewriter – later inspiring 1985 novel Blood Meridian, in which a teenager flees from her home across the US border.
McCarthy reportedly feared he would be charged with statutory rape for taking a teenager across state lines.
Ms Britt owned a toy kitten named John Grady Cole, a name McCarthy would go on to use for his protagonist in All the Pretty Horses, published in 1992. The title of the novel is said to have come from a lullaby that the teenager would sing to the stuffed creature before bed.

Vanity Fair reported that she is represented in 10 of McCarthy’s books, sometimes in the form of several characters at once, as well as on the covers of The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Ms Britt said McCarthy proposed to her twice, but they never got engaged and split in 1981. The pair, however, kept in contact, and he is said to have come back to visit her every few months for the rest of his life. He died in 2023.
“It feels like I’m being disloyal to Cormac,” Ms Britt said. “But he would always warn me that at some point his archives would open up and people would find out about me.”

[Artaxerxes II]

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -muse.html:

Vanity Fair under fire for 'glorifying' Cormac McCarthy's sexual relationship with underage 'muse'

Vanity Fair is under fire for 'glorifying' and 'romanticizing' author Cormac McCarthy's sexual relationship with his underage 'muse'.
The American novelist's secret underage muse was revealed in a piece yesterday more than a year after his death from prostate cancer.
But readers have taken issue with writer Vincenzo Barney's choice of language.
The article centers around Augusta Britt, now 64, who recounts her relationship with McCarthy and their first meeting at a hotel pool in Tucson, Arizona, when she was a troubled foster child, 16, and McCarthy was 42.
'Just imagine for a moment...you're sitting by a pool at a cheap motel when a beautiful 16-year-old runaway sidles up to you with a stolen gun in one hand and your debut novel in the other,' Barney wrote.
At the time, Britt explained how she had no intention of starting a relationship with him but described how their relationship developed and how he she believes he 'saved her life.'
The magazine describes their first sexual encounter - when she was 17.
While Barney acknowledges the age gap, he called it 'possibly illegal'.

'He was 43, she was 17. The image is startling, possibly illegal.
'At the very least, it raises questions about inappropriate power dynamics and the specter of premeditated grooming.
'But not to Britt—who had suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of many men in her young life—then or now,' he writes.
Readers were furious with his characterization of a 'groomer'.
'Genuinely stunned this got published.
'The writer is positively drooling over the thought of an exploited, abused 16-year-old girl. He celebrates Cormac McCarthy's pedophilia (he was 42!) as "the craziest love story." What is going on here?' said one reader.
The Telegraph also gave a scathing review.

'Perhaps more troubling than the mangled prose, Barney seems to treat McCarthy’s paedophilic interest in the vulnerable teenager as a great love story.
'It is a scarcely unbelievable stance to take in 2024, seven years after the #MeToo scandal first broke and seven decades following the publication of Lolita,' said its critic.
Barney acknowledges in the article that McCarthy was at one point the subject of an FBI search after running away with Britt.
Vanity Fair and the article's author, Vincenzo Barney, were contacted for comment but have not yet responded as of the time of publication.
Britt describes how the relationship came to be.
'It wasn't very safe in the foster homes,' Britt, now 64, explained.
'They weren't allowed to have locks on bedroom or bathroom doors, so the men would just follow me into the rooms.
'But at the Desert Inn, I could use the showers by the pool to shower.'
It was there, she said, that she first saw McCarthy.
'I thought he looked familiar, but couldn't quite place him,' Britt recounted.
She spent months with Barney in Arizona, remembering her relationship with the literary legend.

[Artaxerxes II]

This is the 'controversial' Vanity Fair article for those of you wondering what's going on: https://archive.ph/5Xqm5

Original article: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/ ... -exclusive

[MoleMan]

This is the 'controversial' Vanity Fair article for those of you wondering what's going on: https://archive.ph/5Xqm5

Original article: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/ ... -exclusive

Thanks for the share.