"She was the truest witness of his life."

November 20, 2024 1:33 PM

Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: “I Loved Him. He Was My Safety.” by Vincenzo Barney

“I loved him more than anything. He kept me safe, gave me protection. He was everything to me. Everything. He was my anchor. He was my world. He was my home, even when we didn’t live together anymore. Those things that happen to you, that young and that awful, you don’t really heal. You just patch yourself up the best you can and move on. And Cormac gave me protection and safety when I had none. I would be dead if I didn’t meet him. He was the most important person in my life, the person I love the most. He was my anchor. And now that he’s gone,” [Augusta Britt] pauses, “I’m shiftless.”

..

“I always looked to Cormac’s books to see how I was doing.” She takes a comedic beat. “Which was usually dead.” In chronological order we have, at the very least: Harrogate, Wanda, John Grady Cole, Blevins, Alejandra, Magdalena, Carla Jean, Laura, and Alicia—who is dead of suicide in the opening italics of The Passenger. Only Harrogate seemingly makes it out alive, with his face averted into his own pale reflection in the train window taking him out of the novel. That sheer, ghostly reflection—in a sense, it’s how Britt sees herself in McCarthy’s mirrory prose, a ghost rising from the characters, the situations, the deaths, a ghost gaining some momentary purchase on herself. Her mission from the age of 11 was to be good, to survive, and yet McCarthy kept killing her. “I thought he must not believe in me,” she says. “It’s taken me decades to realize that maybe what he was doing was killing off what had happened to me. Killing off the darkness.”

My final, unexpected conversation with Cormac McCarthy by David Kushner should imho be read first, and gives a far more positive take on his time at the Santa Fe Institute, in contrast to her mid 2023 remarks on SFI, but both together give a nice perspective.

"Find work you like and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both." — Cormac McCarthy

posted by jeffburdges (47 comments total)

Uhhhh, yeah, so he was 42 and she was 16 when they met, so aside from the incredibly purple prose, this is probably not the greatest angle on this story.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:47 PM on November 20, 2024 [21 favorites]

This explains the pool scene in No Country For Old Men.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:56 PM on November 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

Augusta Britt selected Vincenzo Barney, presumably because she knew how he'd write this, so I doubt another "angle" ever gets fresh quotes from her. I selected body quotes that most clearly represented what she describes as complex about their relationship to her.

There is much explination about many of his books here, so spoiler warning..
posted by jeffburdges at 2:05 PM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

BookRiot went with the headline 'Cormac McCarthy's longtime secret muse revealed to be 16-year-old girl.'

Could a Cormac McCarthy character have been inspired by Ghislaine Maxwell?
posted by box at 2:12 PM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

She had a stuffed kitten named John Grady Cole. Jesus.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:15 PM on November 20, 2024

Counterpoint: Can Someone Please Write Normally About This Fascinating Woman?
posted by Ghidorah at 2:16 PM on November 20, 2024 [80 favorites]

y i k e s
posted by extramundane at 2:22 PM on November 20, 2024 [5 favorites]

I don't know Vincenzo Barney from Adam but this was a weird, fawning piece that made me not want to read anything more by him.

This explains the pool scene in No Country For Old Men.

It's been a long time since I read the book, but my recollection is that the pool scene was an invention of the Coens. In the book, Moss picks that woman up as a hitch-hiker and she's in the story for longer. She ends up being a hostage for the Mexicans who kill Moss.
posted by dobbs at 2:28 PM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

I urge everyone who's made it this far down the comments to read Ghidorah's link.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:31 PM on November 20, 2024 [21 favorites]

She had a stuffed kitten named John Grady Cole. Jesus.

The character is named after the kitten, not the other way around.
posted by dobbs at 2:33 PM on November 20, 2024 [5 favorites]

From Ghidorah's link, which is a great article, there's this lovely zinger:

As recounted—eventually—in a long Vanity Fair profile written by Vincenzo Barney and edited by his worst enemy in the world,
posted by chavenet at 2:37 PM on November 20, 2024 [19 favorites]

Can Someone Please Write Normally About This Fascinating Woman?

From a certain angle, or perhaps several, there's a sort of tragedy in a fascinating individual and her life being portrayed only in fictionalized snippets, indirectly, over the course of decades, by an acclaimed novelist famous at least in part for the dense stylization of his prose. There's a sort of next-level tragedy in that individual, depicted in so incredibly many (doomed) forms in somebody else's words, finally deciding to share her story with the world, in her own words, and choosing as custodians of those words a writing and editing team that will send those words out into the world hideously adorned with clauses and sentences like this...

Simply do not do this. Do not make this sentence; if you have made this sentence, do not ever publish it. What in the hell is the relationship between the various nouns of this sentence? I feel like I am having a stroke.

posted by BungaDunga at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2024 [7 favorites]

Yes, Albert Burneko piece is amusing and fair. If you pres ctrl-f " in the Vanity Fair piece, then you'll locate all the Augusta Britt quotations more easily, so you can skim Barney's prose more rapidly.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:44 PM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

The character is named after the kitten, not the other way around.

Still bad!
posted by axiom at 2:47 PM on November 20, 2024

Hmmm... Kind of puts me in mind of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:10 PM on November 20, 2024

The character being named after the kitten is the weirder direction, if anything, but I don’t know exactly what it says that the rest of the story doesn’t, because of the many years in between their meeting and that book. It’s always harder for me to fit these kinds of stories into a neat template in my mind when it ends up being a 40 year relationship, not a 4-year relationship.
posted by atoxyl at 3:14 PM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

A lot of weird things happened here, things that ought to be firmly discouraged, but there are still worse endings to stories that start this way, I suppose.
posted by atoxyl at 3:19 PM on November 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

Before folks are in a hurry to immediately write this off as just creepy, it's worth considering Britt's own words. Now, as a 60+ year old woman with a long and interesting life and plenty of time and space to consider her complex relationship with McCarthy.

“I know we joke around, calling Cormac a groomer,” she can’t help but crack a quick smile here before turning serious, “but that’s a defense mechanism of mine. I loved him more than anything. He kept me safe, gave me protection. He was everything to me. Everything. He was my anchor. He was my world. He was my home, even when we didn’t live together anymore. Those things that happen to you, that young and that awful, you don’t really heal. You just patch yourself up the best you can and move on. And Cormac gave me protection and safety when I had none. I would be dead if I didn’t meet him. He was the most important person in my life, the person I love the most. He was my anchor. And now that he’s gone,” she pauses, “I’m shiftless.”

There's plenty to be uncomfortable with, 16 year old Britt was clearly vulnerable. But there's a lot more subtlety and complication in the story.
posted by Nelson at 3:29 PM on November 20, 2024 [4 favorites]

There's plenty to be uncomfortable with, 16 year old Britt was clearly vulnerable. But there's a lot more subtlety and complication in the story.

this is the kind of thing you can only say with a straight face if you've never heard this kind of story.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 3:38 PM on November 20, 2024 [25 favorites]

I make no judgments about Britt’s feelings, beliefs, or experiences to say that McCarthy should have been imprisoned for fucking a 16 year old.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:43 PM on November 20, 2024 [31 favorites]

let's be clear, He kept me safe, gave me protection. He was everything to me.... He was my world. is, uh, not inconsistent with a young person being groomed. like, at all
posted by BungaDunga at 4:01 PM on November 20, 2024 [38 favorites]

by which i mean--the only reason to think that's "subtle" or "complicated" is to fundamentally misunderstand grooming and the effects it has on the vulnerable person. it's incredibly common for there to be mixed emotions, for the abuser to also have filled the role of a savior.

or, more succinctly: the emotions are complicated, as is often the case when someone is wronged. the fact of the wronging is as simple as it gets.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 4:02 PM on November 20, 2024 [9 favorites]

Here's a better adjective for Augusta - Promethean. She brings her admiration and vulnerability to McCarthy - and every day he gnaws away at her.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 4:08 PM on November 20, 2024 [12 favorites]

I would like to add that it is fully possible to save a sixteen year old from a bad situation without having sex with them.
posted by robotmachine at 4:24 PM on November 20, 2024 [59 favorites]

Britt deserves to feel how she feels about her story. It is her life. If she's fine with it, that's her right. She doesn't need anyone to tell her she's wrong for feeling how she feels. That's her reality. She was 16, sure, but 16-year-old girls have agency. I'm not taking that away from her.

But also, yeah, she was underage in a bad situation. That wasn't her fault. Let's focus less on that she was a "victim" and more that a 40-something man was a predator.
posted by edencosmic at 5:48 PM on November 20, 2024 [10 favorites]

What she says about McCarthy's letters makes me so sad.

“So, about those letters,” she says, running her hand along her necklace. “I haven’t read them in decades. They’re really hard for me. I have such a block about them. They did make me feel uncomfortable at the time. Because they were so different from how he talked on the phone, or in person. After living with these creepy men in foster homes, it was such a relief to be with Cormac. I felt safe and secure because he didn’t want anything. He was genuinely interested in me. But then he’d send these letters. And it would be very confusing.”

posted by gladly at 6:03 PM on November 20, 2024 [24 favorites]

1. Did the VF masthead give imprimatur that this story doesn't deserve a CSA warning as it's being shared across the internet?

2. More egregiously for me, it was via summaries of the article (that I later read) that I find out he took her ACROSS NATIONAL BORDERS, indulging in some light human trafficking because he assumed (imagined) that the law is coming after them. But everyone's caught in the romance.
posted by cendawanita at 7:26 PM on November 20, 2024 [9 favorites]

But everyone's caught in the romance.

I think we’re lost in the fog of the article, honestly. I totally missed that she was quoted quite clearly about how she felt about the use of the name John Grady:

I wondered, Is that all I was to him, a trainwreck to write about?

“I was trying so hard to grow up and to fix what was broken about me. I still thought I could be fixed. And this felt the opposite of fixing me.

“Cormac called me and said, ‘What did you think about it?’ And I said, ‘Well, I really liked the book. It’s beautiful. But my kitten, John Grady and everything. It feels weird.’ And he just laughed and said, ‘Well, baby, that’s what I do. I’m a writer.’ ”
posted by atoxyl at 8:42 PM on November 20, 2024 [7 favorites]

Some fact-checking
posted by chavenet at 11:39 PM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

Your novels so far have circled around dark Southern characters who do dark Southern things.


heh heh heh. Not meant as satire, but come on.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:37 AM on November 21, 2024

But also, yeah, she was underage in a bad situation. That wasn't her fault. Let's focus less on that she was a "victim" and more that a 40-something man was a predator.

I think part of the trouble is, we always end up focusing on the victim. They're usually the ones that are willing to talk, to analyze and interrogate their situation-- often in the process of therapy and/or trying to help others. And that's great. The perpetrator or, if you don't want to assign blame right out of the gate, the older and more powerful party, has no reason to open up like that and everything to lose. How many times have you seen someone like that subject their actions to public scrutiny?
posted by BibiRose at 5:56 AM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Can someone paste/ summarize the fact checking tweets?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:33 AM on November 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

The main fact checking bits are:

- The paperback she claimed to have didn't have a picture of the author
- Open carry by minors was illegal
- Her claims of shooting accuracy are highly unbelievable, both regarding a leather strop and a burglar

Overall the fact checker's thesis is that she's a lying liar who lies, but he "doesn't blame her" and instead points the finger at VF for not doing due diligence and publishing a bunch of tall tales.

There really is no upside to letting journalists write about you, no upside at all.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:56 AM on November 21, 2024 [5 favorites]

Thanks. From Jeet Heer: "Here's a mystery. The Vanity Fair article has Cormac McCarthy running off to Mexico in 1977 with a teenage girl. But in a 1974 letter to Hugh Kenner, Guy Davenport mentions that McCarthy had just run off to Mexico with a teenage girl. Did McCarthy do this more than once? Did Vanity Fair get the date wrong?"
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:58 AM on November 21, 2024 [8 favorites]

I want to think VF got the dates wrong, but in this world, I'd bet he did more than once.
posted by Dalekdad at 7:03 AM on November 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

"You don’t act as if you want a wife and baby. You act as if you want to be single again.”
“I guess that’s right,” the man says. I picture Lee packing a suitcase that she drags to the porch where Cormac waits.
“But what will you do?” the man in the poem says to Lee, “Be a whore?”

- Leaving Cormac: Life Lessons From My Correspondence with Lee McCarthy
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:37 AM on November 21, 2024 [6 favorites]

This is why I love Metafilter. While one of my favorite books is Outer Dark (and No Country is one of my favorite films), I've never thought much about Cormac McCarthy, the person. If it wasn't for this thread, I would have never known about Augusta Britt and his ex-wife Lee. Obviously, few people in this world are purely good or purely bad, but goddamn what a fucking mess of a person McCarthy was.
posted by extramundane at 1:01 PM on November 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

I am not a fan of Cormac McCarthy. Maybe I should go back and reread (though having read this, I expect I won't), but I came away pretty cold from his books when I read them as a teenager. I felt no connection to their themes or characters. I felt like I was looking at beautiful portraits painted by somebody who had never seen or met a person. But if there's one thing that would've infuriated him, it is the prose in that article. It's not justice, but it is poetic.

All relationships, even abusive ones, are more complicated than any one aspect. But that does not preclude us from recognizing and naming abuse.
posted by Nothing at 4:35 PM on November 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

If it wasn't for this thread, I would have never known about Augusta Britt and his ex-wife Lee.

Just wait until you find out about Jennifer McCarthy...
posted by chavenet at 12:42 AM on November 22, 2024 [3 favorites]

An Interview With the Vanity Fair Writer Whose Cormac McCarthy Scoop Went Viral for All the Wrong Reasons (Dan Kois, for Slate)
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:53 PM on November 22, 2024 [6 favorites]

Reading Blood Meridian at the age of 15 was like getting high. McCarthy was my introduction to the inventive malleability of the word. Without McCarthy, I would never have developed my bold, nonsensical style.

Just for the record, I also write fiction and have a novel set at Bennington that everyone is going to hate. I can’t wait to share it with the world!



god love him.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:12 AM on November 23, 2024 [1 favorite]

An Interview With the Vanity Fair Writer Whose Cormac McCarthy Scoop Went Viral for All the Wrong Reasons (Dan Kois, for Slate)

Oh my god what a mess. This guy is such a troll.
posted by BibiRose at 4:01 AM on November 23, 2024 [2 favorites]

NYTimes: A Long-Held Secret Is Now Public. Will It Alter Cormac McCarthy’s Legacy?

Most of it focusses on chatter among McCarthy scholars (!) about what Britt's story says about the writing

What left many scholars surprised, and unconvinced, was the notion asserted in Vanity Fair that Britt was the key inspiration for some of McCarthy’s most memorable characters — and that she profoundly shaped other aspects of his work, including recurring themes and motifs, even his obsession with horses, firearms and the vulnerable young women who suffer violence and heartbreak in his books.

Towards the end they address the sexual relationship

“Everybody knew about Augusta, but they all knew her as a secret,” he said. “Because they met when she was so young, she was an abused child, she was a runaway, and Cormac was in his 40s, it was a situation that in many ways would look bad.”

Britt "did not respond to a request for comment from The New York Times". A lot of the article seems sources from people who are challenging various aspects of her story.
posted by Nelson at 7:20 AM on November 23, 2024 [3 favorites]

I think he'll look back at this and cringe but that'll be an aesthetic rather than a moral cringe and he comes off better than the McCarthy scholars.

Points for self-awareness!

it wasn’t until she read my horrible drek on Substack that she felt it could be pulled off: that is, told from her perspective, with my daringly bad style absorbing most of the controversy and opinion columns.
posted by away for regrooving at 11:26 AM on November 23, 2024 [3 favorites]

a novel set at Bennington

lol of course
posted by atoxyl at 3:21 PM on November 23, 2024 [3 favorites]

Wow, that Barney interview rocks. It's not just Barney that's trolling here, Britt put him up to it. It's exactly the right reasons for going viral from her perspective. lol

As an aside, Britt is in his will, along with his ex-wives, and his son John. At 65, this surely leaves her with plenty for however she lives. Yet, it's also likely they all gets royalty checks now, incuding her, right? It's likely they get something whenever someone makes a movie from Blood Meridian too? I guess everyone will be happy they handled it this well.

Someone found photo on the hardback edition, so probably she had a library book and confused it with a paperback 40 years later.

Ahh yes, the Jennifer McCarthy story, McCarthy had a thing for women with guns maybe?
posted by jeffburdges at 3:45 PM on November 23, 2024 [1 favorite]

Barney tried to emulate McCarthy's writing style, but instead ended up sounding like the Ultimate Warrior.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:19 PM on November 26, 2024 [1 favorite]