“Without McCarthy, I would never have developed my bold, nonsensical style.”
An interview with the Vanity Fair writer whose astounding revelations about Cormac McCarthy went viral for all the wrong reasons:
- Vanity Fair published the piece by Vincenzo Barney in which he talks about how 64 year old Augusta Britt had a relationship with venerated author Cormac McCarthy when she was 16 and he was 42
- Barney is in his 20s and this is his first major reporting piece. It’s been widely slammed for the terrible prose but also the way it romanticizes what seems like a pretty predatory relationship
- Biographers and journalists have known about Britt for years but she refused to talk to them
- She found Barney on his substack through reviews of McCarthy’s work
- They “met” on April 1st which they now consider a private holiday
- He spent months living with her and getting drunk, shooting guns etc
- Barney insists that Britt herself does not consider herself as having been groomed and he did not push back on that
- His father never let him read living authors except Cormac McCarthy
- His much trashed style for his VF piece was influenced by Martin Amis
- Is very online and hits back at critics, other writers and journalists who think he did a terrible job with the material
- He’s writing a novel
ONTD are you high on your own supply?
