Writer Cormac McCarthy confides in Oprah Winfrey

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy, appearing on Tuesday in his first television interview, told talk show host Oprah Winfrey his writing is a constant pursuit of perfection that is not plotted out in advance.

"You always have this hope that today I'm going to do something better than I've ever done," McCarthy, 73, said in the interview filmed earlier in New Mexico.

Asked if he was passionate about writing, he said: "I like what I do."

"Some writers have said in print that they hated writing, it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult but you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve but which you never stop trying to achieve," McCarthy said.

"That's your signpost and your guide," he added. "You can't plot things out. You just have to trust in, you know, wherever it comes from."

Of "The Road," his dark tale of a post-apocalyptic father-son journey which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction, McCarthy said he "had no idea where it was going" as he wrote it.

He said the inspiration came a few years ago when he was in a hotel room in El Paso, Texas, with his young son who was asleep. In the middle of the night he stared out the window wondering what the city might look like in 50 or 100 years.

"I thought about my little boy" and made some notes, he said.

Later, while visiting Ireland, he said he realized he had not just a couple of page of notes, but a book.

Winfrey earlier this year chose that book for her club, recommending it to her audience.

McCarthy is the author of 10 novels, one published screenplay and one play. His works include "Suttree" in 1979, "Blood Meridian" in 1985 and "All the Pretty Horses" in 1992.

"The Road" was published in September 2006 by Knopf, with a later soft cover version from Vintage. Both are divisions of Random House, which is part of Bertelsmann AG.

NEW TO TV

McCarthy told Winfrey he had never done a TV interview, or many interviews generally.

"I don't think it's good for your head," he said. "You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn't be talking about it. You probably should be doing it."