Here’s How Twitter Reacted to Cormac McCarthy’s Death Hoax

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Cormac McCarthy Is Dead. Long Live Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy’s fake twitter page

Yesterday, a fake Twitter account designed to look like Knopf (@aknopfnews) announced that Cormac McCarthy had died at age 81 from a stroke. USA Today quickly picked up on the news and retweeted it, leading to a frenzy of concern that the author of novels like The Road and No Country For Old Men had passed away.

It was soon revealed that the news was a hoax by Italian journalist Tommasso Debenedetti. Debenedetti has created fake accounts for authors in the past (DeLillo, Marquez, Munro) but Twitter seemed to enjoy the idea that McCarthy, he of guns, blood, and apocalypse, had survived death (or maybe as McCarthy would put it, survived being buried alive.)

Or perhaps Debenedetti is the hoax, and something else is going on…

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