The Passenger and Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy REVIEW

Late masterpiece, or the Great Boomer Novel?

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[scott]

"I've met a few kittens who were also fairly loud". Phenomenal.

Great review!

[diorblunt]

I was surprised upon reading them both earlier this year. After seeing/hearing the mediocre reception after it’s release, I decided I had to read them for myself. I found the passenger to be extremely powerful and emotional on many levels. It felt like an authors final embrace to his readers, and it was extremely despairing as per usual w/ Cormac.

I truly feel these books won’t be appreciated for some time yet, not until after they have had time to sink into his canon. There is so much to uncover beneath the surface and in many ways they feel at times like a maze to navigate through.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, but a beautiful work nonetheless.

[ОльгаСурьянинова]

Thank you very much for your work. I didn't proceed with a literature phd but do miss this discourse immensely. I pursued a different career, so your videos are my connection to the world I once was a part of.

[vanishing_girl]

I loved The Passenger and think it was more complex than you give it credit for, I think there was a lot of Shakespeare influence (which is always a plus for me) in the Sheddan character and I think he kind of undercut Bobby and Alice's worldview in a way that complicated things. Tbh Sheddan is probably my favorite character in all of McCarthy's work.

Unfortunately, I basically totally agree with you on Stella Maris. The only parts I really liked were just the extra plot details one uncovers throughout the dialogue that served to flesh out The Passenger more.

[k.e.]

Let's goo! Was waiting for this review!

[d-]

Great reviews! I read The Road and Blood Meridian back in the day, probably too young and inexperienced, and I never got excited about them very much. I've seen praises and praises of McCarthy's work and only now after hearing your mixed reviews I'm actually interested in picking up his book again.

[rjd]

While Suttree never resonated with me at all and I always gave up reading it after ten pages or so it was very different with these two. - Even if it were juvenile I couldn't see anything wrong with that. I was a highschool teacher, and now retired, I miss the students a lot, exactly because they were "juvenile", that means for me they were curious, open to discussing ideas and don't pretend to know everything already, what makes "grown ups" so boring and uninteresting to talk with in comparison. - I think you cannot read Stella Maris fast, maybe I am just stupid or senile, but i had to read it slowly and passages twice to understand it all. Now, when I did understand it right, the questions and allusions seem to me to dig really deep. I know of no other writer who even comes close to tackle subjects like in Stella Maris. Like to relate the questionable ontology of math to the problem of evel. To me that is a really thrilling idea. But, okay, I'm a juvenile boomer ;) .

[Medtana]

what is the books of umberto eco that he use dialogue in it please ?

[THFLCNx]

Good review, and some interesting thoughts on the works. :) I know I'm likely in a minority, but for me The Passenger is McCarthy's greatest work; "greatest" maybe not so much in flawless execution but rather in reach and ambition. The themes are broad and grand, and the characters I thought were the most fully realized that he ever wrote by a fairly large margin. Although I would have to politely disagree about the "grumpiness" or "boomerism" of the books. I thought the concerns raised were rather valid, and its observations rather astute. I do understand why the books might not jive with a lot of people, but for me personally I thought they were magnificent. :)

[GeorgeMillerUSA]

Great review as always. Like others, I've been waiting for you to talk about these books.

That aside, will you do Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, Brooklyn Crime Novel? Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

[tommylewis]

Felt the same way. A few months after finishing I read Suttree. Hit me much harder - the reactionary gut instincts were churning out the feeling that something much deeper was going on beneath the language of that book. At times that came through with TP - SM, but the pair felted dwarfed by the healing quality of Sut's lonesome death-conscious mosaic.

[sean]

I think you criticism is certainly valid - but the quality of the writing and the ambition behind these books make them work for me.

[Paromita_M]

Umberto Eco resonates with me a bit more even when his work doesn't always click with me.

Cormac McCarthy on the other hand tends to be complete hit or miss. The Passenger was a miss for me. Stella Maris I liked barring the technical talk which was at times interesting but also detracted imo from the emotional depth.

[alphonseelric]

It seems weird to criticize McCarthy for being over the top when his most "over the top" work (Blood meridian) is extremely historically accurate (and even then he toned down some of the carnage that visited the frontier during the 1850s, as reported by John Sepich). The problem seems to me the modern reader's unwillingness to even entertain these highly pessimistic ideas, unless wrapped in some dystopian, anti-capitalist narrative, when they suddenly become prescient simply because of their relevancy to modern life in a metropolis. Relatibility, perhaps, is the barrier.

As I get older I seem to understand McCarthy's perspective more and more, and trust me no anti-natalist/nihilist was I ever, nor am now. Juvenile is the most ironic descriptor for these books imo. It's an issue of not being on the writer's wavelength, I believe. McCarthy is not over the top because he is unintentionally trying to parody himself, instead, as DFW very rightly pointed, it's the modern reader's unwillingness to meet anything serious as anything else but satire and parody. You can see the same reactions with another writer like Dostoevsky (although a prose stylist he surely was not, I agree).

You mentioned Jonathan Lethem and it's precisely because of writers like him or writers with the same attitude as him that we no longer have Great contemporary writers like we used to in the 40s, 50s, 60s etc. I am not being cranky, modern mainstream fiction isn't competing with those early eras in terms of literary value. Part of the reason I think is because of this "anti-intellectual" attitude to anything serious. I am also surprised that The Road seemed so tense to him given a good 90% of the book has literally nothing happening in it.

[FHORNER]

I read only The Passenger, and probably will have to reread it to get a more clear view of it, but my first thought was that the interests that mc carthy had in his final years, especially liviing in santa fe institute and being really interested in science, had a huge influence in this book, which wasn't particularly good to the storytelling. I mean, sometimes it seems that he creates dialogues just to show his knowledge about those dificult topics. I have a degree in engineering, so I found most of those parts cool, but at many timesthey dont have any connection to the plot itself. The characters sometimes appear to exist in the book only as a channel to the author expose part of his conversations and learning that he had in the institute during those final years. I'm not saying that it couldn't be done, but the I think that it works only when it helps to strenghten certain characters to the reader, I mean, to make them more real. In The Passenger, though, I don't think he achieved that in most of the book, because the characters in many passages look cold and, sometimes, like robots, and don't appear to be real at all. Having said all that, I've got to say that I really enjoyed reading it. He was a great writer.

[TK-kfzc]

I agree with your criticism of the juvenile angst. I also thought that Stella Maris was a vehicle for McCarthy to show off his years of studying advanced physics. It became oppressive.

[EpicAirGuitarist]

I think there is a sense of paranoia throughout both books. Like the scene with the IRS agent was way too unrealistic. I think it was a hallucination. Maybe Bobby has schizophrenia too.

[davidpalmer]

Good review, thank you. I'm a fan of McCarthy's work but you articulated much better than I could a certain qualm I felt about his last pair of books - nothing that diminished my enjoyment, but just an edge or niggle of dissatisfaction. Stellar Maris I pretty much read as a philosophical work and I did register an incongruity in what felt like McCarthy's views being expressed through this very young woman. Your boomerism remark struck a chord.

As an aside, I found it sad you felt it necessary to bend over backward apologising for your lack of effusive praise and assuring readers your critique didn't apply to them as people. If McCarthy was indeed expressing adolescent views, well maybe that's a reflection of our culture. The widespread propensity to take offense at things is about as adolescent as you can get.

[FleurPillager]

Some of my favorite authors in the last few years have been writing fiction full of current media talking points including Cormac McCarthy and Louise Erdrich. If I didn't know better I'd think they were being strongly encouraged by someone or something to say certain things. The Passenger and Stella Maris didn't really seem like Cormac McCarthy wrote them. Same with the last 3 or so of Louise Erdrich's books. It seemed like a checklist of all of the common media talking points; aliens, George Floyd riots, mental health, transgenderism, abortion, Buddhism, etc. To me there was something slightly off about it if you know his work.