The Passenger (Vintage International) Paperback – September 26, 2023

I haven't written an Amazon review in years, but will come out of "retirement" for this one.Forget what you think you know about McCarthy as a writer. Those hoping for a retread of his earlier books will be sorely disappointed by this one. The style is unmistakably McCarthy--indeed, "ThePassenger" features some of the author's finest observations, clearest prose, and punchiest dialogue--but aside from that, the reader is in brand new territory.Narratively speaking, the plot is all over the place. From the smoky barrooms of N'awlins to a deserted oil rig off the Florida coast to shacks in the Louisiana bayou and the wilds of Idaho, to a psychiatric hospital in Wisconsin, the story's geography skips around almost as much as its subject matter. Underlying everything is a palpable sense of dread, paranoia, existential despair. What does the government want from Bobby Western? To what extent are the sins of a father visited on his children? What is the fundamental nature of reality? What is the ultimate nature of God? And what does any of this have to do with a passenger missing from a downed plane's manifest? This is a novel of questions, not answers. Anyone expecting the latter will be left empty-handed.Much will be made of McCarthy's mid-novel, ten-page riff on quantum physics, string theory, and nuclear thermodynamics. I'll admit these pages did little for me and the book would not have been any the poorer for having left them out. But McCarthy is 89 and he's spent decades hobnobbing with scientists at the Santa Fe Institute--I won't begrudge him his passions and interests, especially when the rest of the novel is so richly-imagined. Among other wonders, he invests the platonic yet deeply sensual relationship between Bobby and Alicia Western with the pathos of Greek tragedy, while providing enough scientific and historical arcana to keep the most devoted conspiracy theorist busy for a good, long time. Add to this the Thalidomide Kid--one of the most sinister, charismatic antagonists in all of McCarthy's fiction--and a vibrant cast of supporting characters, mix in a good deal of humor and heart (two qualities in short supply in much of his earlier work) and you have a recipe for something (beautifully) new.I don't think "The Passenger" can be fairly reviewed without giving it time to "set"--and perhaps a second reading. (I discount my own review for that very reason.) There will be plenty of folks--even McCarthy devotees--who will not enjoy this book at all for the fact that it's so dense, so resistant to neat interpretation. If I had to compare it to McCarthy's past novels, I suppose it's most similar to "Suttree," for its depictions of a highly-literate man who finds himself "outside" society.Those willing to watch a master try something new and revolutionary late in his career will find a great deal to applaud here. It's a messy, messy book for a messy, messy world.

So, I read Blood Meridian recently, a number of years after having read and thoroughly enjoyed the Border Trilogy and The Road. While I did not enjoy Blood Meridian nearly as much, there is no question that it contained large sections of stunningly descriptive writing. McCarthy recently released this novel (the first of a pair) and I elected to take it on.McCarthy is, quite simply, the most descriptive writer I’ve ever been exposed to. However, as in Blood Meridian, I found some sections hard to follow. In Blood Meridian, McCarthy pens long paragraphs in Spanish, with no translation of what is being said. In The Passenger, he goes off on a 6-8 page exposition on the subject of complex physics, which I promise you, not one person in 10,000 could possibly hope to understand.It raises the question, “how did he write it.” I don’t think that he is a physicist. I’ve got to think the text is accurate. Did he school himself sufficiently in particle physics to pen the dialogue?He also frequently has many pages of back-and-forth dialogue (excellently written) that ultimately becomes confusing when trying to figure out which character is speaking.The story follows a character named Bobby Western, something of a loner/wanderer who stumbles across something that places him in great danger. A second thread deals with his sister, Alicia, a paranoid schizophrenic. McCarthy’s accounts of her hallucinations are masterful.In any event, Bobby is on the run, from whom and from what is never fully explained. His father was a contemporary of Oppenheimer and this is touched upon from time to time. There is an absolutely brilliant conversation concerning the Kennedy assassination.As in Blood Meridian, McCarthy displays flashes of brilliance, at others is borderline unreadable. In the end, the good outweighs the bad.

Typical Cormac. An interesting read. During the read I keep trying to story line of this book. Finally, I think, discovered it in the last few pages. We are passenger on a journey of life and not many of us are on the same path, anyway that my read on this book. For those that have not read MC before, be prepared for no punctuation except the period after each sentence.

Linda história

This book is a book that engages huge questions about ontology and principles of science while nominally writing about a few larger than life characters that are powerfully drawn. While its scope is broad and the length may be daunting, the prose is accessible and seductive. There were many passages I reread because they were so lyrical. This has to be one of the most beautiful, inspirational books I have read in my life. Months later I find myself going back to the marked up sections to be reminded what powerful writing looks like.

Muy rápido y en excelentes condiciones.

Um grande escritor

No spoiler review. I used to rate McCarthy as America’s greatest living writer. Now he is dead, it’s a larger pantheon, but he stands with the best; Melville, Faulkner et al. The passenger and its companion novel, Stella Maris, were his final works and we can reasonably assume he knew well in advance they would be his final act. To be clear, this is my third reading of this work, such are the layers and complexities of its construction. A writer of his talents was always going to imbue these works with some of his life’s wisdom and reflections. Whilst dealing head on with the calamities of his sister’s paranoid schizophrenia, at times this is laugh out loud funny. The monologues of his real life friend John Sheddan (one of a number of his East Tennessee circle) are a masterclass in dry self deprecation and character assassination. It is very deep stuff; at times watching the life of a man unravel with no apparent ability to avoid the ensuing dissolution, is disturbing. In later life McCarthy was deeply interested in particle physics and the cosmological problems and contradictions of humanity’s limitations to both understand nature and be part of it at the same time. This is played out through the reflections of Bobby on his farther’s role in building the first atom bomb, his time at Trinity on the Manhattan project and some of the seminal characters, like Oppenheimer, Chew, Feynman, and later , Yukawa, and Weinberg etc. Don’t let any limitation in your physics put you off, this is not a test of your knowledge. There are serious issues in play here: What is the good life? Are values universal or merely socially created? Can we really ever understand nature? Does his sister’s love for him somehow damn him to his fate? I doubt you can get to grips with this book at one reading so be prepared to go back to it maybe two or three times. For me, it’s a thought provoking masterclass and we are privileged that he was bold enough to imbue this work with these insights. I will miss his works and I offer my thanks for the pleasure it brought me.