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The Passenger #2
Stella Maris
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the second of a two-volume masterpiece: Stella Maris is an intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence.
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on one common experience of the world; she recalls a childhood where, by the age of seven, her own grandmother feared for her; she surveys the intersection of physics and philosophy; and she introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, the hallucinations that only she can see. All the while, she grieves for Bobby, not quite dead, not quite hers. Told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia’s psychiatric sessions, Stella Maris is a searching, rigorous, intellectually challenging coda to The Passenger, a philosophical inquiry that questions our notions of God, truth, and existence.
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on one common experience of the world; she recalls a childhood where, by the age of seven, her own grandmother feared for her; she surveys the intersection of physics and philosophy; and she introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, the hallucinations that only she can see. All the while, she grieves for Bobby, not quite dead, not quite hers. Told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia’s psychiatric sessions, Stella Maris is a searching, rigorous, intellectually challenging coda to The Passenger, a philosophical inquiry that questions our notions of God, truth, and existence.
190 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 6, 2022
About the author
Cormac McCarthy
42 books25.5k followersCormac McCarthy was an American novelist and playwright. He wrote twelve novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres and also wrote plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. His earlier Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005, and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. In 2009, Cormac McCarthy won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, a lifetime achievement award given by the PEN American Center.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,697 reviews
November 23, 2022
Wow wow wow wow - I think my head just exploded. Short recap: In The Passenger, we heard the story of Bobby Western, salvage diver, physics expert, former race car driver, and grieving brother who is still in love with his beautiful sister who killed herself (my review). This very sister is the protagonist of Stella Maris, the book's title being the name of the psychiatric facility she admitted herself to, now for the second time. The whole text is made up of seven (hello, religious motif) sessions with her therapist Dr. Cohen, rendered in pure dialogue, McCarthy style, so no superfluous adornment like "he said, she said" or excessive punctuation. And here's the kicker: The text is set in 1972, and she tells Cohen that Bobby, who is afraid of depths (!), was in a coma after a car accident, that he was brain dead and the doctors wanted her to agree to stop life-support.
What that means for the parts of The Passenger that take place up to 10 years after the sister's suicide? You decide. It definitely has to do with The Kekulé Problem, McCarthy's 2017 essay that ponders the relation between language and the subconscious, between thinking and narrating - the discussion of August Kekulé in "Stella Maris" is central for understanding the workings of the double book project as a whole, as the mechanics of the subconscious are a main concern: "the actual process of thinking—in any discipline—is largely an unconscious affair. (...) The truth is that there is a process here to which we have no access", writes McCarthy in The Kekulé Problem.
While in "The Passenger", the sister is alternately called Alice and Alicia, we now learn that she changed her name from Alice to Alicia, which plays into the core theme: Alice/Alicia is desperate because, not unlike Faust, she wants to make the sense of the world, but can't; but while Faust, also a scholar, strives for God-like knowledge and thus ultimately power, Alice/Alicia searches for meaning: What are we? And why are we here? There are no answers, just anger, and then, desperation and suffering: "The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy." (Meanwhile the devil in Faust: "For all that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly; 'Twere better nothing would begin." - Alice/Alicia agrees and wishes to have never existed in the first place). These ideas permeate McCarthy's work as a whole.
"Stella Maris" is thus a work that consists mainly of philosophical ponderings and to a degree, it reads like McCarthy talking to himself about his worldview. As in "The Passenger", the natural sciences play a major role: Pages and pages confront the reader with higher physics and mathematics, with (mainly German) philosophy, with questions of intergenerational guilt and American history (the siblings' parents were both involved in the Manhattan Project), with destiny and determination.
Alice/Alicia is a math prodigy who worked at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques with Alexander Grothendieck. With Dr. Cohen, she talks about (and this is not a full list): Ludwig Wittgenstein, G.K. Chesterton, George Berkeley (especially An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision), Immanuel Kant, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Willard Van Orman Quine, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Kurt Gödel (especially mathematical platonism), Emmy Noether, Ernest Lawrence, Jean Piaget, Johann Sebastian Bach, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, David Hawkins, Oswald Spengler, Gregory Chaitin, T.D. Lee, David Bohm, John Dillinger, Rosemary Kennedy, Charles Chihara, etc.pp.
In relation to the classic trope of "what does craziness even mean?", Alice/Alicia and her therapist grapple with the very concept of reality and what constitutes it: Alice/Alicia dismisses language (which she deems a parasite in the biological system and an epidemic). She ponders philosphy and religion (she is Jewish), of course science, but also music - due to her synesthesia, she melts those systems into each other. In context with (heavenly) rules that structure reality, there is the incest motif: Alice/Alicia does not care about the taboo and wants to have sex with her brother. Understandably, Dr. Cohen is rather unsettled by his patient, and there are recurring lines in their dialogue: "I don't know whether you're serious." - "I know.". Alice/Alicia despises people who want to repair her, she just wants to talk.
Ultimately, Alice/Alicia, a devotee of solipsism, assumes that all problems are spiritual in nature. Dreams play a major role in her life, and here's the key one (I say): In the dream, Alice/Alicia looks through a peephole into a world where guards protect a door, and she knows there is something terrible behind that door, and that human longing for connection only serves to evade that presence: She calls this presence "Archatron" (Archatron does ritual sacrifices in Cities of the Plain, much like "Kid" is not only the name of one of her hallucinations, but also a protagonist in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West ). Life is fear and suffering, just read, you know, everything by Cormac McCarthy.
I'm firmly convinced that "The Passenger" and especially "Stella Maris" will keep literary scientist on their toes for many, many years to come, as there is so much going on there, and the books stand on the shoulders of everything McCarthy has written before. Here's my German radio piece about the novel, you can find links to another one about The Passenger as well as my interview with the German translator in my GR "Passenger" review.
What that means for the parts of The Passenger that take place up to 10 years after the sister's suicide? You decide. It definitely has to do with The Kekulé Problem, McCarthy's 2017 essay that ponders the relation between language and the subconscious, between thinking and narrating - the discussion of August Kekulé in "Stella Maris" is central for understanding the workings of the double book project as a whole, as the mechanics of the subconscious are a main concern: "the actual process of thinking—in any discipline—is largely an unconscious affair. (...) The truth is that there is a process here to which we have no access", writes McCarthy in The Kekulé Problem.
While in "The Passenger", the sister is alternately called Alice and Alicia, we now learn that she changed her name from Alice to Alicia, which plays into the core theme: Alice/Alicia is desperate because, not unlike Faust, she wants to make the sense of the world, but can't; but while Faust, also a scholar, strives for God-like knowledge and thus ultimately power, Alice/Alicia searches for meaning: What are we? And why are we here? There are no answers, just anger, and then, desperation and suffering: "The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy." (Meanwhile the devil in Faust: "For all that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly; 'Twere better nothing would begin." - Alice/Alicia agrees and wishes to have never existed in the first place). These ideas permeate McCarthy's work as a whole.
"Stella Maris" is thus a work that consists mainly of philosophical ponderings and to a degree, it reads like McCarthy talking to himself about his worldview. As in "The Passenger", the natural sciences play a major role: Pages and pages confront the reader with higher physics and mathematics, with (mainly German) philosophy, with questions of intergenerational guilt and American history (the siblings' parents were both involved in the Manhattan Project), with destiny and determination.
Alice/Alicia is a math prodigy who worked at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques with Alexander Grothendieck. With Dr. Cohen, she talks about (and this is not a full list): Ludwig Wittgenstein, G.K. Chesterton, George Berkeley (especially An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision), Immanuel Kant, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Willard Van Orman Quine, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Kurt Gödel (especially mathematical platonism), Emmy Noether, Ernest Lawrence, Jean Piaget, Johann Sebastian Bach, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, David Hawkins, Oswald Spengler, Gregory Chaitin, T.D. Lee, David Bohm, John Dillinger, Rosemary Kennedy, Charles Chihara, etc.pp.
In relation to the classic trope of "what does craziness even mean?", Alice/Alicia and her therapist grapple with the very concept of reality and what constitutes it: Alice/Alicia dismisses language (which she deems a parasite in the biological system and an epidemic). She ponders philosphy and religion (she is Jewish), of course science, but also music - due to her synesthesia, she melts those systems into each other. In context with (heavenly) rules that structure reality, there is the incest motif: Alice/Alicia does not care about the taboo and wants to have sex with her brother. Understandably, Dr. Cohen is rather unsettled by his patient, and there are recurring lines in their dialogue: "I don't know whether you're serious." - "I know.". Alice/Alicia despises people who want to repair her, she just wants to talk.
Ultimately, Alice/Alicia, a devotee of solipsism, assumes that all problems are spiritual in nature. Dreams play a major role in her life, and here's the key one (I say): In the dream, Alice/Alicia looks through a peephole into a world where guards protect a door, and she knows there is something terrible behind that door, and that human longing for connection only serves to evade that presence: She calls this presence "Archatron" (Archatron does ritual sacrifices in Cities of the Plain, much like "Kid" is not only the name of one of her hallucinations, but also a protagonist in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West ). Life is fear and suffering, just read, you know, everything by Cormac McCarthy.
I'm firmly convinced that "The Passenger" and especially "Stella Maris" will keep literary scientist on their toes for many, many years to come, as there is so much going on there, and the books stand on the shoulders of everything McCarthy has written before. Here's my German radio piece about the novel, you can find links to another one about The Passenger as well as my interview with the German translator in my GR "Passenger" review.
January 2, 2023
It’s 1972 and 20 year old Alicia Western checks herself into Stella Maris, a mental hospital, where she suspects schizophrenia has taken hold of her as she has begun hallucinating visitations from an imaginary dwarfish figure called the Thalidomide Kid. The book follows a series of sessions between her and her doctor Michael Cohen.
So this is the second and final book in the story that began, and ostensibly ended, in The Passenger, because Stella Maris is a completely unnecessary addition to what should have only been a standalone novel.
I expected it to contribute at least something to the previous book - unearth a layer of understanding or enlighten us on as aspect of the story - but, no, Stella Maris literally adds nothing to The Passenger, unless you wanted more pointless dialogue on maths, physics and the prominent figures in those fields.
The book is 100% dialogue between Alicia and the doc, following McCarthy’s style of no punctuation, quotation marks or “he/she said”, though, given that it’s just the two characters, you can easily follow who’s speaking without those cues (Alicia is by far the chattier of the two).
All the novel does is cover the same ground that was sufficiently covered in The Passenger: Alicia being a crazy genius in love with her older brother Bobby, Bobby’s European escapades and finding their gran’s secret treasure, their dad’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, and that Alicia’s completely batty but also thoroughly learned in maths and physics.
Somebody reading this without realising it’s the second half of a larger story would probably get the same out of someone who read the series in order: that is, wondering what the hell the point of all this waffling nonsense is!
I found the short discussions on maths and physics in The Passenger quite tedious - to read nearly 200 pages of the same but in greater detail was completely boring. McCarthy writes dialogue well but nothing about this book is worth reading in the slightest. If you’ve read The Passenger, reading Stella Maris is entirely superfluous - for completists only, and even then it likely won’t be an enjoyable experience.
So this is the second and final book in the story that began, and ostensibly ended, in The Passenger, because Stella Maris is a completely unnecessary addition to what should have only been a standalone novel.
I expected it to contribute at least something to the previous book - unearth a layer of understanding or enlighten us on as aspect of the story - but, no, Stella Maris literally adds nothing to The Passenger, unless you wanted more pointless dialogue on maths, physics and the prominent figures in those fields.
The book is 100% dialogue between Alicia and the doc, following McCarthy’s style of no punctuation, quotation marks or “he/she said”, though, given that it’s just the two characters, you can easily follow who’s speaking without those cues (Alicia is by far the chattier of the two).
All the novel does is cover the same ground that was sufficiently covered in The Passenger: Alicia being a crazy genius in love with her older brother Bobby, Bobby’s European escapades and finding their gran’s secret treasure, their dad’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, and that Alicia’s completely batty but also thoroughly learned in maths and physics.
Somebody reading this without realising it’s the second half of a larger story would probably get the same out of someone who read the series in order: that is, wondering what the hell the point of all this waffling nonsense is!
I found the short discussions on maths and physics in The Passenger quite tedious - to read nearly 200 pages of the same but in greater detail was completely boring. McCarthy writes dialogue well but nothing about this book is worth reading in the slightest. If you’ve read The Passenger, reading Stella Maris is entirely superfluous - for completists only, and even then it likely won’t be an enjoyable experience.
December 15, 2022
Another … ha…. “not-writing reviews”
… This sequel to “The Passenger” is a gem!!
“Patient is a twenty-year-old Jewish/Caucasian female. Attractive, possibly anorexic. Arrived at this facility six days ago apparently by bus and without luggage. Admission signed by Dr. Wegner. Patient had a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills in her purse –something over forty– thousand which she attempted to give to the receptionist. Patient is a doctoral candidate at the mathematics at the University of Chicago, and has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia with a long-standing aetiology of visual and auditory hallucinations. Resident of this facility on to prior occasions”.
“You’d already graduated from the University of Chicago”.
“Yes”.
“At sixteen”.
“Yes. I was in the doctoral program. I still am I suppose. I had no life, really. All I did was work”.
“If you had not become a mathematician, what would you like to have been?”
“Dead”.
“How serious a response is that?”
“I took your question seriously. You should take my response seriously”.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Maybe I did sort of blow off your question. What I really wanted was a child. What I do really want. If I had a child, I would just go in at night and sit there. Quietly. I would listen to my child breathing. If I had a child, I wouldn’t care about reality.”
“You committed yourself here”.
“At Stella Maris”.
“Yes”.
UNPUTDOWNABLE and MAGNIFICENT!!!
The writing/ dialogue is soooooooooo GOOD!!! - The humor and details were sprinkled with so much warmth and tenderness I wanted to cry.
Themes…
…grief,
an inquiry into understanding the madness of existence, math,
death,
mental illness….
and….
compassionate loving attentive caring!!!
“The more naïve your life the more frightening your dreams. Your unconscious will keep trying to wake you”.
LOVE IT!!!!
… This sequel to “The Passenger” is a gem!!
“Patient is a twenty-year-old Jewish/Caucasian female. Attractive, possibly anorexic. Arrived at this facility six days ago apparently by bus and without luggage. Admission signed by Dr. Wegner. Patient had a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills in her purse –something over forty– thousand which she attempted to give to the receptionist. Patient is a doctoral candidate at the mathematics at the University of Chicago, and has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia with a long-standing aetiology of visual and auditory hallucinations. Resident of this facility on to prior occasions”.
“You’d already graduated from the University of Chicago”.
“Yes”.
“At sixteen”.
“Yes. I was in the doctoral program. I still am I suppose. I had no life, really. All I did was work”.
“If you had not become a mathematician, what would you like to have been?”
“Dead”.
“How serious a response is that?”
“I took your question seriously. You should take my response seriously”.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Maybe I did sort of blow off your question. What I really wanted was a child. What I do really want. If I had a child, I would just go in at night and sit there. Quietly. I would listen to my child breathing. If I had a child, I wouldn’t care about reality.”
“You committed yourself here”.
“At Stella Maris”.
“Yes”.
UNPUTDOWNABLE and MAGNIFICENT!!!
The writing/ dialogue is soooooooooo GOOD!!! - The humor and details were sprinkled with so much warmth and tenderness I wanted to cry.
Themes…
…grief,
an inquiry into understanding the madness of existence, math,
death,
mental illness….
and….
compassionate loving attentive caring!!!
“The more naïve your life the more frightening your dreams. Your unconscious will keep trying to wake you”.
LOVE IT!!!!
November 28, 2022
covid made my brain dumb, so i had to read this reallllly slooooowly, but if i ever review again, i have many (dumb) thoughts about this one.
March 25, 2023
What a thing is literary fiction. This book had me listening to the mentioned Bach Chaconne, reading Hamlet and Wittgenstein, ordering Mlodinow’s book on the unconscious, watching two interviews of the novel’s author, revisiting and thinking hard about the Kekule problem (why is the communication from the unconscious to the conscious so obscure—strange dreams—when it clearly knows language), and most importantly: bringing up over a beer many of its talking points with a friend. This is the power of literary fiction, an art form most rare in the pen of its highest talent, Cormac McCarthy.
I read to understand life. Humanity, mortality, joy, suffering, human psychology, philosophical insight, love, and love lost, death. That is most interesting to me, and what is most interesting is also entertaining. Stella Maris is of this world. Far from a perfect novel, but a highly engaging one. I’ve read this and its sister book, The Passenger, twice now. There’s so much I could say. I am at times a broken record, but I simply have not read anyone else who sears the page with such scorchingly beautiful prose, writes with such touching humanity, weaves in big ideas with emotionally poignant scenes. His dialogue, on the whole (though at times it does slip in this duology—repetitive jokes and tiring idioms—) is the best I’ve read.
I don’t find Alicia to be a likeable character. She’s smug, impenetrable, standoffish, elitist. My chief pity for her is not her circumstance—unrequited love, self-admission to a mental institute—because all other misfortunes are diminished by her arrogance. She’s convinced her high IQ equates to the truest understanding of the world. It does not. Intelligence only takes you so far. The same data can be interpreted multiple ways. And understanding comes from living. In a reader’s short time with her she contradicts herself at least twice (the afterlife; the nature of dreams) and ends up being wrong in what matters most to her: her brother will survive his coma. (Though I am puzzled as to why she would tie the red sash around her waist before putting her head through the noose, she had said if she took her life she wouldn’t want to be found, that the animals could eat her body as a Eucharist. So why the sash... unless… Just in case Bobby will live? Then he would not be left wandering, searching for her like he did unsuccessfully for his father’s bones.)
There is much Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet: Believing her lover never will wake, she takes her own life. Several quotes from Hamlet. I’m sure many more references this drop-out failed to catch.
The scene with the violin is beautiful. I stopped and read it about as slow as a thing can be read while keeping its coherence. My fire burning in front of me. I reread it again. Then I played the referenced Bach Chaconne in D Minor. Alicia is passionate, if not ontologically oriented, to the abstract truth of math. She cries over the notes, but she breaks down from the sight of the violin’s body. The wood. Its shape. Being handmade. The body.
“When things suddenly fall into place after days of labor it’s like a lost animal coming in out of the rain. Your thought is to say there you are. To say I was so worried. You hardly even bother to review your work. You just know. That what you are looking at is true. It’s a joyful thing.” Yeah. Yes it is. Certain artistic truths can feel like that too. I know that for certain. You hold a ring of 1000 keys, slotting them and giving each a turn. Until. Click. Felt certainty for one’s “radical preference” (Saunders).
Alicia’s treatise on unconscious knowledge. “I don’t know any math. I just try to get it written down when it shows up.” Too fascinating. Alicia dug me a rabbit hole. You sit down and the thing comes out and occasionally it’s good, or better than that, and you take no pride in it because of how uncomplicit you feel in the act. So strange. I’ve been asking myself how to pamper, feed, praise, encourage my unconscious to elevate my own writing.
The Thalomide Kid is autonomous. To her, and perhaps to all, he is as real as math as music as Alicia as you and me. Very interesting.
I adore literary fiction. It’s both a map and a dictionary to the world. My publicist suggested I focus on other words when promoting my work. But, fuck that. I’m all in on literary fiction. A writer can offer to the reading public any given topic if her talents are sufficient. I don’t have to mention the name of the man whose austere prose was not so sparse as to be without a keen aesthetic sensibility, conveying his charisma, seducing a reader with the tragic romance of the bull fight. Or like the old Russians packaging their social-ethical theories in engaging plots. Is there a more widely-known account of the Napoleonic Wars than Tolstoy’s War & Peace? Anything is fair game for one with sufficient literary talents. Nabokov and Lolita may be the quintessential example. This book reminds me of that tradition, but with much better dialogue than Dostoyevsky’s painfully melodramatic exchanges, and on a topic that fundamentally explores one true nature of the world. To think, CM has brought psychological, mathematical, and quantum theories to a million more readers. No doubt, brought some to tears by rendering the body, if not the human body, of that violin. Humanity. The power of literary fiction. I echo the author, and that author before: What a thing is man.
***
Friends, on the first Tuesday of the month I send out a short newsletter with updates on my novel-in-progress, a glimpse of one writer's life in small-town coastal Tofino, and a link to the month's free eBooks of various authors. It’s my privilege to stay connected to those who appreciate my work. If interested, and to receive a free collection of my short stories, please sign up here: www.luckydollarmedia.com
I read to understand life. Humanity, mortality, joy, suffering, human psychology, philosophical insight, love, and love lost, death. That is most interesting to me, and what is most interesting is also entertaining. Stella Maris is of this world. Far from a perfect novel, but a highly engaging one. I’ve read this and its sister book, The Passenger, twice now. There’s so much I could say. I am at times a broken record, but I simply have not read anyone else who sears the page with such scorchingly beautiful prose, writes with such touching humanity, weaves in big ideas with emotionally poignant scenes. His dialogue, on the whole (though at times it does slip in this duology—repetitive jokes and tiring idioms—) is the best I’ve read.
I don’t find Alicia to be a likeable character. She’s smug, impenetrable, standoffish, elitist. My chief pity for her is not her circumstance—unrequited love, self-admission to a mental institute—because all other misfortunes are diminished by her arrogance. She’s convinced her high IQ equates to the truest understanding of the world. It does not. Intelligence only takes you so far. The same data can be interpreted multiple ways. And understanding comes from living. In a reader’s short time with her she contradicts herself at least twice (the afterlife; the nature of dreams) and ends up being wrong in what matters most to her: her brother will survive his coma. (Though I am puzzled as to why she would tie the red sash around her waist before putting her head through the noose, she had said if she took her life she wouldn’t want to be found, that the animals could eat her body as a Eucharist. So why the sash... unless… Just in case Bobby will live? Then he would not be left wandering, searching for her like he did unsuccessfully for his father’s bones.)
There is much Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet: Believing her lover never will wake, she takes her own life. Several quotes from Hamlet. I’m sure many more references this drop-out failed to catch.
The scene with the violin is beautiful. I stopped and read it about as slow as a thing can be read while keeping its coherence. My fire burning in front of me. I reread it again. Then I played the referenced Bach Chaconne in D Minor. Alicia is passionate, if not ontologically oriented, to the abstract truth of math. She cries over the notes, but she breaks down from the sight of the violin’s body. The wood. Its shape. Being handmade. The body.
“When things suddenly fall into place after days of labor it’s like a lost animal coming in out of the rain. Your thought is to say there you are. To say I was so worried. You hardly even bother to review your work. You just know. That what you are looking at is true. It’s a joyful thing.” Yeah. Yes it is. Certain artistic truths can feel like that too. I know that for certain. You hold a ring of 1000 keys, slotting them and giving each a turn. Until. Click. Felt certainty for one’s “radical preference” (Saunders).
Alicia’s treatise on unconscious knowledge. “I don’t know any math. I just try to get it written down when it shows up.” Too fascinating. Alicia dug me a rabbit hole. You sit down and the thing comes out and occasionally it’s good, or better than that, and you take no pride in it because of how uncomplicit you feel in the act. So strange. I’ve been asking myself how to pamper, feed, praise, encourage my unconscious to elevate my own writing.
The Thalomide Kid is autonomous. To her, and perhaps to all, he is as real as math as music as Alicia as you and me. Very interesting.
I adore literary fiction. It’s both a map and a dictionary to the world. My publicist suggested I focus on other words when promoting my work. But, fuck that. I’m all in on literary fiction. A writer can offer to the reading public any given topic if her talents are sufficient. I don’t have to mention the name of the man whose austere prose was not so sparse as to be without a keen aesthetic sensibility, conveying his charisma, seducing a reader with the tragic romance of the bull fight. Or like the old Russians packaging their social-ethical theories in engaging plots. Is there a more widely-known account of the Napoleonic Wars than Tolstoy’s War & Peace? Anything is fair game for one with sufficient literary talents. Nabokov and Lolita may be the quintessential example. This book reminds me of that tradition, but with much better dialogue than Dostoyevsky’s painfully melodramatic exchanges, and on a topic that fundamentally explores one true nature of the world. To think, CM has brought psychological, mathematical, and quantum theories to a million more readers. No doubt, brought some to tears by rendering the body, if not the human body, of that violin. Humanity. The power of literary fiction. I echo the author, and that author before: What a thing is man.
***
Friends, on the first Tuesday of the month I send out a short newsletter with updates on my novel-in-progress, a glimpse of one writer's life in small-town coastal Tofino, and a link to the month's free eBooks of various authors. It’s my privilege to stay connected to those who appreciate my work. If interested, and to receive a free collection of my short stories, please sign up here: www.luckydollarmedia.com
May 19, 2024
This novel is the follow up to The Passenger. It is 1972 and Alicia, sister of Bobby, who dominates the previous volume, checks herself into an asylum somewhere in Wisconsin called Stella Maris. Their father worked on the Manhattan Project with Oppenheimer, et al. Bobby and Alicia are both highly intelligent, but Alicia even more so than her brother. The book is mostly dialogue. It starts with yet another shrink — Alicia's spoken to so many — interviewing her on this her third self commitment to the asylum. Alicia is a genius who has studied mathematics with the great Grothendieck before he turned away from mathematics. Her psychosis, whatever it is, features florid hallucinations in the form of a buffoonish vaudeville troupe which seems like something from the early twentieth century.
I wonder if this book's text wasn't at some point part of the manuscript of the first volume. I say that because the first volume is such a rich display of McCarthy's narrative skills, while this one so far seems like an aimless graduate seminar on the history of mathematics and related topics. It seems to me just the sort of lesser prose that a wily editor might strip away. It lacks the magic of the first volume, which is full of description — walking the streets of New Orleans, diving down to the wreckage of a flight which ended at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, running from strange G-men whose objectives are unknown, driving a Maserati 160 mph on the public highways, the sandy beaches round the buggy Mississippi delta. There's none of that in this second volume. It's more like one half of a Socratic dialog. Half because the shrink attending Alicia is often as flummoxed by the intricacies of her talk as the reader is.
The use of the second person in the speech of a young woman of twenty, who is about to commit suicide, is intriguing. Remember she's estranged now from mathematics, has given it up.
"So what was it that you understood?
Vis-à-vis Gödel?
Vis-à-vis.
I think I saw what he saw. That finding the limits of a system was not just finding the limits. It was finding what lay beyond the limits. You just had to find the limits first.
And what lay beyond the limits?
In this case it was the realization that what you had long suspected was in fact true. That mathematics had no limits. That it was inexhaustible. There was no longer any question about that. And now you had to sit down and think about the universe.
And what did you think? About the universe.
You thought that your inquiry was going to labor under a shrinking availability of the empirical. Even while you worked the universe was receding.
So what would you bring to bear on the inquiry?
I suppose the only thing that you had. Your mind." (p. 182)
Perhaps my favorite thing about the book is that it familiarizes the reader with some of the great mathematicians and their work while using not a single equation. God bless Cormac McCarthy.
I wonder if this book's text wasn't at some point part of the manuscript of the first volume. I say that because the first volume is such a rich display of McCarthy's narrative skills, while this one so far seems like an aimless graduate seminar on the history of mathematics and related topics. It seems to me just the sort of lesser prose that a wily editor might strip away. It lacks the magic of the first volume, which is full of description — walking the streets of New Orleans, diving down to the wreckage of a flight which ended at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, running from strange G-men whose objectives are unknown, driving a Maserati 160 mph on the public highways, the sandy beaches round the buggy Mississippi delta. There's none of that in this second volume. It's more like one half of a Socratic dialog. Half because the shrink attending Alicia is often as flummoxed by the intricacies of her talk as the reader is.
The use of the second person in the speech of a young woman of twenty, who is about to commit suicide, is intriguing. Remember she's estranged now from mathematics, has given it up.
"So what was it that you understood?
Vis-à-vis Gödel?
Vis-à-vis.
I think I saw what he saw. That finding the limits of a system was not just finding the limits. It was finding what lay beyond the limits. You just had to find the limits first.
And what lay beyond the limits?
In this case it was the realization that what you had long suspected was in fact true. That mathematics had no limits. That it was inexhaustible. There was no longer any question about that. And now you had to sit down and think about the universe.
And what did you think? About the universe.
You thought that your inquiry was going to labor under a shrinking availability of the empirical. Even while you worked the universe was receding.
So what would you bring to bear on the inquiry?
I suppose the only thing that you had. Your mind." (p. 182)
Perhaps my favorite thing about the book is that it familiarizes the reader with some of the great mathematicians and their work while using not a single equation. God bless Cormac McCarthy.
December 15, 2022
This companion piece to ‘The Passenger’ consists completely of psychoanalytic sessions between Alicia, the sister of Bobby Western of the first book, and her psychiatrist. There is nothing other than the words they speak to each other. It’s experimental and it’s clever. There is much to admire and much to enjoy in the discussions which cover, or more accurately merely surface comment on , quantum physics and philosophy. I enjoyed reading it (listening in this case) but didn’t get that feeling of having gone through an experience that I usually feel after finishing a Cormac McCarthy book. When Alicia wants to stop talking about something she says, ‘Maybe we’ll shelve this for a while’. Let me finish by ending the review with that.
January 4, 2023
Thank you so much Knopf for the free copies.
I read THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS back-to-back because I just couldn’t wait. I am already familiar with Cormac McCarthy’s books - Blood Meridian being my favorite - so I was excited. McCarthy is known for his exquisite and polished writing. And true to form, there are some beautiful passages in these unusual books.
THE PASSENGER is the story of a salvage diver in New Orleans named Bobby Western. Unfortunately, in Bobby’s line of work, he can find terrible things beneath the murky waters, including an airplane crash with the long ago deceased still inside. But the real interesting things about Bobby are that he’s a genius mathematician, he’s tortured by the past work of his physicist father, and oh yes, he’s in love with his sister, Alicia Western.
STELLA MARIS is the companion novel that goes into more depth about Alicia. It covers her stint in the hospital asylum, STELLA MARIS, where she spent time for a year before her death. To be clear, this short novel takes place 8 years earlier than the events in THE PASSENGER. Alicia is 20 years old, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and yes, in love with her brother, Bobby. The book covers the conversations between Alicia and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen.
I found both books together to be compelling. McCarthy writes with precision, but also with ambiguity. Some readers might prefer it if there was no STELLA MARIS, and they might be right. However, I found THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS to be perfect companions. McCarthy gracefully covers themes of genius and madness, illicit dreams and reality, heartache, incestuous relationships, and what’s the phrase? “Sins of the father”. It’s all complicated, but excellent.
I read THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS back-to-back because I just couldn’t wait. I am already familiar with Cormac McCarthy’s books - Blood Meridian being my favorite - so I was excited. McCarthy is known for his exquisite and polished writing. And true to form, there are some beautiful passages in these unusual books.
THE PASSENGER is the story of a salvage diver in New Orleans named Bobby Western. Unfortunately, in Bobby’s line of work, he can find terrible things beneath the murky waters, including an airplane crash with the long ago deceased still inside. But the real interesting things about Bobby are that he’s a genius mathematician, he’s tortured by the past work of his physicist father, and oh yes, he’s in love with his sister, Alicia Western.
STELLA MARIS is the companion novel that goes into more depth about Alicia. It covers her stint in the hospital asylum, STELLA MARIS, where she spent time for a year before her death. To be clear, this short novel takes place 8 years earlier than the events in THE PASSENGER. Alicia is 20 years old, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and yes, in love with her brother, Bobby. The book covers the conversations between Alicia and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen.
I found both books together to be compelling. McCarthy writes with precision, but also with ambiguity. Some readers might prefer it if there was no STELLA MARIS, and they might be right. However, I found THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS to be perfect companions. McCarthy gracefully covers themes of genius and madness, illicit dreams and reality, heartache, incestuous relationships, and what’s the phrase? “Sins of the father”. It’s all complicated, but excellent.
January 10, 2023
"Why are people not interested in science?"
Of all the quotes I could've possibly picked from a McCarthy work, why did I pick the one above to start my review? It's because I've spent the last week reading these two books together and of all the science and math that I've read, I can honestly say I don't remember hardly any of it. I can list general physics terms like gluon and quark. I can name mathematicians like Poincaré, Gödel, von Neumann and Grothendieck.
...but do I care? In my last review on The Passenger, I mentioned that I felt it was unfinished, something that needed to be polished further. It's ambiguity was interesting, but I was wanting more. "Stella Maris" answered a question I had, but also left another one that made me want to throw the book to the ground. Alicia and Bobby Western could've been more interesting characters, but the overwhelming despair and mental illness was constantly there, but not in a way that made me feel sorry for them.
With these two books, McCarthy shows off by telling us what really interests him in life and it's not writing a novel, but something more akin to a upper level University textbook. He's knowledgeable about a myriad of scientific and mathematical topics and it shines, but for the wrong reason.
Give me a few years and I'll head back into the past with "Suttree", "No Country for Old Men" and probably re-read my Everyman's Library version of "The Border Trilogy", but damn, my mind is fried and I'm pissed off.
Of all the quotes I could've possibly picked from a McCarthy work, why did I pick the one above to start my review? It's because I've spent the last week reading these two books together and of all the science and math that I've read, I can honestly say I don't remember hardly any of it. I can list general physics terms like gluon and quark. I can name mathematicians like Poincaré, Gödel, von Neumann and Grothendieck.
...but do I care? In my last review on The Passenger, I mentioned that I felt it was unfinished, something that needed to be polished further. It's ambiguity was interesting, but I was wanting more. "Stella Maris" answered a question I had, but also left another one that made me want to throw the book to the ground. Alicia and Bobby Western could've been more interesting characters, but the overwhelming despair and mental illness was constantly there, but not in a way that made me feel sorry for them.
With these two books, McCarthy shows off by telling us what really interests him in life and it's not writing a novel, but something more akin to a upper level University textbook. He's knowledgeable about a myriad of scientific and mathematical topics and it shines, but for the wrong reason.
Give me a few years and I'll head back into the past with "Suttree", "No Country for Old Men" and probably re-read my Everyman's Library version of "The Border Trilogy", but damn, my mind is fried and I'm pissed off.
June 19, 2023
Do you think that those who commit suicide have things in common ? Yes, said Alicia. They don't like it here.
Alicia, schizophrenic, is in Stella maris, a mental hospital. She has 7 sessions with her psychiatrist before the book ends. She spends most of her time talking about math, a subject she loves. The rest of the time she talks about her brother bobby and her desire for death. She loves bobby more than life itself, and she loved her father.
When she learns of her father's death in Mexico, she claims that had she been there with him she would have killed herself so that she could continue to be with him. Her therapist asks her, Do you believe in an after life? Her answer, I don't believe in this life.
.
Alicia, schizophrenic, is in Stella maris, a mental hospital. She has 7 sessions with her psychiatrist before the book ends. She spends most of her time talking about math, a subject she loves. The rest of the time she talks about her brother bobby and her desire for death. She loves bobby more than life itself, and she loved her father.
When she learns of her father's death in Mexico, she claims that had she been there with him she would have killed herself so that she could continue to be with him. Her therapist asks her, Do you believe in an after life? Her answer, I don't believe in this life.
.
December 29, 2022
This rating is really reflective of my impression of 'The Passenger' and 'Stella Maris' as a whole. Is 'SM' really a five star book on its own merit? Maybe. It's close. But it draws so much of its power from what the reader has already learned in 'The Passenger'. The connections between the two works make the emotions more raw. It makes this one of the sadder books I have read. Without having read 'The Passenger' first, Alicia's comments and thoughts don't provoke the same level of sorrow.
Aside from that, this is once again a dialogue driven book, with McCarthy once again venturing into the realms of mathematics, theology, physics, philosophy- topics he has clearly taken a strong interest in over his lifetime. Much like in 'The Passenger', you're not going to grasp everything that is being discussed. And that's not the point. The point is that it is impossible to fully understand everything we want to understand; particularly as it pertains to ourselves. So don't get frustrated when you don't fully grasp what Alicia is talking about. She's too clever for you. Just enjoy the writing, enjoy the humor and emotion. Do that, and the power of these two books will reveal itself pretty quickly.
Aside from that, this is once again a dialogue driven book, with McCarthy once again venturing into the realms of mathematics, theology, physics, philosophy- topics he has clearly taken a strong interest in over his lifetime. Much like in 'The Passenger', you're not going to grasp everything that is being discussed. And that's not the point. The point is that it is impossible to fully understand everything we want to understand; particularly as it pertains to ourselves. So don't get frustrated when you don't fully grasp what Alicia is talking about. She's too clever for you. Just enjoy the writing, enjoy the humor and emotion. Do that, and the power of these two books will reveal itself pretty quickly.
June 13, 2023
June 13, 2023 Update RIP Cormac McCarthy (July 20, 1933 - June 13, 2023). Read an obituary at the Canadian CBC at Cormac McCarthy, bleak and brutal titan of American literature, dead at 89. Stella Maris becomes his final novel, unless something should be published posthumously.
I Am Become Death
Review of the Knopf Publishing hardcover (December 6, 2022)
Stella Maris [Latin: Star of the Sea, a female protector or guiding spirit at sea (a title sometimes given to the Virgin Mary)] is the name of the Psychiatric Institution into which Alicia Western checks herself at the start of this novel. There is an intake form on the first page and then the rest of the book consists of transcripts of the recorded conversations between Alicia and her therapist. It is thus entirely dialogue. The book takes place in 1972 and thus predates the 1981 events of the earlier book The Passenger (published October 2022). It was published later though, so in a sense if is both a prequel and a sequel.
Without the context of the earlier book, Stella Maris will probably seem very repetitive and slight. Alicia is of the genius stereotype edging into madness. You have the sense that she is toying with the therapist and only humouring him as a diversion. Often she lies in her answers but then admits the lie a moment later. She describes her history as a genius child who was already a doctoral candidate in mathematics in her teens. The conversations cover her encounters with other genius mathematicians and the history of her father's involvement on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb with Oppenheimer.
We do also learn that she spent time with her brother Bobby in Europe when he was injured in a racing accident. I may have missed something, but I had the impression that she believed Bobby to either be in a coma or have died. That did make me wonder whether the entire The Passenger book was then a fiction in her mind if Bobby (its main character) was not alive.
As I expected in my review of The Passenger, Stella Maris provides no further answers but only deepens the complications and mystery of the Alicia and Bobby Western story. It is just as obsessed with mathematics, physics, hallucinations, death and the possible annihilation of life through nuclear weapons. But I still enjoyed it for Alicia's gameplay and especially her occasional diversions about the construction of violins, about music, and about Johann Sebastian Bach.
Trivia and Links
In what seems like synchronicity, the teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" (2023) was released on December 19, 2022 i.e. shortly after the release of both of Cormac McCarthy's Passenger novels. See it on YouTube here.
There is a combined article and review about Cormac McCarthy and the Passenger novels in The New Yorker magazine as Cormac McCarthy peers into the abyss by David Wood in the December 19, 2022 issue, which you can read for free if you have remaining free reads or are a subscriber. Thanks to Jessaka for the heads-up!
I Am Become Death
Review of the Knopf Publishing hardcover (December 6, 2022)
But anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It's up there with fire and language. It is at least number three and it may be number one. We just don't know yet. But we will. - Alicia Western in "Stella Maris".
And supposedly Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita but I think the Sanskrit word for Time came out Death or maybe the other way around. Or maybe they're the same. - Alicia Western in "Stella Maris".
Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people. - excerpt from The Bhagavad Gita Chapter 11 Verse 32.
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. - quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer as inspired by The Bhagavad Gita, after the successful testing of the first atomic bomb.
Stella Maris [Latin: Star of the Sea, a female protector or guiding spirit at sea (a title sometimes given to the Virgin Mary)] is the name of the Psychiatric Institution into which Alicia Western checks herself at the start of this novel. There is an intake form on the first page and then the rest of the book consists of transcripts of the recorded conversations between Alicia and her therapist. It is thus entirely dialogue. The book takes place in 1972 and thus predates the 1981 events of the earlier book The Passenger (published October 2022). It was published later though, so in a sense if is both a prequel and a sequel.
Without the context of the earlier book, Stella Maris will probably seem very repetitive and slight. Alicia is of the genius stereotype edging into madness. You have the sense that she is toying with the therapist and only humouring him as a diversion. Often she lies in her answers but then admits the lie a moment later. She describes her history as a genius child who was already a doctoral candidate in mathematics in her teens. The conversations cover her encounters with other genius mathematicians and the history of her father's involvement on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb with Oppenheimer.
We do also learn that she spent time with her brother Bobby in Europe when he was injured in a racing accident. I may have missed something, but I had the impression that she believed Bobby to either be in a coma or have died. That did make me wonder whether the entire The Passenger book was then a fiction in her mind if Bobby (its main character) was not alive.
As I expected in my review of The Passenger, Stella Maris provides no further answers but only deepens the complications and mystery of the Alicia and Bobby Western story. It is just as obsessed with mathematics, physics, hallucinations, death and the possible annihilation of life through nuclear weapons. But I still enjoyed it for Alicia's gameplay and especially her occasional diversions about the construction of violins, about music, and about Johann Sebastian Bach.
There are not any composers like Bach. There's just Bach. - Alicia Western in "Stella Maris"
Trivia and Links
In what seems like synchronicity, the teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" (2023) was released on December 19, 2022 i.e. shortly after the release of both of Cormac McCarthy's Passenger novels. See it on YouTube here.
There is a combined article and review about Cormac McCarthy and the Passenger novels in The New Yorker magazine as Cormac McCarthy peers into the abyss by David Wood in the December 19, 2022 issue, which you can read for free if you have remaining free reads or are a subscriber. Thanks to Jessaka for the heads-up!
November 24, 2023
For me, the unmistakable masterpiece is the second portion of McCarthy’s story. It’s high level discussion at its best. It’s the excavation of important material, one that satisfies every nerve ending that craves erudition. It’s the slow buildup of the therapeutic alliance between a resistant genius and an ordinary therapist. It’s the buildup of trust and the leaning into anxiety. I could read this conversation forever and ever. It ends.
“I think what most people think. That it’s caring that heals, not theory. Good the world over. And it may even be that in the end all problems are spiritual problems. As moonminded as Carl Jung was he was probably right about that. Keeping in mind that the German language doesnt distinguish between mind and soul.”
“But anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It’s up there with fire and language. It’s at least number three and it may be number one. We just dont know yet. But we will.”
“I think what most people think. That it’s caring that heals, not theory. Good the world over. And it may even be that in the end all problems are spiritual problems. As moonminded as Carl Jung was he was probably right about that. Keeping in mind that the German language doesnt distinguish between mind and soul.”
“But anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It’s up there with fire and language. It’s at least number three and it may be number one. We just dont know yet. But we will.”
Read
February 2, 2023I didn't rate The Passenger and I won't rate this one either. I didn't understand either one of them, but do know that McCarthy's brain is not one I personally would want to dwell in.
What amazed me about this follow up is how fascinating I found these conversations between Alicia and her therapist. The Passenger frustrated me because it was just one dead end after another with no resolution in any direction. Stella Maris was a very long exercise in existentialism. Were there answers here to any of Alicia's ramblings? No, but the scenarios she presented were fascinating to contemplate.
I am completely surprised that I was so invested in this "transcript". I dreaded picking this up and was prepared to be bored and just as lost as in the first novel, but even when I understood nothing I was captivated.
One more mystery. These conversations take place in 1972. Bobby is brain dead in an Italian hospital after a race car accident. Yet, in The Passenger, Bobby is alive and well, grieving over Alicia's suicide. Go figure.
What amazed me about this follow up is how fascinating I found these conversations between Alicia and her therapist. The Passenger frustrated me because it was just one dead end after another with no resolution in any direction. Stella Maris was a very long exercise in existentialism. Were there answers here to any of Alicia's ramblings? No, but the scenarios she presented were fascinating to contemplate.
I am completely surprised that I was so invested in this "transcript". I dreaded picking this up and was prepared to be bored and just as lost as in the first novel, but even when I understood nothing I was captivated.
One more mystery. These conversations take place in 1972. Bobby is brain dead in an Italian hospital after a race car accident. Yet, in The Passenger, Bobby is alive and well, grieving over Alicia's suicide. Go figure.
April 24, 2024
Herein lies the rub with these here reviews. For most folk, I think all that matters is a quick glance at the star rating and a hop step to the next review. Nonetheless, this is THE book that doesn't lend itself well to a typical starred review. For instance: should Stella Maris be considered a novel in its own merit? Certainly the publisher has deemed it worth the price of a second admission. Or is it, as is my opinion, nigh impossible to appreciate Stella Maris without the context given by The Passenger? In any case, I gave it three stars, but would consider it an essential part of the story McCarthy is telling.
Where The Passenger is a tint ambiguous at the edges, demanding your attention through potential hallucinations and reality, Stella Maris is entirely composed of the conver-sessions between Alicia and her psychiatrist du jour, Dr. Cohen. Bobby's sister is given a more vibrant life and mind than she possessed in The Passenger. We're largely told that Alicia was brilliant prior to her suicide, but Stella Maris effusively demonstrates that intelligence.
I got the feeling, and let me know if you did too, that every time Alicia scoffed at poor Dr. Cohen's rudimentary understanding of theoretical mathematics, it was McCarthy scoffing at me. There's no doubt that McCarthy is an intellectual of his age, but I'd be lying to say that almost any of the mathematical back and forth that goes on between these pages were comprehensible. All the same, the sections where the conversation shifted to ideas of reality, perception, the unconscious, and the limitations of our understanding of the variety of human experience were enthralling and challenging.
So, should you read this one? It's a tough question. As stated above, if you've read The Passenger I think that this is an essential coda. You need to place some of the previous novel's details on more firm footing, and you'll perhaps be unsurprised to hear that there's overwhelming contradictions between the two books. I must have read one of the early lines about Bobby's car crash five times before moving on.* It's the sort of work that defies easy categorization and answers.
For all the difficulty described above, I've loved reading these sibling novels. My endeavour was to start the year with something a little more challenging and I've found that these novels have eased me into the realm of tougher texts. Do consider giving the two novels a go, I've found them well worth my time and all of the review business aside, that's really the best recommendation I can offer.
*Mea culpa: Upon review of some Cormac McCarthy forums, it looks like I just missed discussion on Bobby's coma in the first book.
Where The Passenger is a tint ambiguous at the edges, demanding your attention through potential hallucinations and reality, Stella Maris is entirely composed of the conver-sessions between Alicia and her psychiatrist du jour, Dr. Cohen. Bobby's sister is given a more vibrant life and mind than she possessed in The Passenger. We're largely told that Alicia was brilliant prior to her suicide, but Stella Maris effusively demonstrates that intelligence.
I got the feeling, and let me know if you did too, that every time Alicia scoffed at poor Dr. Cohen's rudimentary understanding of theoretical mathematics, it was McCarthy scoffing at me. There's no doubt that McCarthy is an intellectual of his age, but I'd be lying to say that almost any of the mathematical back and forth that goes on between these pages were comprehensible. All the same, the sections where the conversation shifted to ideas of reality, perception, the unconscious, and the limitations of our understanding of the variety of human experience were enthralling and challenging.
So, should you read this one? It's a tough question. As stated above, if you've read The Passenger I think that this is an essential coda. You need to place some of the previous novel's details on more firm footing, and you'll perhaps be unsurprised to hear that there's overwhelming contradictions between the two books. I must have read one of the early lines about Bobby's car crash five times before moving on.* It's the sort of work that defies easy categorization and answers.
For all the difficulty described above, I've loved reading these sibling novels. My endeavour was to start the year with something a little more challenging and I've found that these novels have eased me into the realm of tougher texts. Do consider giving the two novels a go, I've found them well worth my time and all of the review business aside, that's really the best recommendation I can offer.
*Mea culpa: Upon review of some Cormac McCarthy forums, it looks like I just missed discussion on Bobby's coma in the first book.
Read
November 20, 2022You committed yourself here.
At Stella Maris.
Yes.
If you get committed you get certified but if you commit yourself you don’t. They figure you must be reasonably sane or you wouldnt have shown up. On your own. So you get a pass as far as the records are concerned. If you’re sane enough to know that you’re crazy then you’re not as crazy as if you thought you were sane.
Presented as a “coda” to Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger, Stella Maris contains the transcripts of seven therapy sessions between a psychiatrist and Alicia Western; the genius mathematician sister of the main character in The Passenger; a troubled young woman whose eventual fate is described in the previous novel’s first few pages. Whereas The Passenger only had generalised passages about math and physics, Stella Maris features a deeper dive into mathematical thinkers and their work — with a particular focus on Alicia’s speciality in topography — and as it is entirely presented in dialogue, this reads as a Socratic investigation into the nature of reality (and our inability to translate what we unconsciously intuit into communicable language, whether verbal or mathematical.) I did enjoy this as a followup to The Passenger — and if the math references were going over my head, they were going over Dr Cohen’s, too, and he asked for clarification where necessary — but even more so than with the previous novel, this feels a bit like a vanity/legacy project; as though McCarthy just wanted to put the summation of his life’s thinking into print without feeling particularly indebted to novelistic expectations. As a completionist, I am delighted to have read this, but this is going to be one of those rare occasions upon which I will not assign a rating; this feels outside the scope of such things. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
The problem with the unknowable absolute is that if you could actually say something about it it wouldn’t be the unknowable absolute anymore. You can get from the noumenal to the phenomenal without stirring from your chair. In other words, nothing can be excerpted from the absolute without being rendered perceptual. Bearing in mind that to claim reality for what is unknowable is already to speak in tongues. The trouble with the perfect and objective world — Kant’s or anybody’s — is that it is unknowable by definition. I love physics but I don’t confuse it with absolute reality. It is our reality. Mathematical ideas have a considerable shelflife. Do they exist in the absolute? How is that possible? I said to myself. But then myself became another self. No more than right. It took the math with it. The idea. A long period of uncertainty. When I recohered I was someplace else. As if I had escaped my own lightcone. Into what used to be called the absolute elsewhere.
I dont understand.
I know. Me either. It’s just my view that you cant fetch something out of the absolute without fetching it out of the absolute. Without converting it into the phenomenological. By which it then becomes our property with our fingerprints all over it and the absolute is nowhere to be found. Now I’m not so sure.
As a senior fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, Cormac McCarthy has long been incubating his ideas about the world in conversation with a cross-disciplinary assemblage of other deep thinkers. In 2017, he published his first nonfiction essay — The Kekulé Problem — in Nautilus magazine, and many of the facts and ideas from the essay pop up in Stella Maris. I appreciate McCarthy’s use of the Socratic format to present and debate these ideas — the psychiatrist/patient dialogue was perfectly suited as a fictional framework — and there’s just enough plot tie-in with The Passenger to warrant reading this to complement Alicia’s brother’s story. I don’t think I would call this a complete and satisfying novel on its own — “coda” does seem about right — but again, I did find considerable value in it.
I look unhappy? Tougher mettle is called for I suppose. I’m all right. For a long time I’ve suspected that we might be simply incapable of imagining the epochal evils of which we stand rightly accused and I thought it at least a possibility that the structure of reality itself harbors something like the forms of which our sordid history is only a pale reflection. I thought that it was something Plato might have considered but could in no way bring himself to express. I see by your look that you have at last beheld the very incubation of lunacy.
I am happy that this duology exists as a summation of McCarthy’s thought and craft — I know of no other living author who writes at this level — but I think it needs to be read in the context of his entire oeuvre; Stella Maris certainly needs to be read in concert with The Passenger, or if one wanted to mainline the ideas, The Kekulé Problem is complete unto itself. And again: If McCarthy’s main thesis entails the futility of expressing sensed truths in communicable language, I beg patience for my clumsy words.
November 16, 2022
4.5 // Much, much, much better than its meandering predecessor THE PASSENGER (still think that’s a messy, exhausting book; a lot of die-hards will never admit that, imo). Told strictly in dialogue, it follows a conversation between Alicia and her doctor, and I enjoyed that structure (especially considering that the dialogue here was much looser than the self-consciousness of THE PASSENGER). It had a great flow, pace, and kept momentum.
This is 100% the sister’s story, and it does fill in the blanks from the plot/narrative/tangents/brother’s story of the first book, so they do pair “well” with one another. Themes include: philosophy, fate, religion, death, love, loyalty, mathematics, mental health. Tightly written (that low page count did wonders), McCarthy reined himself in. Hmm, unsure if this will acquire classic status like the flawlessly-executed horror show CHILD OF GOD or the hauntingly grotesque BLOOD MERIDIAN, but it’s all-consuming, an attribute that was missing from the first book.
This is 100% the sister’s story, and it does fill in the blanks from the plot/narrative/tangents/brother’s story of the first book, so they do pair “well” with one another. Themes include: philosophy, fate, religion, death, love, loyalty, mathematics, mental health. Tightly written (that low page count did wonders), McCarthy reined himself in. Hmm, unsure if this will acquire classic status like the flawlessly-executed horror show CHILD OF GOD or the hauntingly grotesque BLOOD MERIDIAN, but it’s all-consuming, an attribute that was missing from the first book.
December 8, 2022
You’d be far better served by countenancing the philosophers “Alicia” (McCarthy) blathers on about than by wasting your time with Stella Maris.
FYI, if you choose to ignore my warning, in addition to the eye-roll inducing vapidity of Alicia’s “deep thoughts,” you can expect a heaping helping of McCarthy’s trademark misogyny, too.
And please, don’t come at me with tales of McCarthy’s stylistic boldness. Loads of stories are put to paper every day with nothing but dialogue to carry the narrative—they’re called plays.
McCarthy should be embarrassed, but the dimwit mass of lit-bro critics who salivate at the very mention of his name will surely rescue him from the humiliation he so richly deserves for vomiting Stella Maris onto his readers.
FYI, if you choose to ignore my warning, in addition to the eye-roll inducing vapidity of Alicia’s “deep thoughts,” you can expect a heaping helping of McCarthy’s trademark misogyny, too.
And please, don’t come at me with tales of McCarthy’s stylistic boldness. Loads of stories are put to paper every day with nothing but dialogue to carry the narrative—they’re called plays.
McCarthy should be embarrassed, but the dimwit mass of lit-bro critics who salivate at the very mention of his name will surely rescue him from the humiliation he so richly deserves for vomiting Stella Maris onto his readers.
January 25, 2023
Self-indulgent snoozefest.
Congratulo Cormac McCarthy por, aos 89 anos, ainda ter uma mente mais ágil do que a minha, isto é, partindo do princípio que não cabeceou tanto ao escrever este livro como eu a lê-lo. Das 3* com que classifico “Stella Maris”, 0,5* são pelo monumento inegável que ele é na literatura e 2,5* pela protagonista eloquente e combativa que, quando não é usada pelo ventríloquo McCarthy para divagar sobre essa entidade vaga que é o mundo, fala sobre a família, os diagnósticos, os psicoterapeutas...
Calculo que as tuas reservas acerca dos médicos da alma tenham uma longa história.
Podemos dizê-lo.
Qual é a tua principal queixa?
Não sei. Talvez a falta de imaginação deles. A ideia errada que têm acerca das categorias em que gostam de encaixar os doentes.
...o suicídio, as bruxas, os sonhos...
Os sonhos acordam-nos para nos dizer que devemos recordar-nos. Talvez não haja nada a fazer. Talvez a questão seja saber se o terror é um aviso a respeito de nós próprios. (...) O que nos acordou foi qualquer coisa que vimos ou qualquer coisa que somos?
As sete transcrições das sessões entre o Dr. Cohen e Alicia, irmã de Bobby, protagonista de “O Passageiro”, assentam num diálogo credível e vigoroso, mas parecem-me um exercício de vaidade ao sustentar-se essencialmente na matemática, física e... wait for it... filosofia. Ah, mas não lês para aprender? Também, mas esta é uma daquelas leituras em que, quanto mais o mestre se exibe, mais a pupila se sente burra. Problema meu, obviamente.
Alicia, filha de um dos físicos responsáveis pelo Projecto Manhattan, o programa nuclear americano que deu origem ao ataque a Hiroxima e Nagasaki, foi uma criança prodígio no domínio da matemática e do inevitável violino, mas desde cedo começou a ser acossada por alucinações visuais e auditivas, que haveriam de conduzir ao diagnóstico de esquizofrenia paranóide.
Chamaste-lhes alucinações.
Estou apenas a tentar viver no vosso mundo.
Agora tenho a certeza de que estás no gozo.
Quer mesmo entrar por esse caminho?
Não sei ao certo de que caminho se trata.
A ideia de que há no mundo pouca felicidade não é uma mera opinião. Toda a benevolência é suspeita. Acabamos por nos aperceber de que o mundo não nos tem em mente. Nunca teve.
Internada pela segunda vez, por livre vontade, no hospital psiquiátrico de Stella Maris, assistimos ao pingue-pongue verbal com o terapeuta que a acompanha, jogo em que ela é claramente a oponente mais forte e desafiadora, por ser um génio e por não se perceber se o pouco que revela é verdade ou manipulação.
O amor é em si mesmo, muito possivelmente, uma perturbação mental.
Isso é um comentário sério?
É, sim.
Acreditas nisso?
Provavelmente. Talvez não. Às vezes. A literatura não é encorajadora. Nem a experiência.
Depois do horror de “A Estrada” e do nojo de “O Filho de Deus”, “Stella Maris” não suscitou em mim qualquer emoção e nem aquilo que me despertava mais curiosidade, o facto de McCarthy ter pela primeira vez uma protagonista do sexo feminino, justificou a leitura. De Alicia, guardarei somente alguns soundbites bem pensados.
Ainda que não acredite que a leitura de “O Passageiro” me esclareça sobre o que me confunde em “Stella Maris” nem que minore aquilo que me desagrada, pretendo lê-lo e, um dia, reler “Stella Maris”.
Os animais gemem se tiverem fome ou frio. Mas não desatam aos berros. É má ideia. Quanto mais barulho fizermos, mais provável é que um predador nos coma. Se não temos maneira de fugir, ficamos em silêncio. Se os pássaros pudessem voar, não cantavam. Quando somos seres indefesos, guardamos para nós as nossas opiniões.
Congratulo Cormac McCarthy por, aos 89 anos, ainda ter uma mente mais ágil do que a minha, isto é, partindo do princípio que não cabeceou tanto ao escrever este livro como eu a lê-lo. Das 3* com que classifico “Stella Maris”, 0,5* são pelo monumento inegável que ele é na literatura e 2,5* pela protagonista eloquente e combativa que, quando não é usada pelo ventríloquo McCarthy para divagar sobre essa entidade vaga que é o mundo, fala sobre a família, os diagnósticos, os psicoterapeutas...
Calculo que as tuas reservas acerca dos médicos da alma tenham uma longa história.
Podemos dizê-lo.
Qual é a tua principal queixa?
Não sei. Talvez a falta de imaginação deles. A ideia errada que têm acerca das categorias em que gostam de encaixar os doentes.
...o suicídio, as bruxas, os sonhos...
Os sonhos acordam-nos para nos dizer que devemos recordar-nos. Talvez não haja nada a fazer. Talvez a questão seja saber se o terror é um aviso a respeito de nós próprios. (...) O que nos acordou foi qualquer coisa que vimos ou qualquer coisa que somos?
As sete transcrições das sessões entre o Dr. Cohen e Alicia, irmã de Bobby, protagonista de “O Passageiro”, assentam num diálogo credível e vigoroso, mas parecem-me um exercício de vaidade ao sustentar-se essencialmente na matemática, física e... wait for it... filosofia. Ah, mas não lês para aprender? Também, mas esta é uma daquelas leituras em que, quanto mais o mestre se exibe, mais a pupila se sente burra. Problema meu, obviamente.
Alicia, filha de um dos físicos responsáveis pelo Projecto Manhattan, o programa nuclear americano que deu origem ao ataque a Hiroxima e Nagasaki, foi uma criança prodígio no domínio da matemática e do inevitável violino, mas desde cedo começou a ser acossada por alucinações visuais e auditivas, que haveriam de conduzir ao diagnóstico de esquizofrenia paranóide.
Chamaste-lhes alucinações.
Estou apenas a tentar viver no vosso mundo.
Agora tenho a certeza de que estás no gozo.
Quer mesmo entrar por esse caminho?
Não sei ao certo de que caminho se trata.
A ideia de que há no mundo pouca felicidade não é uma mera opinião. Toda a benevolência é suspeita. Acabamos por nos aperceber de que o mundo não nos tem em mente. Nunca teve.
Internada pela segunda vez, por livre vontade, no hospital psiquiátrico de Stella Maris, assistimos ao pingue-pongue verbal com o terapeuta que a acompanha, jogo em que ela é claramente a oponente mais forte e desafiadora, por ser um génio e por não se perceber se o pouco que revela é verdade ou manipulação.
O amor é em si mesmo, muito possivelmente, uma perturbação mental.
Isso é um comentário sério?
É, sim.
Acreditas nisso?
Provavelmente. Talvez não. Às vezes. A literatura não é encorajadora. Nem a experiência.
Depois do horror de “A Estrada” e do nojo de “O Filho de Deus”, “Stella Maris” não suscitou em mim qualquer emoção e nem aquilo que me despertava mais curiosidade, o facto de McCarthy ter pela primeira vez uma protagonista do sexo feminino, justificou a leitura. De Alicia, guardarei somente alguns soundbites bem pensados.
Ainda que não acredite que a leitura de “O Passageiro” me esclareça sobre o que me confunde em “Stella Maris” nem que minore aquilo que me desagrada, pretendo lê-lo e, um dia, reler “Stella Maris”.
Os animais gemem se tiverem fome ou frio. Mas não desatam aos berros. É má ideia. Quanto mais barulho fizermos, mais provável é que um predador nos coma. Se não temos maneira de fugir, ficamos em silêncio. Se os pássaros pudessem voar, não cantavam. Quando somos seres indefesos, guardamos para nós as nossas opiniões.
October 15, 2023
Mi definisca capire
Alicia e uno psichiatra senza nome dialogano dentro i locali di una struttura per malattie mentali, Stella Maris.
Alicia è una giovane donna dotata di una intelligenza superiore, una intelligenza che le fa porre questioni su di sé, sulla vita, sull'esistenza, sull'amore che forse la più parte delle persone mai si sono poste. Quanto meno non in modo così strutturato.
Ed è curiosamente la matematica, quel modo così essenziale e privo di convenevoli che ha il matematico di porsi davanti alle questioni, quel dire cose tremende con un senso dell'umorismo caustico e nerissimo, che non può che irritire e affascinare.
"I matematici tendono a essere piuttosto diretti. Credo che per molti di loro il concetto di dissimulazione non sia neanche granché comprensibile."
Come funziona l'uomo? Come funziona il cosmo e l'universo? Se togliessimo tutte le infrastrutture che nei secoli abbiamo costruito, il linguaggio in primis, cosa rimarrebbe?
"Alla fin fine questo strano nuovo codice deve aver almeno in parte sostituito il mondo con quello che se ne può dire. La realtà con l’opinione. Il racconto con l’approfondimento."
E cosa è mai il subconscio, quella cosa misteriosa che ci accompagna costantemente nella nostra vita, cui poniamo questioni e problemi, che, quando meno ce lo aspettiamo si ripresenta a noi con risposte e soluzioni?
"Come fa matematica, l’inconscio?[..]A volte si ha la netta sensazione che fare matematica sia sostanzialmente mettere dati nella sottostazione e aspettare di vedere cosa ne vien fuori."
Ma soprattutto cosa è reale e cosa non lo è se tutto ciò che viviamo è una proiezione della nostra mente?
"È questa la domanda? O forse la vera domanda è semplicemente perché la mente sembri determinata a convincerci della realtà di ciò che non ne ha."
"Presumo che crediamo di sapere dove siamo ma ovviamente è un’assurdità."
Alicia una grande. Ora non mi rimane che fare la conoscenza di suo fratello Bobby.
Chiaramente ho sovvertito l'ordine di lettura. Ma scompigliare un po' le carte magari regala punti di vista inattesi.
Alicia e uno psichiatra senza nome dialogano dentro i locali di una struttura per malattie mentali, Stella Maris.
Alicia è una giovane donna dotata di una intelligenza superiore, una intelligenza che le fa porre questioni su di sé, sulla vita, sull'esistenza, sull'amore che forse la più parte delle persone mai si sono poste. Quanto meno non in modo così strutturato.
Ed è curiosamente la matematica, quel modo così essenziale e privo di convenevoli che ha il matematico di porsi davanti alle questioni, quel dire cose tremende con un senso dell'umorismo caustico e nerissimo, che non può che irritire e affascinare.
"I matematici tendono a essere piuttosto diretti. Credo che per molti di loro il concetto di dissimulazione non sia neanche granché comprensibile."
Come funziona l'uomo? Come funziona il cosmo e l'universo? Se togliessimo tutte le infrastrutture che nei secoli abbiamo costruito, il linguaggio in primis, cosa rimarrebbe?
"Alla fin fine questo strano nuovo codice deve aver almeno in parte sostituito il mondo con quello che se ne può dire. La realtà con l’opinione. Il racconto con l’approfondimento."
E cosa è mai il subconscio, quella cosa misteriosa che ci accompagna costantemente nella nostra vita, cui poniamo questioni e problemi, che, quando meno ce lo aspettiamo si ripresenta a noi con risposte e soluzioni?
"Come fa matematica, l’inconscio?[..]A volte si ha la netta sensazione che fare matematica sia sostanzialmente mettere dati nella sottostazione e aspettare di vedere cosa ne vien fuori."
Ma soprattutto cosa è reale e cosa non lo è se tutto ciò che viviamo è una proiezione della nostra mente?
"È questa la domanda? O forse la vera domanda è semplicemente perché la mente sembri determinata a convincerci della realtà di ciò che non ne ha."
"Presumo che crediamo di sapere dove siamo ma ovviamente è un’assurdità."
Alicia una grande. Ora non mi rimane che fare la conoscenza di suo fratello Bobby.
Chiaramente ho sovvertito l'ordine di lettura. Ma scompigliare un po' le carte magari regala punti di vista inattesi.
January 17, 2023
It pains me to give an author like McCarthy two stars, very different from my four-star rating of The Passenger. My reaction to that book was, like the novel, all over the place. At times I was irritated and bored and times I was totally engaged and finding so very much to admire. Not so here, not for me anyway. What interests McCarthy did not interest me at all, and for me it quickly began to feel self-indulgent and, dare I say, somewhat pretentious. While others seem to find a deeper meaning in it all, I found that I really didn’t care.
August 16, 2024
Forse sono passati i momenti in cui trovare anche solo un vago riferimento alla matematica liceale in un romanzo mi faceva saltare sulla sedia. Certo, però, in questo libro la matematica assume un ruolo difficile da ignorare e non posso, per formazione e gusti, non centrare la mia recensione su questo nodo.
Un avviso preliminare: è certo possibile leggere Stella Maris senza aver prima letto il romanzo "Il Passeggero". Possibile ma non desiderabile visto che il primo è la premessa del secondo e ne è anche la conclusione, essendo le prime pagine de "Il Passeggero" la descrizione di ciò che succede poco dopo l'ultima pagina di Stella Maris. Il paragone trovato in una recensione con il nastro di Moebius mi sembra del tutto appropriato.
Intanto i fatti: Stella Maris è un libro che riporta, in una trascrizione del tutto priva di commenti, descrizioni, interventi e intercalari dell'autore, le sette sedute terapeutiche tra lo psichiatra Dottor Cohen e la sua giovane paziente Alice.
Alice è una (bellissima) ragazza probabilmente anoressica, con tendenze suicidarie e una lunga storia di allucinazioni - meglio descritte appunto ne "Il Passeggero", ma è anche una ragazza prodigio della matematica, entrata all'Università a 14 anni pe ritrovarsi, negli anni successivi, all'IHES di Parigi a parlare - da pari a pari - con Grothendieck della nascente teoria dei topoi.
Ecco: Grothendieck e i topoi non sono l'unico affaccio sulla matematica in un libro in cui Godel occupa un ruolo per nulla sceondario, ma si parla di algebra omologica, Deligne, Whitehead e Russell, von Neumann, teoria delle categorie e via di questo seguito.
Il dialogo tra Alice e il suo terapeuta è sempre sull'orlo del collasso, lei cerca sempre di tenerne il controllo, cosa che grazie alla sua superiorità intellettuale spesso le riesce, ma il suo terapeuta sa portarla nelle zone difficili del pensiero, dove il suo controllo razionale vacilla e le emozioni prendono il sopravvento. Emozioni che dobbiamo sempre dedurre indirettamente visto che l'assenza dell'autore ci relega nello scomodo ruolo di origliatori a distanza. Il pathos aumenta pur continuando a ruotare attorno al rifiuto di ogni cura e al palese intento autodistruttivo di Alice.
Due rapporti umani costituiscono il nucleo delle drammatiche sofferenze della ragazza. Quello con il padre, fisico teorico tra i protagonisti della costruzione della prima bomba atomica nel deserto di Los Alamos, con tutti gli annessi problemi etici, ed un devastante tumore finale che lascia Alice orfana molto presto. Quello con il fratello, Bob, dotatissimo fisico teorico che lascia gli studi per dedicarsi all'automobilismo sportivo e che, nel momento in cui Alice si autoricovera alla clinica Stella Maris, giace in coma in un ospedale europeo (Bob sopravviverà, come sappiamo dal fatto che sarà il protagonista del prequel/sequel). Di Bob Alice è follemente innamorata, di un amore per nulla platonico ma sensuale e travolgente, e il rifiuto della relazione incestuosa da parte di Bob, che contraccambia il sentimento in cuor suo, è il nocciolo duro del rifiuto alla vita di Alice.
Non sono però gli unici temi del dialogo tra paziente e terapeuta.
Alice si è tuffata a fondo nella matematica anche allo scopo di capire un mondo rispetto al quale si è sempre sentita aliena e di trovare un senso, non accontentandosi di dimostrare teoremi matematici, di trovare gloria nella piccola comunità degli specialisti di settore, ma con l''ambizione di arrivare al cuore delle domande, di capire cosa è la Matematica.
E' un linguaggio del mondo, o è un mondo essa stessa? I suoi oggetti sono reali o costruiti? E come fa la nostra mente a fare matematica? Perché spesso riesce a farla prescindendo dal linguaggio e utilizzando i meccanismi imprevedibili dell'inconscio.
Perché è incompleta? (Nota a margine; se due protagonisti tra cui la comunicazione è bloccata si chiamano Alice e Bob e voi siete dei matematici non penserete affatto che la cosa sia casuale. Allo stesso tempo, che a cercare di curare Alice si il Dottor. Cohen, proprio come quel Cohen, quello della ipotesi del continuo così inestricabilmente legata all'incompletezza, difficile pensare ad una scelta aleatoria).Ecco, dunque, la teoria dei topoi, una teoria che si propone al tempo stesso come strumento matematico e come strumento metamatematico, che parla delle cose ma parla anche di come è fatta la matematica stessa, in un circolo quasi autoreferenziale che poche persone al mondo hanno la caratura intellettuale per reggere. E perché, per Alice, capire la matematica è così importante?
Possiamo fare congetture. Alice ha coltivato per un breve lasso di tempo la convinzione di poter trovare un posto nel mondo padroneggiando la matematica e di poter capire il mondo capendo la matematica. Cresciuta, sempre, nella convinzione di voler capire ciò che la circondava usando la comprensione come barriera da una fagocitante sensazione di terrore rispetto a un mondo che sente estraneo Alice a un certo punto sente di poterlo fare. E sente allo stesso tempo di poter accedere all'amore, nella figura di Bob, finalmente. E' proprio mentre coltiva la speranza che compaiono le sue allucinazioni, guidate da Thalidomide Kid, un bambino focomelico che le compare in camera e la apostrofa con un tono scanzonato e provocatorio. Ma le allucinazioni, è Alicia a dirlo, la distraggono e la proteggono allo stesso tempo, sbarrando la porta a qualcosa che lei intuisce come ancora più distruttivo e spaventoso. Cosa c'è di spaventoso nel suo progetto di felicità e perché è solo quando questo progetto svanisce, nella disperazione, che le allucinazioni si ritirano? C'è la paura del ripetersi della dinamica innescata dal padre? Arrivare ad usare la scienza in maniera distruttiva? C'è il senso di colpa per quello che il padre ha fatto e il senso di dover espiare quel dolore. C'è la paura che superare il tabù dell'incesto sposti in un mondo sovraumano, privo di vincoli e dunque, complessivamente, terribile?
Non lo so, Non sono sicuro di aver capito, non so quante riletture mi serviranno - se mai - per capirlo. Ma la matematica usata in questo libro è tutto meno che casuale. Il ruolo di Godel nient'affatto un semplice name-dropping, né quello di Grothendieck, entrambi matematici usciti autodistruttivamente dal loro corpo a corpo con i fondamenti della disciplina.
Detto questo il libro rimane dentro, per la forza delle immagini, per la pietà che suscita per il destino di Alice, per il dolore della vita che evoca (poche pagine più terribili di quelle in cui lei spiega le conseguenze fisiche di un suicidio tramite annegamento) e per la dolorosa richiesta di impossibile vicinanza con cui si chiude. Così che, dopo l'ultima pagina, forse il primo commento che farete, a chi vi sta vicino, darà: "no, nulla, mi è andato qualcosa nell'occhio"
Credo che sarà un matematico il primo a capire a fondo questo libro. Ci vorrà del tempo.
Questa recensione non è un invito alla lettura, ci sono libri dei quali si può dire che non sono per deboli di cuore.
Un avviso preliminare: è certo possibile leggere Stella Maris senza aver prima letto il romanzo "Il Passeggero". Possibile ma non desiderabile visto che il primo è la premessa del secondo e ne è anche la conclusione, essendo le prime pagine de "Il Passeggero" la descrizione di ciò che succede poco dopo l'ultima pagina di Stella Maris. Il paragone trovato in una recensione con il nastro di Moebius mi sembra del tutto appropriato.
Intanto i fatti: Stella Maris è un libro che riporta, in una trascrizione del tutto priva di commenti, descrizioni, interventi e intercalari dell'autore, le sette sedute terapeutiche tra lo psichiatra Dottor Cohen e la sua giovane paziente Alice.
Alice è una (bellissima) ragazza probabilmente anoressica, con tendenze suicidarie e una lunga storia di allucinazioni - meglio descritte appunto ne "Il Passeggero", ma è anche una ragazza prodigio della matematica, entrata all'Università a 14 anni pe ritrovarsi, negli anni successivi, all'IHES di Parigi a parlare - da pari a pari - con Grothendieck della nascente teoria dei topoi.
Ecco: Grothendieck e i topoi non sono l'unico affaccio sulla matematica in un libro in cui Godel occupa un ruolo per nulla sceondario, ma si parla di algebra omologica, Deligne, Whitehead e Russell, von Neumann, teoria delle categorie e via di questo seguito.
Il dialogo tra Alice e il suo terapeuta è sempre sull'orlo del collasso, lei cerca sempre di tenerne il controllo, cosa che grazie alla sua superiorità intellettuale spesso le riesce, ma il suo terapeuta sa portarla nelle zone difficili del pensiero, dove il suo controllo razionale vacilla e le emozioni prendono il sopravvento. Emozioni che dobbiamo sempre dedurre indirettamente visto che l'assenza dell'autore ci relega nello scomodo ruolo di origliatori a distanza. Il pathos aumenta pur continuando a ruotare attorno al rifiuto di ogni cura e al palese intento autodistruttivo di Alice.
Due rapporti umani costituiscono il nucleo delle drammatiche sofferenze della ragazza. Quello con il padre, fisico teorico tra i protagonisti della costruzione della prima bomba atomica nel deserto di Los Alamos, con tutti gli annessi problemi etici, ed un devastante tumore finale che lascia Alice orfana molto presto. Quello con il fratello, Bob, dotatissimo fisico teorico che lascia gli studi per dedicarsi all'automobilismo sportivo e che, nel momento in cui Alice si autoricovera alla clinica Stella Maris, giace in coma in un ospedale europeo (Bob sopravviverà, come sappiamo dal fatto che sarà il protagonista del prequel/sequel). Di Bob Alice è follemente innamorata, di un amore per nulla platonico ma sensuale e travolgente, e il rifiuto della relazione incestuosa da parte di Bob, che contraccambia il sentimento in cuor suo, è il nocciolo duro del rifiuto alla vita di Alice.
Non sono però gli unici temi del dialogo tra paziente e terapeuta.
Alice si è tuffata a fondo nella matematica anche allo scopo di capire un mondo rispetto al quale si è sempre sentita aliena e di trovare un senso, non accontentandosi di dimostrare teoremi matematici, di trovare gloria nella piccola comunità degli specialisti di settore, ma con l''ambizione di arrivare al cuore delle domande, di capire cosa è la Matematica.
E' un linguaggio del mondo, o è un mondo essa stessa? I suoi oggetti sono reali o costruiti? E come fa la nostra mente a fare matematica? Perché spesso riesce a farla prescindendo dal linguaggio e utilizzando i meccanismi imprevedibili dell'inconscio.
Perché è incompleta? (Nota a margine; se due protagonisti tra cui la comunicazione è bloccata si chiamano Alice e Bob e voi siete dei matematici non penserete affatto che la cosa sia casuale. Allo stesso tempo, che a cercare di curare Alice si il Dottor. Cohen, proprio come quel Cohen, quello della ipotesi del continuo così inestricabilmente legata all'incompletezza, difficile pensare ad una scelta aleatoria).Ecco, dunque, la teoria dei topoi, una teoria che si propone al tempo stesso come strumento matematico e come strumento metamatematico, che parla delle cose ma parla anche di come è fatta la matematica stessa, in un circolo quasi autoreferenziale che poche persone al mondo hanno la caratura intellettuale per reggere. E perché, per Alice, capire la matematica è così importante?
Possiamo fare congetture. Alice ha coltivato per un breve lasso di tempo la convinzione di poter trovare un posto nel mondo padroneggiando la matematica e di poter capire il mondo capendo la matematica. Cresciuta, sempre, nella convinzione di voler capire ciò che la circondava usando la comprensione come barriera da una fagocitante sensazione di terrore rispetto a un mondo che sente estraneo Alice a un certo punto sente di poterlo fare. E sente allo stesso tempo di poter accedere all'amore, nella figura di Bob, finalmente. E' proprio mentre coltiva la speranza che compaiono le sue allucinazioni, guidate da Thalidomide Kid, un bambino focomelico che le compare in camera e la apostrofa con un tono scanzonato e provocatorio. Ma le allucinazioni, è Alicia a dirlo, la distraggono e la proteggono allo stesso tempo, sbarrando la porta a qualcosa che lei intuisce come ancora più distruttivo e spaventoso. Cosa c'è di spaventoso nel suo progetto di felicità e perché è solo quando questo progetto svanisce, nella disperazione, che le allucinazioni si ritirano? C'è la paura del ripetersi della dinamica innescata dal padre? Arrivare ad usare la scienza in maniera distruttiva? C'è il senso di colpa per quello che il padre ha fatto e il senso di dover espiare quel dolore. C'è la paura che superare il tabù dell'incesto sposti in un mondo sovraumano, privo di vincoli e dunque, complessivamente, terribile?
Non lo so, Non sono sicuro di aver capito, non so quante riletture mi serviranno - se mai - per capirlo. Ma la matematica usata in questo libro è tutto meno che casuale. Il ruolo di Godel nient'affatto un semplice name-dropping, né quello di Grothendieck, entrambi matematici usciti autodistruttivamente dal loro corpo a corpo con i fondamenti della disciplina.
Detto questo il libro rimane dentro, per la forza delle immagini, per la pietà che suscita per il destino di Alice, per il dolore della vita che evoca (poche pagine più terribili di quelle in cui lei spiega le conseguenze fisiche di un suicidio tramite annegamento) e per la dolorosa richiesta di impossibile vicinanza con cui si chiude. Così che, dopo l'ultima pagina, forse il primo commento che farete, a chi vi sta vicino, darà: "no, nulla, mi è andato qualcosa nell'occhio"
Credo che sarà un matematico il primo a capire a fondo questo libro. Ci vorrà del tempo.
Questa recensione non è un invito alla lettura, ci sono libri dei quali si può dire che non sono per deboli di cuore.
January 24, 2024
Questa è l'acqua
"La Verità con la V maiuscola riguarda la vita prima della morte. Riguarda il fatto di toccare i trenta, magari i cinquanta, senza il desiderio di spararsi un colpo in testa."
Stamattina presto fuori con i cani, nessuno in giro, niente traffico, strade deserte e silenziose, la straniante impressione che Milano fosse completamente disabitata.
E' stato esaltante, finchè non è passato un autobus vuoto.
E sono tornata qui.
L'ultimo giorno di questo anno di merda, che continua a portarsi appresso vagonate di sofferenza. Tess che arrancava al mio fianco, zoppicando vistosamente, per tenere il passo con me e Orsa, pur con la nostra andatura lentissima.
E Cormac nella testa e nei piedi, come sempre, quando finisco un suo libro, e come sempre comunque, a scavare gallerie nel mio sistema limbico, a ricordarmi la bellezza, e la semantica polivalente, della parola ippocampo.
Sono tutti lì adesso, Alicia, lo stupracocomeri di Suttree, il giudice Holden, Ballard figlio di Dio e la Lupa e Bobby Western e quel magnifico cialtrone del Kid che, senz'altro, farà a botte con Blevins.
E tutti gli altri, anche i senzanome.
Ma tutti lì, dove?
E' un luogo sepolto tra le mie sinapsi, oppure è diffuso sotto la pelle come una geografia in continuo mutamento?
Non ho un'idea precisa di dove sia questo dove dentro di me, il luogo dove convergono tutti i multiversi creati dalle parole ma dove sussistono solo come significati, svincolati dal linguaggio e dalla grammatica.
Ma è uno dei pochi spazi che, sono certa, non potrà degradarsi nel silenzio o nell'oblio o nella consunzione biologica, nonostante la sua natura sia molto, molto fisica oltre che incorporea.
Come la duplice natura delle particelle.
Anche se di fisica quantistica non capisco proprio una mazza.
Però lo percepisco chiaramente, così come i miei cani percepiscono il mondo con "altri" sensi che io non conosco.
Ma che so esistere.
E' un lascito immenso il tuo, Cormac.
Questo filo invisibile che esiste solo quando non lo guardi, questa pista che corre nel buio come fosse una luce.
Tangente e parallela.
Che tocca le Menti, i Corpi, i Luoghi che amo. E, all'unisono, ne diverge.
Guardo il mio cane, stremato dalla vita, che cerca con fatica di scavare una buca, in cerca di risposte a domande che appartengono solo a lei, con una determinazione irriducibile che umilia la sua maledetta malattia.
"Pensò che la bellezza del mondo nascondeva un segreto, che il cuore del mondo battesse a un prezzo terribile, che la sofferenza e la bellezza del mondo crescevano di pari passo, ma in direzioni opposte, e che forse quella forbice vertiginosa esigeva il sangue di molta gente per la grazia di semplice fiore."
Guardandola, mi sono arrivate le tue parole.
Non le ho pensate, le ho sentite.
Tess e la grazia di un fiore.
Entanglement.
Grazie Cormac.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8MzHq...
"La Verità con la V maiuscola riguarda la vita prima della morte. Riguarda il fatto di toccare i trenta, magari i cinquanta, senza il desiderio di spararsi un colpo in testa."
Stamattina presto fuori con i cani, nessuno in giro, niente traffico, strade deserte e silenziose, la straniante impressione che Milano fosse completamente disabitata.
E' stato esaltante, finchè non è passato un autobus vuoto.
E sono tornata qui.
L'ultimo giorno di questo anno di merda, che continua a portarsi appresso vagonate di sofferenza. Tess che arrancava al mio fianco, zoppicando vistosamente, per tenere il passo con me e Orsa, pur con la nostra andatura lentissima.
E Cormac nella testa e nei piedi, come sempre, quando finisco un suo libro, e come sempre comunque, a scavare gallerie nel mio sistema limbico, a ricordarmi la bellezza, e la semantica polivalente, della parola ippocampo.
Sono tutti lì adesso, Alicia, lo stupracocomeri di Suttree, il giudice Holden, Ballard figlio di Dio e la Lupa e Bobby Western e quel magnifico cialtrone del Kid che, senz'altro, farà a botte con Blevins.
E tutti gli altri, anche i senzanome.
Ma tutti lì, dove?
E' un luogo sepolto tra le mie sinapsi, oppure è diffuso sotto la pelle come una geografia in continuo mutamento?
Non ho un'idea precisa di dove sia questo dove dentro di me, il luogo dove convergono tutti i multiversi creati dalle parole ma dove sussistono solo come significati, svincolati dal linguaggio e dalla grammatica.
Ma è uno dei pochi spazi che, sono certa, non potrà degradarsi nel silenzio o nell'oblio o nella consunzione biologica, nonostante la sua natura sia molto, molto fisica oltre che incorporea.
Come la duplice natura delle particelle.
Anche se di fisica quantistica non capisco proprio una mazza.
Però lo percepisco chiaramente, così come i miei cani percepiscono il mondo con "altri" sensi che io non conosco.
Ma che so esistere.
E' un lascito immenso il tuo, Cormac.
Questo filo invisibile che esiste solo quando non lo guardi, questa pista che corre nel buio come fosse una luce.
Tangente e parallela.
Che tocca le Menti, i Corpi, i Luoghi che amo. E, all'unisono, ne diverge.
Guardo il mio cane, stremato dalla vita, che cerca con fatica di scavare una buca, in cerca di risposte a domande che appartengono solo a lei, con una determinazione irriducibile che umilia la sua maledetta malattia.
"Pensò che la bellezza del mondo nascondeva un segreto, che il cuore del mondo battesse a un prezzo terribile, che la sofferenza e la bellezza del mondo crescevano di pari passo, ma in direzioni opposte, e che forse quella forbice vertiginosa esigeva il sangue di molta gente per la grazia di semplice fiore."
Guardandola, mi sono arrivate le tue parole.
Non le ho pensate, le ho sentite.
Tess e la grazia di un fiore.
Entanglement.
Grazie Cormac.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8MzHq...
January 26, 2024
” Credo che la sensazione di essere un alieno – ben diversa dal sentirsi semplicemente alienati – tra i pazienti psichiatrici sia piuttosto comune.”
"Stella Maris", così è chiamata la stella che guida i marinai.
Un astro che richiama il culto mariano e che, metaforicamente, simboleggia la luce che nel buio dell’esistenza, avrebbe la funzione di fare strada, aprire un varco tra le insidie.
E’ forse questo che cerca Alice Western, la giovane donna che bussa alla porta di una clinica psichiatrica proprio dal nome Stella Maris?
” 27 ottobre, 1972
Caso 72-118
La paziente è un’ebrea/caucasica di vent’anni. Di bell’aspetto, forse anoressica. Arrivata in questa struttura sei giorni fa apparentemente in autobus e senza bagaglio. Ammissione firmata dal dottor Wegner. La paziente aveva nella borsetta una busta di plastica piena di banconote da cento dollari – poco piú di quarantamila dollari in totale – che ha cercato di consegnare alla receptionist. La paziente è una dottoranda in matematica presso l’Università di Chicago e le è stata diagnosticata una schizofrenia paranoide con presenza ricorrente di allucinazioni visive e uditive. Già residente presso questa struttura in due precedenti occasioni.”
Il romanzo è propriamente il secondo di una dilogĭa che rappresenta anche l’ultima produzione di questo grandissimo scrittore recentemente scomparso.
Il testo è, in sostanza, un dialogo tra lo psichiatra- il dottor Cohen- e la paziente, perlopiù, una forma dialettica che verte su argomenti filosofici e matematici.
A quattordici anni Alice entra all’Università di Chicago uscendone solo due anni dopo laureata (sicuramente a pieni voti) in matematica.
”Di certo non sapeva che la parola prodigio deriva dalla parola mostro in latino.”
Argomentazioni per niente facili che, confesso, di aver capito poco e, per di più, anche graficamente sono difficili da seguire in quanto il botta e risposta tra i due è impaginato tutto di seguito tanto che perdere il segno può essere difficoltoso in tutti i sensi.
Ma c'è un fascino tra queste pagine che, probabilmente, è rappresentato dalla non comprensione.
Sette incontri per entrare in contatto con una giovane donne ferita dalle diagnosi e le etichette (Autistica, geniale, sinestesica, schizofrenica, paranoide..) e ferita da una realtà che non le appartiene.
Le ultime righe sono da pianto se si fa mente locale sul fatto che sono le ultime parole di un Grandissimo Scrittore!!
"Credo che il nostro tempo sia scaduto.
Lo so. Mi tenga la mano.
Tenerle la mano?
Sí. Voglio che lo faccia.
D’accordo. Perché?
Perché è quello che fanno le persone quando aspettano la fine di qualcosa."
"Stella Maris", così è chiamata la stella che guida i marinai.
Un astro che richiama il culto mariano e che, metaforicamente, simboleggia la luce che nel buio dell’esistenza, avrebbe la funzione di fare strada, aprire un varco tra le insidie.
E’ forse questo che cerca Alice Western, la giovane donna che bussa alla porta di una clinica psichiatrica proprio dal nome Stella Maris?
” 27 ottobre, 1972
Caso 72-118
La paziente è un’ebrea/caucasica di vent’anni. Di bell’aspetto, forse anoressica. Arrivata in questa struttura sei giorni fa apparentemente in autobus e senza bagaglio. Ammissione firmata dal dottor Wegner. La paziente aveva nella borsetta una busta di plastica piena di banconote da cento dollari – poco piú di quarantamila dollari in totale – che ha cercato di consegnare alla receptionist. La paziente è una dottoranda in matematica presso l’Università di Chicago e le è stata diagnosticata una schizofrenia paranoide con presenza ricorrente di allucinazioni visive e uditive. Già residente presso questa struttura in due precedenti occasioni.”
Il romanzo è propriamente il secondo di una dilogĭa che rappresenta anche l’ultima produzione di questo grandissimo scrittore recentemente scomparso.
Il testo è, in sostanza, un dialogo tra lo psichiatra- il dottor Cohen- e la paziente, perlopiù, una forma dialettica che verte su argomenti filosofici e matematici.
A quattordici anni Alice entra all’Università di Chicago uscendone solo due anni dopo laureata (sicuramente a pieni voti) in matematica.
”Di certo non sapeva che la parola prodigio deriva dalla parola mostro in latino.”
Argomentazioni per niente facili che, confesso, di aver capito poco e, per di più, anche graficamente sono difficili da seguire in quanto il botta e risposta tra i due è impaginato tutto di seguito tanto che perdere il segno può essere difficoltoso in tutti i sensi.
Ma c'è un fascino tra queste pagine che, probabilmente, è rappresentato dalla non comprensione.
Sette incontri per entrare in contatto con una giovane donne ferita dalle diagnosi e le etichette (Autistica, geniale, sinestesica, schizofrenica, paranoide..) e ferita da una realtà che non le appartiene.
Le ultime righe sono da pianto se si fa mente locale sul fatto che sono le ultime parole di un Grandissimo Scrittore!!
"Credo che il nostro tempo sia scaduto.
Lo so. Mi tenga la mano.
Tenerle la mano?
Sí. Voglio che lo faccia.
D’accordo. Perché?
Perché è quello che fanno le persone quando aspettano la fine di qualcosa."
January 22, 2023
Stella Maris is the companion novel to The Passenger, the books a stunning body of work by Cormac McCarthy that we have been awaiting sixteen years since his last published novel, The Road. As the book opens in 1972, we read the intake assessment of Alicia Western to Stella Maris, a hospice for the care of psychiatric patients in Wisconsin. It is noted that the patient is a doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with a longstanding history of auditory and visual hallucinations. Alicia arrived with a plastic bag filled with one-hundred dollar bills totalling over forty-thousand dollars and checked herself into the hospital.
It is in this book that we have access to the transcripts of Alicia's therapy sessions with her psychiatrist Dr. Cohen, and it is through this process that we have remarkable insight, not only to Alicia Western but to her brother Bobby. There is also more insight into the family dynamics involving her mother and father and grandmother. Alicia had returned from Italy where her brother Bobby was in a coma and not expected to recover after a fiery crash in his Formula Two racing car.
This is an intense character study of Alicia as well as the expanse of her intelligence from early childhood. She taught herself to read and to tell time before the age of four. Alicia's father was a briliant scientist working for J. Robert Oppenheimer. One of the most poignant passages was when Alicia was a small child and ventures into her father's study:
There is much esoteric and metaphysical and philosophical discussion as Alicia explores her beliefs with Dr. Cohen, citing the works of Schopenhauer and his views that if the universe vanished the only thing left would be music. We learn of the rare Amati violin that Alicia bought on auction with part of her inheritance and of the history of the oldest violin believed to be from 1564. But the through-line of these beautiful novels remains the Manhattan project and the role that their father played in the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos and its ultimate detonation in July 1945 stunning all those who witnessed the nuclear fireball early in the morning on this New Mexico desert. But Oppenheimer, well-versed in the Bhagavad-Gita, this piece of Hindu scripture ran through his mind:
It is in this book that we have access to the transcripts of Alicia's therapy sessions with her psychiatrist Dr. Cohen, and it is through this process that we have remarkable insight, not only to Alicia Western but to her brother Bobby. There is also more insight into the family dynamics involving her mother and father and grandmother. Alicia had returned from Italy where her brother Bobby was in a coma and not expected to recover after a fiery crash in his Formula Two racing car.
This is an intense character study of Alicia as well as the expanse of her intelligence from early childhood. She taught herself to read and to tell time before the age of four. Alicia's father was a briliant scientist working for J. Robert Oppenheimer. One of the most poignant passages was when Alicia was a small child and ventures into her father's study:
"I went in one day and sat at his desk and looked at the problem he was working on. I already knew some math. Quite a bit, actually. I tried to puzzle out the paper but it was hard. I loved the equations. I loved the big sigma signs with the codes for the summations. I loved the narrative that was unfolding. My father came in and found me there and I thought I was in trouble and I jumped up but he took me by the hand and led me back to the chair and sat me down and went over the paper with me. His explanations were clear. Simple. But it was more than that. They were filled with metaphor. He drew a couple of Feynman diagrams and I thought they were pretty cool. They mapped the world of the subatomic particles he was attempting to explain. The collisions. The weighted routes. I understood--really understood--that the equations were not a supposition of the form whose life was confined to the symbols on the page which described them but that they were there before my eyes. In actuality."
There is much esoteric and metaphysical and philosophical discussion as Alicia explores her beliefs with Dr. Cohen, citing the works of Schopenhauer and his views that if the universe vanished the only thing left would be music. We learn of the rare Amati violin that Alicia bought on auction with part of her inheritance and of the history of the oldest violin believed to be from 1564. But the through-line of these beautiful novels remains the Manhattan project and the role that their father played in the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos and its ultimate detonation in July 1945 stunning all those who witnessed the nuclear fireball early in the morning on this New Mexico desert. But Oppenheimer, well-versed in the Bhagavad-Gita, this piece of Hindu scripture ran through his mind:
"Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
August 17, 2023
Δεν λέω τίποτα, τρέχω να πάρω τον Επιβάτη.
February 20, 2024
Ein absoluter Hammer diese beiden Bände. Völlig unterschiedlich. Ich glaube viele Autoren wählen ganz gerne naive Figuren, denn hier zeigt sich: das ist ein dickes Brett, wenn die Hauptfigur sehr intelligent oder gar genial ist. Aber McCarthy packt hier so richtig was aus. Bin sehr traurig dass er schon von uns gegangen ist.
I recommend Nam’s review, for both Passenger and Stella Maris, he perfectly expresses what I could not tell as accurate.
I recommend Nam’s review, for both Passenger and Stella Maris, he perfectly expresses what I could not tell as accurate.
February 13, 2023
Once again, Cormac McCarthy has stupefied his readers with an unusual and difficult to comprehend novel. The second book is to be read after reading The Passenger where we met Bobby Western, the salvage diving brother of Alicia, and collected a laundry list of questions that were left unanswered in the end. In Stella Maris the hopes of finding the answers to those questions went out the window. Here we are privy to seven sessions that Alicia has with her psychiatrist and we get a deeper understanding of the ideas that she holds important to her in the final days of her life. She has checked herself into this hospital and we know that she has suicidal thoughts and experiences schizophrenic hallucinations. One of her main hallucinations is called the Thalidomide Kid, a miniature vision with flippers for hands and a snarky mouth meant to get at her subconscious, whom we met in the previous book. At one point in their dialogues, the doctor suggests that the Kid never existed to which Alicia quips
Define exist…Im not really concerned with what other people believe. I dont consider them qualified to have an opinion.
In the dialogues with her doctor, we find out that Alicia is troubled by her existence and talks a lot about who we are and what we are here for. Much of what she talks about is philosophical contemplations and more discussions about mathematics - her area of expertise. She goes even further into discussions about religion, science and music. At times she comes across as playing the doctor, often sarcastic and dismissive, but you get the sense that she just wants to talk and doesn’t want to be fixed. She has spent an enormous amount of money left to her by her grandmother on an Amati violin that she values but never thought she was good enough to be the best. It’s obvious that she loves the rules of music and her thoughts are penetrating:
Music is made out of nothing but some fairly simple rules. Yet its true that no one made them up…But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension.
In fact most of Alicia’s dialogue has a dark and dreary tinge to it. She never wants to talk about her brother Bobby, but eventually allows her vulnerabilities concerning her love for him to come out.
It has been 16 years since McCarthy’s last novel, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Road which is my favorite of the ones I’ve read so far. He is 89 years old and most likely these will be the last of his novels we will have the pleasure to read. These are dissimilar to his previous works and can be frustrating but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like them. I think it would take loads and loads of dissection to get at what it is he actually wanted to get across and someone or some others who are much more intelligent than me to do it. And then I wonder if McCarthy even cares because it seems in these two novels that he writes what he wants to regardless.
Define exist…Im not really concerned with what other people believe. I dont consider them qualified to have an opinion.
In the dialogues with her doctor, we find out that Alicia is troubled by her existence and talks a lot about who we are and what we are here for. Much of what she talks about is philosophical contemplations and more discussions about mathematics - her area of expertise. She goes even further into discussions about religion, science and music. At times she comes across as playing the doctor, often sarcastic and dismissive, but you get the sense that she just wants to talk and doesn’t want to be fixed. She has spent an enormous amount of money left to her by her grandmother on an Amati violin that she values but never thought she was good enough to be the best. It’s obvious that she loves the rules of music and her thoughts are penetrating:
Music is made out of nothing but some fairly simple rules. Yet its true that no one made them up…But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension.
In fact most of Alicia’s dialogue has a dark and dreary tinge to it. She never wants to talk about her brother Bobby, but eventually allows her vulnerabilities concerning her love for him to come out.
It has been 16 years since McCarthy’s last novel, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Road which is my favorite of the ones I’ve read so far. He is 89 years old and most likely these will be the last of his novels we will have the pleasure to read. These are dissimilar to his previous works and can be frustrating but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like them. I think it would take loads and loads of dissection to get at what it is he actually wanted to get across and someone or some others who are much more intelligent than me to do it. And then I wonder if McCarthy even cares because it seems in these two novels that he writes what he wants to regardless.
January 28, 2023
Cormac McCarthy's latest book is "Stella Maris," a companion novel to "The Passenger," but set earlier in 1972. The book is composed of seven psychiatric consultations between Alicia Western and Dr Cohen at a Wisconsin mental health facility, Stella Maris. Alicia is a beautiful twenty-year-old woman who had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic with hallucinations. She had been a child prodigy, and was a doctoral student of mathematics. She informed Dr Cohen that the word "prodigy" comes from the Latin word for monster.
Alicia and her brother Bobby are both brilliant and haunted by their father's involvement in the Manhattan Project. Bobby was in a coma in an Italian hospital after the crash of his Formula Two racing car when Alicia checked herself into Stella Maris. Alicia talked to the psychiatrist about philosophy, physics, mathematics, the atomic bomb, music, her violin, synesthesia, dreams, hallucinations, her brother, and the nature of existence. When Dr Cohen asks Alicia if she believes in an afterlife, she replies, "I dont believe in this one."
The dialogue varies from being fascinating to being way over the head of anyone without a background in theoretical mathematics. Dr Cohen asks her, "If you had not become a mathematician, what would you like to have been?" "Dead" is her reply.
I'm glad I read "Stella Maris" since it does answer some of the questions I had after reading "The Passenger." Sometimes the book feels like it's Cormac McCarthy himself who is speaking since he has been spending lots of time at the Santa Fe Institute for cutting-edge science. McCarthy does not use apostrophes or quotation marks in the book, but I didn't find it confusing. Every reader has to decide whether to read with a "go with the flow" attitude to get the gist of the book, or spend the time learning more about the many philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians mentioned. It's very difficult to rate a book like this with stars - I'll give it 3 stars today.
Alicia and her brother Bobby are both brilliant and haunted by their father's involvement in the Manhattan Project. Bobby was in a coma in an Italian hospital after the crash of his Formula Two racing car when Alicia checked herself into Stella Maris. Alicia talked to the psychiatrist about philosophy, physics, mathematics, the atomic bomb, music, her violin, synesthesia, dreams, hallucinations, her brother, and the nature of existence. When Dr Cohen asks Alicia if she believes in an afterlife, she replies, "I dont believe in this one."
The dialogue varies from being fascinating to being way over the head of anyone without a background in theoretical mathematics. Dr Cohen asks her, "If you had not become a mathematician, what would you like to have been?" "Dead" is her reply.
I'm glad I read "Stella Maris" since it does answer some of the questions I had after reading "The Passenger." Sometimes the book feels like it's Cormac McCarthy himself who is speaking since he has been spending lots of time at the Santa Fe Institute for cutting-edge science. McCarthy does not use apostrophes or quotation marks in the book, but I didn't find it confusing. Every reader has to decide whether to read with a "go with the flow" attitude to get the gist of the book, or spend the time learning more about the many philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians mentioned. It's very difficult to rate a book like this with stars - I'll give it 3 stars today.
March 14, 2023
....αν ο κοσμος ειναι δική μας κατασκευή, τοτε το να συζηταμε γι΄ αυτον ως κατι αυτόνομο, παράγει αβεβαια αποτελεσματα...
Η Αλίσια μας δίνει ακριβως τον τροπο με τον οποιο πρεπει να αντιμετωπιζεται η ζωή.
Μακρια απο τις αληθειες των αλλων
Η Αλίσια μας δίνει ακριβως τον τροπο με τον οποιο πρεπει να αντιμετωπιζεται η ζωή.
Μακρια απο τις αληθειες των αλλων
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