Deliverance Is Seldom: On Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’
Until recently, Cormac McCarthy‘s readers could be forgiven for suspecting that The Road, published in 2006, was to be the author’s final work. In many ways, the signs seemed clear: The Road eschewed McCarthy’s usual mining of the American past and present and reached beyond civilization itself, out to a harrowing, post-apocalyptic world. It also reached past a father’s ability to protect his child and, in its stunning finale, evocatively sent the next generation off to continue navigating the broken world of chaos and violence that, for so many years, McCarthy had relentlessly documented. The result was prophetic and quite possibly a perfect concluding statement for one of our most celebrated living authors.
But in recent years, rumors began to circulate that McCarthy had another novel in the works. It was purportedly entitled The Passenger, told from a woman’s perspective, and concerned with mathematics—a theme no doubt calcified by McCarthy’s longstanding association with the Santa Fe Institute. Yet beyond a lone YouTube video of an excerpt being read at the Institute, tangible evidence of the novel never surfaced. Maybe The Passenger was being saved as a posthumous publication. Or perhaps it was simply hearsay, a half-baked idea, and we’d never see it.
Well, surprise! The Passenger is being released today. Furthermore, a sibling book, Stella Maris—the book actually being read in that 2016 video, as it turns out—is slated for release on December 6. True to speculation, these books represent a staggering departure for their author and, together, comprise a breathtaking exploration of the nature of reality, love, God, consciousness, and knowledge. While their core concerns remain fully rooted in the overarching project of McCarthy’s oeuvre, The Passenger and Stella Maris tackle dazzlingly fresh ground and are a welcome advancement in McCarthy’s preoccupations.
In bifurcated fashion, and tell the stories of Bobby and Alicia Western, a brother and sister joined by, and and pull no punches as they explore the craggiest regions of human consciousness through two of McCarthy’s most vividly drawn characters.
