The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
This is not my first McCarthy read. And while it is not his most accessible work, it has become one of my favorites. I feel this is the most personal McCarthy novel he’s written. Much of his love for science and mathematics is on display here. The violence is subdued and the dread feels less immediate, as well as grounded in reality. I don’t feel as though the story exists in a place that feels as much of a hyper-reality.
The philosophy is here, of course, passages of it, but there is science too. And history. This is a book about a man, having conversations with people amidst his shadowy inherited turmoil.
Bobby Western and his sister are the children of a physicist that worked with Robert Oppenheimer. There are dubious followings and ransacked apartments.
The Passenger exists in a world where the questions are more important than the answers; a world where people talk about science and mathematics over dinner or in bars, as if it were normal and that sounds absolutely fantastic to me.
And the language. McCarthy is as sharp and beautiful as ever. Sparing when it matters, and full and expository when needed. The language is absolutely beautiful. He is one of the few remaining authors of an older and quickly fading era of poeticism in the narrative.
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy is really, really cool shit.
Next on to its companion book, Stella Maris
