Cormac McCarthy: Stella Maris (2022, Pan Macmillan)
English language
Published Nov. 7, 2022 by Pan Macmillan.
Certainly not as riveting as The Passenger. It's simply a dialectic journey between a traumatized woman and her psychologist in the mental ward. There is lots of interesting scientific philosophy; specifically regarding mathematics and mathematians.
If you liked Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, then you'll like this.
I can't imagine the amount of research into mathematics and physics that McCarthy had to do in order to write both this and The Passenger.
A final note: There is significant overlap in the worldview of Alicia and No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurh, which really has me wondering about the worldview of Cormac McCarthy...because that worldview is pretty bleak.
Literary and very cerebral and 100% dialogue. A brilliant complementary novel to The Passenger that explores genius and the big questions of life, meaning, and purpose. The real genius here is McCarthy. A story only this author could pull off.
This book reads differently from The Passenger, structurally, but is also in conversation with its sister (or should I say brother) novel. The interactions between the two novels is both illuminating on the meaning of both and adding new confusions that wouldn't exist if either novel were read on its own.
But Cormac McCarthy has always baked a certain vagueness into his work, so this should come as no surprise. After all, that's a feature of Cormac McCarthy...particularly with a couple of novels that has the unreality and unknowable nature of reality as one of their themes.
Stella Maris is written as a conversation between Alicia Western and her therapist that is recorded over a series of sessions. To some, this will be similar to the Sunset Limited and for good reason, as one of the central conflicts is very similar. And just as doomed. Where it differs is in …
This book reads differently from The Passenger, structurally, but is also in conversation with its sister (or should I say brother) novel. The interactions between the two novels is both illuminating on the meaning of both and adding new confusions that wouldn't exist if either novel were read on its own.
But Cormac McCarthy has always baked a certain vagueness into his work, so this should come as no surprise. After all, that's a feature of Cormac McCarthy...particularly with a couple of novels that has the unreality and unknowable nature of reality as one of their themes.
Stella Maris is written as a conversation between Alicia Western and her therapist that is recorded over a series of sessions. To some, this will be similar to the Sunset Limited and for good reason, as one of the central conflicts is very similar. And just as doomed. Where it differs is in how heavy the conversation gets, and not just in the expected bleak way. There are extensive contemplations on mathematics, metaphysics, linguistics, the development of the atom bomb... basically, there's a lot to chew on despite it lacking the length and heavy prose of The Passenger.
Though it can certainly be read on its own, I do think there's a certain satisfaction to reading it after or with The Passenger. It certainly makes me want to read both again!
In conclusion, Cormac McCarthy knocked it out of the park with this one. Along with The Passenger, it's a worthy addition to his body of work.
