I really love these novels because you can tell that at some point when he was younger he filled out the whole mystery whodunnit plot, and then with age realized he didn’t need it. Can’t think of many examples of masterpieces released when the artist is 89 like this. Feels so singular. Almost a century of experience. Following up to my post: it reminds me of that letter Akira Kurosawa sent to Ingmar Bergman about how you can’t create a true masterpiece until you achieve your second babyhood in your 80s.
This is without a doubt the best video you’ve posted. Sometimes I wonder how it would have felt like to live when authors such as Joyce, Faulkner and Nabokov were releasing new novels and I remind myself that I live in a time when McCarthy is still alive and he is without a doubt going down in history among the greatest to ever do it. What a privilege it is to be able to say I’ve been there when The Passenger came out.
Wow, thanks so much! Your thoughts mirror my own sentiments. I read the dead masters and have the same thoughts. Then I think about McCarthy, Vollmann, Cartarescu, et al., and it's a great consolation.
@@LeafbyLeaf Have you read Dying Grass, Chris? Shades of both Gaddis and McCarthy in it. I believe Vollmann said somewhere that McCarthy was his favorite living writer.
I know it's gotten a rather lukewarm response so far, but for me, The Passenger is McCarthy's masterpiece. It can be a little clunky at times in its setup, but it reaches farther than anything else he's written and it sort of encompasses his oeuvre. Stella Maris was really neat, but I liked The Passenger more. As far as I'm concerned, McCarthy went out like a G.
Very excited, for your review! Just finished Stella Maris, very good timing. A quote I can't stop thinking about, "The universe never made anything it didn't intend to destroy."
Same for me. There are MyCarthy books I've read over 10 years ago that're still with me. His literature seems to really take residence in my consciousness.
Just finished The Passenger and really enjoyed it. I feel like Cormac doesn’t get enough credit for his humor. I’m not sure any other writer had made me laugh like he does simply because of his timing. He is a master at setting such a bleak stage but will occasionally break out something hilarious that catches you completely off balance-some of the Sheddan parts, Harrogate in Suttree. Those moments are fleeting in his work but damn are they funny. On to Stella Maris!
Not trying to make a habit out of making youtube comments, this may be my fourth one ever, but this video was really great and you deserve the kudos! I thought these books were the best thing to come out last year and you brought up many of the things that I was thinking about while reading them. But really the best part was that you brought up many things I had not noticed or understood, and now I'm going to have to read them again. An interesting thing I noticed from reviews on good reads was that many of the negative reviews noted the "incomprehensible" math and science, which is a fair opinion if the science is not familiar to you. However, what was most odd was that the positive reviews rarely mentioned the math and science which I don't think is a fair assessment because it felt, at least to me, that if the math and science were taken out you'd be left with very little, so what's to like. Perhaps this has changed that was pretty early on and I haven't looked at good reads more recently. Either way your video was quite all encompassing which was certainly a feat with these novels great work!
Hey, Brenden! Your comments are most welcome here, my friend. And I really appreciate the kudos. To be honest--and I'm not trying to be/sound élitist when I say this--I had to stop reading GR reviews a while back. I'll leave it at that. Indeed, McCarthy has given us a sort of "eternal golden braid" composed of the humanities _and_ the sciences (sort of like what Hofstadter did in _GEB_ )! Again--thanks so much for the support and encouragement.
Quantum entanglement is one of the first things that occurred to me when reading both of these, because someone just said that there was an element of quantum "stuff" before I got them to read. They, the brother and sister are always together no matter how far apart.
When I want to find amazing reviews on books, I always know where to go. Chris, you are an astonishing books' reviewer (the best on youtube) and a true source of inspiration. Thank you very much! I owe you so much.
If nothing else, I think the characters of Robert and Alicia Western are some of his most interesting characters he's put to paper. After reading The Passanger, Stella Maris and then the Passanger again, I found myself already missing these two siblings.
You are killing me, I read these books the same way you did, though I confess it took me several readings. I have thoroughly enjoyed your video. These may well be my favorite books, and they form an organic whole. I saw "The Passenger" as a narrative orbiting the massive object of "Stella Maris;" "Stella Maris" transforms "The Passenger," as opening and closing blinds with contrasting patterns not only reveals the view outside, but changes the view depending upon the pattern on the side of the blind we look through. You've done very well. Thank you.
What a marvelous summation of the deep mystery that is the late Cormac's McCarthy's last masterpiece(s). These are books that demand multiple readings. He doesn't take you by the hand. He makes you do the work. I speak of him as if he is still with us. And in a sense, he is. Thank you.
If you view your video analytics, just know that I'm bailing on your video at the 2 min 30 sec mark not because it's bad, but because I haven't read my copies yet but now I'm more enthusiastic to do so than ever. I'll be back to this one in a few weeks. Thanks for your channel!
Excellent analysis of both books, I smiled every time you mentioned that you'd read a passage. I personally found the scientific thoughts and references that feature heavily in SM to challenge the reader - who whilst maybe relatively well read (Shakespeare, Homer, The Bible) has minimal mathematical or physics knowledge and that considering the volume of written work on these subjects, we as enjoyers of novels are wholly ignorant of that World - let alone the World that they attempt to discover.
Thank you so much for shedding light on these magical books. Listening to you breaking down the structure and highlighting the subtle, and not so subtle nuances really filled me with joy and the desire to reread
Part 1 "In one of Plato’s last dialogues, he describes a metaphysical debate that was raging during his own day. In Sophist 246a-c we read: Stranger: What we shall see is something like a battle of gods and giants going on between them over their quarrel about reality. Theaetetus: How so? Stranger: One party is trying to drag everything down to earth out of heaven and the unseen, literally grasping rocks and trees in their hands, for they lay hold upon every stock and stone and strenuously affirm that real existence belongs only to that which can be handled and offers resistance to the touch. They define reality as the same thing as body, and as soon as one of the opposite party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not listen to another word. Theaetetus: The people you describe are certainly a formidable crew. I have met quite a number of them before now. Stranger: Yes, and accordingly their adversaries are very wary in defending their position somewhere in the heights of the unseen, maintaining with all their force that true reality consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms. In the clash of argument they shatter and pulverize those bodies which their opponents wield, and what those others allege to be true reality they call, not real being but a sort of moving process of becoming. On this issue an interminable battle is always going on between two camps. In this text, Plato makes reference to a metaphysical dispute that, to put it in contemporary terms, centers on the existence of abstract entities. We cannot investigate the details of this debate here-some aspects of the dialogue will be covered in chapter ten. For now, it will help to clarify the nature of metaphysical issues and positions if we state what this debate is about and what the major options have been regarding it. Let us define the 'universe' as the total spatiotemporal system of matter and (impersonal) energy, that is, as the sum total of material objects, in some way accessible to the senses and to scientific investigation. The universe consists of individual things, events, and processes that exist within space and time, for example, atoms, rocks, rivers, osmosis, and flashes of lightning. For any entity in the universe, it is appropriate to ask where and when it is. In addition to the universe, many philosophers have, like Plato, believed in another realm of entities that are called abstract objects. Abstract objects are immaterial (i.e., nonphysical) entities that do not exist inside space and time; instead, they are timeless and spaceless. It makes no sense to ask where or when they exist. There have been many examples of abstract entities: properties, relations, sets, numbers, and propositions. On this view, 'properties' are entities that can be exemplified by many things at the same time (e.g., redness, goodness, triangularity, humanness) and 'relations' are entities that can relate two or more things and can be in more than one group of things at the same time (e.g., brighter than, father of, larger than). Properties and relations are called 'universals' because, as was mentioned, they can be in more than one thing at once or can relate more than one group at once. Several apples can have the same color of red and several groups of people can enter into the “father of” relation.
I have a selfish appreciation for the mixed reviews that these books received, because having my expectations lowered just meant I was that much more blown away when I finally got around to them. They're now among my favorite works of fiction. I haven't been able to shake the idea of The Kid actually being something of an "interdimensional being", like you said... I think this is as close as McCarthy ever got to writing an actual sci-fi novel, with actual aliens, haha. Especially in light of the Archatron, and what Alicia says about The Kid being "sent" and "salvaged up out of a bleak sea"... which made me think that the strange nature of that plane crash might've been even stranger than is let on, hence the government's involvement. Maybe it's far-fetched, or "not fetched far enough"... Regardless, these books' emphasis on "we'll just never know", all the way to the end, is perfectly fitting. It's masterwork, no doubt. Thanks for your review.
the fine sweet edge of his grief was thinning...............white as applhalves.........smallmouth water.....there is no greater writer in english alive.....a brilliant and loving tribute.....i will share more on your ig, ....this novel (i take both as 1 book) is THE great reading experience of my 2022 as well.....a beautiful brilliant analysis chris....just beautiful and fitting....thank you, b....shaped in the rim lighting.....
Great video and great two books. I’m surprised you didn’t bring up anything about Alicia describing drowning in lake Tahoe, it was one of the most uncomfortable scenes i’ve ever read in a McCarthy novel. Brilliantly terrifying.
He's talking about the "Kekkule' Problem" in that part of Stella Maris, I think. We don't think in "language" and yet we do think. No one knows where the thoughts come from. The language comes after the thought.
I really like thinking about this sort of a things. Just recently started reading Blanchot and he talks about the "Tyrannical Prehension." The writer grasps his other hand that hold the pen and refuses to let go and the "sick-hand" grasps for the pen as it falls, the pen is however the shadow of the pen, not the actual pen (not the actual words). If we can't grasp where are thoughts come from, are we the passenger? Not saying this is what the book is about but the passenger theme makes sense when you think about the paranoia and mental illness in the novel.
Amazing once again, and so relieved by your typically powerful insight. Always blown away by what can be gleaned from a run-through like this. McCarthy's prose is laced with kernels of vocabulary and grammatical pieces, and it requires the reader to be a bit unflinching and okay with stopping and really thinking about these highly concentrated kernels. Thanks Chris!
Good find with that number 7. All McCarthy novels have some sort of numerology to them. Blood meridian has number 8, The Crossing has 3, Outer Dark has 2 etc. The Orchard Keeper also puts importance on the number 7 btw. Secondly, I think TK is Clairvoyant. His rambles are unmediated because he can't seem to separate the events temporally. P.S. Recommending Robert Walser.
I should've known the numerological element wasn't new (it only stood out to me in these books). Thanks for this edification! Great thinking around TK, too. Walser is firmly on my radar!
Part 2 A 'set' is a group or collection of things called the members of the set. The set of all numbers from one to ten is an example of a set. 'Numbers' are the things that enter into certain mathematical relationships, for example, addition, subtraction. 'Propositions' are the contents expressed in declarative sentences and contained in people’s minds when they are thinking. Propositions are also the things that are either true or false and that can be related to each other by means of the laws of logic (e.g., “if, then,” “if and only if”). Let us call the 'world' the sum total of everything whatever that exists including nonspatiotemporal abstract entities as well as the spatiotemporal universe of physical entities. The metaphysical debate alluded to by Plato can now be put as follows: Do abstract entities exist? Or put another way: Does the world exist or is there only a universe? 'Ontologists' are those philosophers who, like Plato, believe in the world and abstract entities. The term 'naturalism' has many different meanings, but a standard use of the term defines it as the view that the universe alone exists. Since most current forms of naturalism are physicalist in flavor, naturalism has come to mean that reality is exhausted by the spatiotemporal world of physical objects accessible in some way to the senses and embraced by our best scientific theories. The naturalist has three tasks before he or she can defend naturalism as a broad metaphysical view: -The naturalist must show that mental entities are not real (a) by denying their existence outright (e.g., since beliefs, if they exist, must be mental, then we should treat beliefs like a flat earth and deny that there are such things) or (b) by reducing them to physical entities in space and time (e.g., beliefs exist, but they are really nothing but states of the brain) or (c) by trying to show that in some way or another they depend on the physical world for their existence. -The naturalist must deny that properties and relations are abstract entities by either (a) denying that they exist (extreme nominalism) or (b) accepting the existence of properties and relations but treating them as material realities that are wholly inside of space and time (nominalism and impure realism). -The naturalist must show that abstract entities are not real by either (a) denying their existence outright (e.g., propositions, like witches, do not exist at all) or (b) reducing them to physical entities in space and time (e.g., propositions exist, but they are really nothing but physical scratchings called sentences). The debate between ontologists and naturalists is a clear example of a metaphysical dispute. We mention it here only as an illustration of metaphysics and not as an occasion to journey into the nuances of the dispute. However, proposition (1) will be discussed in chapters eleven through fourteen and to a lesser degree in chapters fifteen and sixteen. Propositions (2) and (3) (especially 2) will be a major center of focus in chapter ten. However, before we can look at these issues, a more fundamental set of metaphysical notions should be clarified (see chap. 9): the nature of existence, identity, and reductionism. To these issues we now turn." -J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig
I just started a book club in the local library in Lisbon inspired by your passion in reading and sharing your thoughts this genuinely. First session will be happening this coming April, and I'm hoping to do Roland Topor's The Tenant. Sending you love from the Portuguese capital, love your channel more and more each time you upload a new video.
That's such a wonderful initiative! Congratulations on spearheading the book club. As for Lisbon, I feel so desperate to get Pessoa and Saramago on this channel! All my best to you!
Thank you for posting this, I very much appreciated the considerable time you took putting this together and the thought you put into it as well. Although I have no background in computer science I have always been a science geek and a massive McCarthy fan since reading Blood Meridian and was instantly hooked. The physics and mathematics in both books are in fact what make them so enjoyable. Admittedly my degree in philosophy helped, and since that included a lot of philosophy of science the themes McCarthy treats were like candy, I just enjoyed reading them so much and having being crafted by a poet made them all that more delicious. I viewed the story as more of an excuse to get the characters into situations where these conversations could occur and that doesn’t bother me as much as it would for some who wanted a story and found the discussions rather tangential. I suspect that no one can truly understand how these two novels hang together or what McCarthy is trying to convey, in one reading. These books will need to be read and considered over and over as they probably should, for years to come. We may find them to have actually been the pinnacle of his career rather than a so called ‘misfire’.
I flew through these books when they came out last year. For whatever reason a New Orleans setting always fascinates me. I'm excited to make my way through your video!
I listened to both of these on audiobook last December while I was working lonely night shifts stocking grocery store shelves, and it rocked me. I felt like McCarthy had opened a trap door into the depths of his mind and I was a "passenger" being drawn further and further into a mystery with no end and no solutions. They feel so strangely personal, which only adds to their power. I have a deep gratitude for McCarthy's final gift of these novels.
Just found your channel after finishing Stella Maris last night and wanting to read and listen to other people's thoughts and reactions. Great video. I really didn't enjoy The Passenger because of the lack of conclusion to any story arc, but I immediately started Stella Maris hoping it would redeem it. Somewhere about halfway through Stella Maris I made the particle entanglement connection and both works just completely opened up for me from there. Together they're really something very special. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on other videos.
Yes, yes! Exactly! After I had that connection in mind, it was like the whole experience moved into a new realm. My thoughts have started to consider the parallels between how entangled particles work and the way Bobby and Alicia operate throughout the book. Thinking about how flipping one entangled particle to + (positive) automatically flips its connected mate to - (negative), I've thought about how when Bobby was in a coma (-), Alicia was most active (+); and when Bobby awakened (+), Alicia was dead (-). I also have a new way of thinking about the +/- style of the contractions and omitted contractions. It's time to read the books again!
@@LeafbyLeaf And it's observation that cements the +/- of the entangled particles. Alicia says multiple times in Stella Maris that in her suicidal ideation, she plans for her body to not be found. Yet on the opening page of The Passenger, she ties a red ribbon around her. McCarthy tells us she intended to be found. Why? Because when the hunter observes her dead, he collapses the wave function. Death itself wasn't enough; observation of her death was crucial. Alicia's death means Bobby must be alive.
Thanks for this review. Reading these two books was a mysterious and wonderful experience. The Passenger was an overwhelming and and all-consuming enterprise for me, so much so, that I immediately read it again as soon as I had finished it. If any other author had these redundancies, plots not being resolved, didactic set pieces and characters like this that seem ridiculously implausible I would have scoffed and stopped reading. However the overall effect was one of almost unbearable poignancy. I have read "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian" but The Passenger is far and away Cormac's best book. It is a shame he is no longer with us as I wonder what he would have come up with next. cheers from Australia.
Yo, love your work! Haven't heard this discussed elsewhere-what do you think of the possibility that the incestuous relationship between the siblings may have been consummated? Although both characters vehemently deny it, we have two dream sequences in The Passenger that toy with the possibility: the first describes "the floor lay littered with the stillborn forms of their efforts and still they labored on, the raw half-sentient mud quivering red in the autoclave." (woah); the second is a dialogue with a doctor who seems to be discussing a stillborn fetus with Bobby and asking whether Alicia should have to see it. I get that they're dream sequences, but they're rather specific in echoing each other. To cap it off, we have the Thalidomide Kid-perhaps thalidomide played a part in a potential stillbirth from Alicia, hence the halluncination? This is all I've got, but would be interested if you (or anyone else) had found any other relevant passages!
I think you've offered a striking show of evidence to support the claim of consummation! I remember when I encountered one of the surreal sequences, it made me wonder if Alice and Bobby were born at the same time, with Alice trailing slightly behind. But then I remembered their age difference. The consummation is unquestionably hinted at, and it's a familiar trope in the McCarthyverse, but, unlike, say, _Outer Dark_ , there's a reason we're left ambivalent. The next logical question is: what changes about the literature if the consummation did v. did not happen? (Re: "woah": Whoa indeed! What a writer.)
While at Ibiza, Bobby has a conversation where some "interesting criminals" who used to live there are mentioned. One of them was "a first class art forger". This is a reference to Elmyr de Hory, who was a subject in Orson Welles' "documentary" movie F for Fake. It was probably just there for flavor but I thought it was neat. Wonder how many other easter eggs are hidden in the text.
@@alphonseelric5722 McCarthy would've been living in Ibiza at the same time as de Hory, but I'm not aware of any connection between them. Feel free to share if you know!
When a person speaks or writes, the person will use a certain structure again and again, and most of the time the person is not even aware that he or she is using that structure repeatedly - for example, using an apostrophe in "would have" but no apostrophe in "can not." The FBI and CIA know this, and this is one way they hunt criminals. When the FBI was hunting the Unabomber, they analyzed his 'manifesto' and compared it to a letter they obtained from a man who had received the letter from his brother, a highly intelligent mathematician-turned-recluse named Ted Kaczynski. Both writings had the same underlying structure, and the FBI knew Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber.
I know some people who attended five years of elementary school, three years of middle school, four years of high school, and four years of college, but still cannot properly use 'there, their, and they're.' Those tricky homophones!
Yay, im so glad, I just started The Passenger. 100 pages in, and I'm glad to get your encouragement! Ok you just moved beyond my place, I will return, thank you for your insights!!!
@20:10 "water droplets on a wire". Electrons are quantum. Wave-particle duality: It's just such a beautiful concept! Along with all other quantum objects, an electron is partly a wave and partly a particle. To be more accurate, an electron is neither literally a traditional wave nor a traditional particle, but is instead a quantized fluctuating probability wavefunction. Electrical energy does not travel though the wire as sound travels through air but instead always travels in the space outside of the wires. This is because electric energy is composed of electric and magnetic fields which are created by the moving electrons, but which exist in the space surrounding the wires.
I think one of the great things about these two books is I didn't understand almost any of the maths stuff and alot of this went over my head... I think but these books really spoke to me. I read them faster than any novels I've read before and think about them all the time. Anyway that's all I wanted to say ❤
I think McCarthy did a great job keeping all of the heady material very evocative, such that, even for those of us who didn't understand it, it was still sort of exhilarating. Plus, it helps us to see just how brilliant Stella was.
Hey Chris. I preordered these books and got each of them when they were released. They’ve been sitting on my shelf (like many other unread books) and I kind of decided not to read them any time soon. Then I listened to the first 2 minutes of this video, and now I have to read them! You have made a major contribution to my already high level of book-FOMO 😉. Thanks Chris! On a more serious note, you are awesome! Jeff.
On my youtube site, SCOTT SHEPARD, I have recently posted an analysis in which I compare THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS to Robert Pirsig's ZEN AND THE ART of MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE and LILA. One of the key elements in my study is how the creation of the atom bomb influences Bobby and Alicia, because of the roles played by their parents. CORMAC MCCARTHY & ROBERT PIRSIG, GENIUS, DEATH, & INSANITY. Some fascinating characters here: Bobby, Alicia, and for Pirsig, his alter ego, Phaedrus.
OK, you got my attention! I happen to have really been moved by those two Pirsig books. I consider them part of the books that directly helped form my Weltanschauung!
Thank you for another in-depth and riveting analysis on this important writer. My only experience with McCarthy the writer (I have seen, and loved, the movie adaptations of NCfOM and The Road) is with Blood Meridian which I could only read in short snippets with long breaks in between (hey, I'm a sensitive reader, what can I say...). This video has inspired me to get back into him. I have started The Road as a read aloud with my teenaged kids. I am as much interested in their reaction as my own. Thanks for the videos, Chris!
Coincidentally, _The Road_ was my first McCarthy. Incredible experience. I bought it in Sweden for my return flight. Started reading it in the terminal, then the plane was delayed on the tarmac for almost four hours. I had finished the book before we even lifted off! I then spent nearly the whole flight under the book’s spell. I was almost physically and emotionally immobilized.
As I've talked to others about these books since making the video, I've felt the same way. It just shows that one reading is insufficient for what McCarthy has given us. Thanks for the encouragement!
Wish I could like a second time😅 I must bow out again as I await Stella Maris in the mail. Thank you for your diligence in explaining the physics passages. I will be back after I finish part 2. (Stella)I'm glad I hung in there. It really picked up for me 1/3 of the way in. Of course, the opening scene was masterful, I had to get used to the "kid" -gratitude to you again
Alicia asks the Kid how he gets around. He talks about being a passenger on a bus. When she moves it takes him a while to find her. Seems like he does move around on yhe physical plane is what I'm getting at. Maybe he took a plane ride to find Bobby and give him a sense of closure. Maybe he was the missing passenger on the plane. And the men who were following Bobby knew that he was connected to this otherworldly visitor.
Thanks for this, including the review & podcast responses. I’m wondering if Dr. Cohen, not Alicia, is closer to a stand-in or loose mouthpiece for McCarthy, based on his Santa Fe Institute experiences (and maybe whether Alicia is a surprising amalgamation, as seen through a novelist’s eyes, of all the experts he’s chatted with).
Enjoyed your synopsis tremendously. I loved these two books and you brought up some things I missed. My feeling is that in these books he polished the story and dialogue to say exactly what he wanted to say- I don’t think he could have improved on them. I read the two books in three days- I could not put them down. I think the titles are also important. I believe McCarthy, throughout these books is saying that all the characters (including the reader) are the passengers. McCarthy is constantly hammering at the question as to who is the pilot (the creator)? He leaves two options open- either there is no creator and that is why the world does not make sense, or that, like the Gnostics he believes the world is fundamentally flawed. I kept wondering who sent the Kid? I believe the Kid is trying to be helpful but he himself is flawed. The Kid is either an external agent and somewhat inept, or a figment of Alicia’s mind that shows even she is not able to have the world make sense. He may be a helpful Archon that is trying to band aid a broken world. Since the Kid is physically flawed and also ultimately fails at helping Alicia McCarthy is saying that the Kid was made by the same flawed creator. I think of Melville's line when Ahab is discussing Moby Dick-McCarthy wants to know who was behind the pasteboard mask? The story is about as tragic as possible. It seems that the final straw that pushes Alicia to suicide is she thinks her brother is either going to die or will be a vegetable. How can the world be so cruel with the ultimate irony that Bobby survives and finds out his sister who he loves above all else has killed herself? Finally- Stella Maris also means guiding light. What does it mean for her to kill herself under their care? I believe McCarthy is saying that we are ignorant (and through no fault of ourselves) ultimately just passengers- but I will have to think about that title some more. Also, there are several indications of a Demiurge and Archons either trying to keep us from the truth or perhaps trying to protect us from the truth so we don’t go insane. I think McCarthy feels the closest we can come to understanding the truth is our subconscious and that math may be the language pointing to the truth. However, McCarthy references some physics concepts (including the double slit experiment and quantum physics) that imply that at a fundamental level the universe does not make sense. This may be him emphasizing that truth is beyond our understanding- or conversely that we may not like the answers. Finally, I think the ultimate proof of the fundamental flaw in the universe is that Alicia and Bobby have a pure love for each other and part of the sadness in this world is that this sort of love is doomed. Also, a similar theme is shown with the transvestite who loves Bobby. Bobby’s reply to her is devastating- “I know. Another time. Another world.” In physics there is nothing that prevents the existence of parallel worlds. Bobby may be saying that maybe there may be some other world were things may be different- but not this one. I have an engineering degree so I don’t know if that is part of the reason I loved these books- they are gorgeous. I think these are right up there with Blood Meridian. Also, I like the idea of entangled particles- that was something I did not think about.
Wow, these are very provocative reads. I keep thinking he was weaving his SFI gleanings on mathematics into a story. 1972 and 1980 transposed, via coma? And the Romeo and Juliette dilemma, in a way. The idea of them being two entangled particles is great! And since Mathematics and the Unconscious are beyond language, his attempt to have " literature" - not just language - participate or function bearing primordial truths. He really has stretched, to touch the sun, in this one.
▫️just finished reading these two books published in Brazil. Your videos are great! I used to come here and watch this video by pieces to avoid spoilers while moving forward with reading. 🐝💙✨✨✨
Hello my friend, Ive been itching to read a novel lately so I came to see what you've been talking about. I received the hardcover books for Christmas, so I think that ill watch your video and start reading!
Do you feel like these absolutely have to be read together or could one be enjoyed alone for a time before reading Stella: in other words could I read them with other books in between? I barely have time as it is hah
I have to ask: is there any chance Bobby and Alicia are lying about their relationship? They both deny that any consummation happened, but there are multiple references to babies, crying babies, Alicia’s desperate desire for a child, the reference at the end of the Passenger to the baptism of a dead baby, the physicality of the Thalidomide Kid… and then a scene in the Passenger with nothing really preceding it or referencing it again, where Bobby talks to a doctor while Alicia is ostensibly anesthetized, where they talk around whether she’s “seen it” and the doctor advises him that he doesn’t have to tell her. Was there a child?
Check out the contractions without apostrophes and see if they align with an uneducated character. Perhaps he's showing how they would write these words... or perhaps he's redefining how we should treat these contractions in the future. Kinda like saying AX is a perfectly good alternative for ASK. Actually easier off the tongue. Perhaps he's expressing the need to simplify writing.
I found the Turing test comment interesting. especially in relation to her psychiatric evaluations and how she had such an understanding that she could aim for a given result /confound the tester.
Absolutely fantastic video as always, Chris! I’ve got the box set waiting on my shelves, and I can’t wait to get to them (I couldn’t help but ignore your advice regarding watching before reading!). Question: do you plan to read/make a video on the latest edition of Divine Days by Leon Forrest?
Thanks so much! I don't _think_ you could really spoil these books, to be honest, so you should be OK. As regards Forrest, I've been at work on a long essay of his life and work for going on something like 3 years now--I can't seem to bring it to a satisfactory close. But, yes, out of this effort I want to do videos on all his work. Amazing writer!
Holy hell. Chris Thank you so much. This work elevated my understanding and appreciation of these books. I’ve loved McCarthy for years but Ive always known I’m staring up at a mountain. I know it’s beautiful and significant but I’ll never truely get it. You’ve helped me get a bit closer. How can I support your work? I couldn’t see a Patreon?
Very kind of you. I don't have a Patreon, but you can "buy me a coffee" using the KoFi link in the video description, if you so desire. When it comes to writers like McCarthy, we're always ascending the mountain with an ever-receding summit. All best to you!
Confession: I'm not a McCarthy fan. However, buzz was substantial enough for me to feel the need to at least take look at these two books. The first put me off within a few pages, and I gave up. The second grabbed me instantly within a couple pages. But I have to hold off on finishing it till I'm done with "You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine".
Update: I liked Stella so much that I went back and gave Passenger a second chance. It turned out to be 10 times better. Great, serious book. Not easy; a tad over my head. For some reason Passenger brings Coetzee to mind.
Wow, yes entangled particles...I keep thinking the two are involved in some bending of time...1972 and 1980 seem to not be part of linear time(?) I don't know how to explain. I could be trying to justify the disjointedness, but I can't help but think he is weaving these SFI gleanings of mathematicians into a story.
Hey there! I think your method of going in completely blind really helped your reading of these texts. My good friend sent me this interview he found ahead of the books release: m.ua-cam.com/video/HrUy1Vn2KdI/v-deo.html - not realizing that this would in some way influence my reading, I watched it. What makes it interesting is that there are lines almost verbatim in this interview that are in the passenger and Stella Maris - it felt almost like these texts were the most “transparent” texts of mccarthy yet in that we see in Alisha a female mccarthy-Ian intellectual- it’s as if Alisha is a mccarthy we could see ourselves loving and or fucking. We could read Bobby as a prototypical McCarthy protagonist- the intelligent but rugged intellectual who reveals his intelligence indirectly and almost seems to keep it at bay lest he reveal too much; Alisha is mccarthy but almost like who mccarthy would like to be- Alisha too isn’t completely revealing and plays a kind of game with her analyst- but her concerns are McCarthy’s intellectual concerns- his own sense of wonder at “brilliant” people- the interviews focus on “intelligence” is really interesting. I highly recommend watching it along with the reviews before your next video. His admiration for Oppenheimer comes through in the book and in the interview. I find it odd (or perhaps fateful?) that we are about to get an film from Chris Nolan on Oppenheimer just shortly after these texts were published. I see the relation too between the Sunset Limited and this text as well with White’s speech on “Dachau” - - What if the incest theme also touches the relation between mccarthy and his reader with incest as also a kind of relation of the reader and McCarthy with Alisha being a kind of acceptable link between the meeting of two minds? I suppose that’s kinda what you are getting at with the 2 halves (I assume you are referring to Aristophanes myth in Plato’s symposium?
Yep, I precisely intended the Aristophanes allusion (couldn't think of the exact citation at the time of recording). Speaking of coincidences with the upcoming Noland film: I just finished reading _Solenoid_ by Mircea Cărtărescu, and not only are the same themes of topology and quantum mechanics in the book (it was originally published in 2015)--but there is also explicit use of Charles Hinton's conception of a tesseract that mirrored Christopher Nolan's depiction at the end of _Interstellar_ ! Thanks so much for the link to the interview. Now that I've read the books, I'll check it out.
Enjoyed listening to your discussion and glad you enjoyed them so much. Unfortunately The Passenger didn't really work for me but Stella Maris was a very poignant and moving read. It was a difficult read (emotionally) but I found Stella Maris to be the superior work of fiction.
Super excited to watch this, I've been waiting for you to release a video on these books. These were my first McCarthy novels and I couldn't put them down. The conversation between Bobby and Debussy in the latter half of the second chapter had some of the best and most poignant writing I've ever read. I can't wait to read the rest of his work!
Question: Why does she see a "thalidomide Kid?" Has she used this drug, for some reason, without having a child yet an effect of the drug shapes the hallucinations? No defected baby but just the image in her mind? Maybe her own , Alicia's mother, had the drug? Wondering...weird.
I came to these new books only about a month after I discovered Blood Meridian-and was blown away by it. I don’t know if McCarthy’s other books follow the Blood Meridian pattern, but because of Blood Meridian I came to The Passenger and Stella Maris on high alert for cleverly hidden clues to DEVASTATING REALIZATIONS to come. I was ready to interpret characters partly as allegories. I was also looking for a momentous climax of some kind in the book’s last few pages, like in Blood Meridian. Right now I judge the new books POSITIVELY: they tried something original and ambitious and arguably succeeded. But I can see a rational reader taking a NEGATIVE PERSPECTIVE, which might be summarized something like this: “McCarthy is just vomiting up his pet philosophical musings through the mouth of a genius character in his story; the genius character is not realistic; the love story is not compelling.” I’ll mention one other specific concrete flaw in the books below, but now let me turn to my positive interpretation of the story. The story can be said to be “about” multiple things, but let me start with the suggestion that The Passenger is about schizophrenia, or more broadly: ways we try to attribute meaning to the events of our lives. We are reminded in the text that there is a genetic component to schizophrenia. The sister is diagnosed with some kind of (atypical) schizophrenia. Meanwhile the brother discusses various paranoid theories with people he knows. To quote Nirvana, “just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.” When The Kid comes to visit the brother, I saw that as a dramatic confirmation that the brother has a milder case of whatever the sister has. No magical (or quantum physical) explanations are required, since he has heard her describe The Kid in detail. Two possible, hypothetical routes to some kind of salvation for the brother or sister appear in the story. One is their LOVE. In other works of literature, love is often presented as the purpose or meaning of life; and we are told that love conquers all. The brother and sister represent a deep and pure tragic love like that between Romeo and Juliet. The other potential path to salvation in the books is MATH, PHYSICS, PHILOSOPHY-some kind of intellectual or transcendental insight or mode of being that might “make it all worthwhile.” As I read I was looking for some way the two (love and math-physics) could be married to create some kind of consummation of their love, or redemption and peace, or something. So now the story is not just about schizophrenia, and I would say it’s not really about math, or the atomic bomb, or the Kennedy assassination either. It’s about whether there is a way to interpret life that is not…nihilistic or absurd or tragic. At least for these characters. We start with the puzzle of the missing passenger in the submerged plane. We realize that is not where we are going to get answers. These characters are also past looking for ultimate answers from organized religion. So we (they) are left with love, or modern physics and math. Over the course of the story we are presented with various dreams and hallucinations that might be clues to some transcendental reality in which the lovers are able to fulfill Alicia Western’s impossible dream of having a child with her brother. We have Miss Vivian, the older woman obsessed with the screaming of babies-could she be some kind of future-past Alicia? We have the possibility that the pair did have sex but lied about it or repressed the memory. Maybe there was even an abortion, and the Kid is an image of that and mechanism for “not thinking about that.” We have some characteristically McCarthian passages describing dark creatures emerging from strange primordial demonic soups. Most dramatically to me, we have the moment where the Kid brings a trunk and inside the trunk is a doll and the trunk is labeled Property of Western Union but the Kid reads it as “PROGENY OF WESTERN UNION.” Given that the siblings are named Western, “Progeny of Western Union” was like a slap in the face. On the next page Alicia is crying and saying she’s sorry to the doll. I thought that had to be a baby. The only thing that didn’t fit is that she said “I was only six years old.” What could that mean, I thought. Maybe the answer is in the unread letter in The Passenger. Nope. (Spoiler answer: she was six years old; the doll was just a doll. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”) I was also carefully noting the allusions to physics and math. The main way I could see modern physics contributing to actualizing their love would be through the phenomenon of ENTANGLEMENT, whereby distant parts of a quantum system can be in instantaneous interaction no matter how far apart. Interestingly, this central concept in quantum physics was not really discussed explicitly but only hinted at for example when Alicia says she’d like to discuss BELL’S THEOREM in Stella Maris. In Stella Maris we also get references to the possibility of loops in time, and the possibility that “simulation” will be the real “afterlife.” Will the final pages reveal that they had sex and a baby? Or that their love created a quantum baby “made purely of light” that needed to be protected in some platonic realm? Or that Bobby’s life was just a simulation his brain created in a coma? Or that they are their own parents and that somehow that’s why Bobby or Alicia or maybe their mom is the missing passenger in the plane? (That last one isn’t even coherent, I don’t think.) No. We get a bit more about sex-talk and dreams between them, but no consummation nor any baby. I don’t think we get any far-out modern physics interpretation such as Philip K Dick might have written. No, the “boring” interpretation of the story works just fine: they had a forbidden love, they were miserable, and they died lonely and apart. They were preoccupied with things that could never solve the real problem: we’re all dead in the end. None of the potential “reveals” I could imagine as a reader would really solve the existential problem the characters face. But if the book did end with a reveal like that, that would give us as readers a sort of satisfaction that the characters can’t access-and neither can we in real life. So if there is an articulable point to the story, it might be a sort of warning to us newfangled atheistic types who get intoxicated by the apparent profundities of math and physics-that although they might appear to give us alternatives to traditional religion for making sense of the world, and making it appear benign or intelligent (as in the line in Stella Maris where she says the issue is whether the universe might be intelligent)-we might trick ourselves into thinking science offers an alternative optimistic worldview-but no. This book is a smack in the face to wake us out of our smug scientist-minded worldview. So ultimately, we pass THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS LIKE ALICE AND LEWIS CARROLL, BUT END UP BACK IN THIS BLEAK WORLD WITH SCHOPENHAUER. In Schopenhauer’s view the universe does have a mind, but it’s not conscious except in us and other animals. The mind of the universe is a blind will to exist that leads to different parts of the universe eating each other not realizing they are eating themselves. So everything lives according to urges we don’t understand, suffers more or less, and disappears with no lasting trace. Aside from the many funny parts in The Passenger (perhaps unexpected in such a dark story), the faint happy notes in the story result from human connections, such as the holding of hands at the end of Stella Maris. One other point I have not seen mentioned by others is THE RED SASH that Alicia’s body is wearing at the start of The Passenger. In Stella Maris she says she wants to be completely erased from existence and not found, but in the Passenger we are told explicitly that she wore a red sash “so that she’d be found.” So maybe she had developed her relationship with Dr. Cohen enough that she wanted to reestablish a connection with the rest of humanity-if only after her death. In summary: the worst spoiler for this story is: there are no spoilers. What appear to be spoilers are decoys. There are no spoilers because there are no satisfying answers that can be revealed, to the problems faced by the characters-or us. Final note regarding an apparent flaw: the author uses “dubious” multiple times when he appears to mean “doubtful.” This is not so minor because the characters are supposed to be hyper-intelligent and hyper-educated, and they make a habit of correcting others’ pronunciation and grammar. So it broke the spell for me (to some extent) when it turned out they don’t know the difference between DUBIOUS and DOUBTFUL.
Dear Sir, I’m saving your intellectual erudition (including the balletic glissade……) for further examination. Quiet bedtime and my notes may blot out the depravity of US capitalism for the near insomniac future……..I’ll be including Descates! ….. again, with much admiration, Miss Jenny (music & mathematics theory teacher), Manhattan.
There's an excellent documentary on UA-cam re thalidomide children and the pure evil of the family who owned the company and continued distribution even though they knew what was happening. Another reason countries should produce their own pharmaceuticals.
In addition to this duo, I've tried other McCarthy novels before and both in tone and concept, it was incomprehensible. I truly believe it is the great "white male barrier" -- only the same audience as the author can afford the greatest lucidity. I say this because I struggled also with books like Fight Club. P.S. My undergrad was in English and I work at a public library, so no, it is not necessarily a cerebral blockage.
Do you think it's perhaps the _violence_ factor of his books (notably you thought of _Fight Club_ as a related case; I'm not a fan of _Fight Club_ myself)? I know a lot of people, even white males, who cannot connect with McCarthy because of the harshness of the tone and concepts, stemming from McCarthy's violent conception of the world. For whatever reason, I'm able to bracket off some of this (not sure that's a good thing!). Thanks so much for your comment!
I have a question. Why don't your write novels yourself? Maybe I have not watched enough of your videos to know what you do career-wise, though I was curious since you've read a lifetime worth of literature.
He has done a 4-part AMA series where he gets to that. If I remember correctly, he works in something something IT related and did always program etc on the side. I don't remember if he studied IT or only literature. In the same video he said that he writes everything out in longhand, which I don't rember if it is a reference to a book/s he is writing or just his rare book reviews. Greetings.
@tobsi2256 did a great summary here. I've worked full-time in IT, mostly as a programmer, since I was 15 (I'm now 38)--but I'm a lifelong reader raised by educators. I've got an AAS in Programming, a BA in Computer Science, and an MA in Literature. I've written several novels, a ream of short stories, and poems that will never see anyone else's eyes. But I've not had any of that published. Starting in 2018, however, I have been writing reviews and essays, which are published in various places. In general, when it comes to writing my own novels, I find that I'm much happier reading than writing. And I have read so many novels to have achieved far greater than I ever could. Not that it's a competition and I am bowing out because I can't be the best. It's just the simple fact that I'm more fulfilled as a reader. So I tend to spend my time reading great work and imploring others to do likewise. There is a novel I've been at work on for over 5 years now. Still in the first draft, writing it out longhand. I'm not rushing it. Just pouring into it when I'm inspired. One day it will reach a point where I'm ready to type out the second draft. Eventually, I'll shop it around. But it'll likely be my last attempt to publish original imaginative work. Harold Bloom published a novel early in his career and he realized that the temptation for readers/critics to write their own novels is not necessarily one that should be pursued. In the end, I have gotten so much deep respect for those who do the craft of writing well.
@@LeafbyLeaf wow, thanks for responding! I ask simply because I do hear, when it comes to writing, people should be full-time writers if they have the talent for it. I'm interested in doing just that, though I fail to recognize how one has the "talent" for such vocation.
If you want my insight, I’d say, these days, there’s no clear-cut path for writers. There are great, best-selling authors who are also full-time professors. I personally know one writer who, even after spending 20 years working full-time as a writer, with successful publications with Doubleday, is now getting a supplemental job in the private sector. Most people who recognize that they have tur vocation of a writer end up going to MFA programs and then get a job as a staff writer, journalist, teacher, etc., while pursuing their own writing on the side until they’ve established themselves enough to support full-time writing. Then again-there are plenty of phenomenal writers who never took even a single writing class. I think it’s mostly about the lifestyle you’re comfortable with that will dictate which path you take. But, in the end, those who are the true writers cannot stop writing. No matter their circumstances, they are absolutely compelled to write, write, write.
Wow. I'm surprised you enjoyed this so much. I read 200 pages of The Passenger and could not go on. It seemed like a parody of bad pretentious writing.
Bookmark. Cont @ 46:00 @ 25:21 Bobby dives the wreck with a friend named Euler? Is there a reason for this? What is Bobby doing with a great mathematician? "Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. * He introduced much of modern "mathematical terminology and notation", including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and *music* *theory* ." @ 27:00 P108 auto? Autobio? " "Otto" "Robert" Frisch, *Austrian-born* British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Lise Meitner he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission (coining the term) and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator Rudolf Peierls[1] he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940." @ 29:30 who is "the missing passenger"...? @ 33:15 Greatest line ever: "The purpose of all families in their lives and in their deaths is to create the traitor who will finally erase their history, forever." @ 33:35 who is the traitor here? Good question. Why does he call the kid "the kid" just like in Blood Meridian? You know, that incredible "Western" novel of McCarthy's..." @ 36:10 "The world does not know you are here. If you knew that, you'd be terrified." ~ Alicia I know. I am. A @40:30 "The starry skies above him, the moral code within him." Kant @ 42:20 I hear Hofstadter's Strange Loop coming... @ 44:00 penetralium def. *inner sanctum * penetralium (plural penetralia) the innermost (or most secret) part of a building; an inner sanctum; a sanctum sanctorum. Don't =/= don't, ' =prime; " = double prime. Squire (why?): A man of high social standing who owns and lives on an estate in a rural area, especially the chief landowner in such an area. A young nobleman acting as an attendant to a knight before becoming a knight himself. @ 45:30 an ongoing stream of time made up of discrete physical quanta. Hence. @ 45:55 "A thin skift ✅️ of snow." Skift [noun] (pronunciation of skiff): "A slight amount, thin layer (especially of snow)." Skiff or Skift? /skɪf/ "A skiff is a small boat." @ 51:25 GEB How much of us is data? Gödel Escher Bach; You are a Strange Loop. - a Douglas Hofstadter The Eternal Golden Braid D. Hofstadter's Law [D.] Hofstadter's law states that a project always takes longer than expected, ***even when the law is taken into account!! Simply put, time estimates for how long a project will take to complete always fall short of the actual time required to complete it." "Called the planning fallacy, it means that a sense of optimism causes people to underestimate how long it will take them to complete a task. In other words, we're too busy thinking of the best-case scenario to consider how the project could go wrong or where we might hit a snag and need more time." *** we're too busy thinking of the best-case scenario @ 56:30 "the thin cranking of their [birds] calls and the truck droning on the grade". Switched behavior. Penultimate. There will be nothing that cannot be simulated. This is the ultimate privilege. @ 01:00:22 Suffering is a part of the human condition that must be borne. Misery, however, is a choice.
Absolutely my new favorite books, and I can’t stop reading them ❤. I’ve really enjoyed your insights into the book, and I’m itching for someone to discuss the concepts with - I’ll hit you up on IG, maybe we can connect!
I really love these novels because you can tell that at some point when he was younger he filled out the whole mystery whodunnit plot, and then with age realized he didn’t need it. Can’t think of many examples of masterpieces released when the artist is 89 like this. Feels so singular. Almost a century of experience.
Following up to my post: it reminds me of that letter Akira Kurosawa sent to Ingmar Bergman about how you can’t create a true masterpiece until you achieve your second babyhood in your 80s.
Excellent, excellent input. Pinning this comment.
RIP Cormac, and thank you for all the hours reading your incredible words. You will always be my favorite writer.
This is without a doubt the best video you’ve posted. Sometimes I wonder how it would have felt like to live when authors such as Joyce, Faulkner and Nabokov were releasing new novels and I remind myself that I live in a time when McCarthy is still alive and he is without a doubt going down in history among the greatest to ever do it. What a privilege it is to be able to say I’ve been there when The Passenger came out.
Wow, thanks so much! Your thoughts mirror my own sentiments. I read the dead masters and have the same thoughts. Then I think about McCarthy, Vollmann, Cartarescu, et al., and it's a great consolation.
@@LeafbyLeaf Have you read Dying Grass, Chris? Shades of both Gaddis and McCarthy in it. I believe Vollmann said somewhere that McCarthy was his favorite living writer.
Oh, yes. I think it’s my favorite in the Seven Dreams series. AND-it’s next up for my WTV reading. 🙌
RIP
I know it's gotten a rather lukewarm response so far, but for me, The Passenger is McCarthy's masterpiece. It can be a little clunky at times in its setup, but it reaches farther than anything else he's written and it sort of encompasses his oeuvre. Stella Maris was really neat, but I liked The Passenger more. As far as I'm concerned, McCarthy went out like a G.
As Michael Dirda said: I like it when an author strives for something slightly beyond their reach.
Very excited, for your review! Just finished Stella Maris, very good timing. A quote I can't stop thinking about, "The universe never made anything it didn't intend to destroy."
Yeah, that one stuck with me just like the one from _Infinite Jest_ that goes: "the truth will set you free, but not until it's done with you."
I finished these, what, a month ago? And I can't stop thinking about them. A true sign of greatness, probably. Or something.
Same for me. There are MyCarthy books I've read over 10 years ago that're still with me. His literature seems to really take residence in my consciousness.
Just finished The Passenger and really enjoyed it. I feel like Cormac doesn’t get enough credit for his humor. I’m not sure any other writer had made me laugh like he does simply because of his timing. He is a master at setting such a bleak stage but will occasionally break out something hilarious that catches you completely off balance-some of the Sheddan parts, Harrogate in Suttree. Those moments are fleeting in his work but damn are they funny. On to Stella Maris!
I know right? John Sheddan, Bormen, even the trans girl Bobby was a little sweet on were all delightful in their humor.
Not trying to make a habit out of making youtube comments, this may be my fourth one ever, but this video was really great and you deserve the kudos! I thought these books were the best thing to come out last year and you brought up many of the things that I was thinking about while reading them. But really the best part was that you brought up many things I had not noticed or understood, and now I'm going to have to read them again. An interesting thing I noticed from reviews on good reads was that many of the negative reviews noted the "incomprehensible" math and science, which is a fair opinion if the science is not familiar to you. However, what was most odd was that the positive reviews rarely mentioned the math and science which I don't think is a fair assessment because it felt, at least to me, that if the math and science were taken out you'd be left with very little, so what's to like. Perhaps this has changed that was pretty early on and I haven't looked at good reads more recently. Either way your video was quite all encompassing which was certainly a feat with these novels great work!
Hey, Brenden! Your comments are most welcome here, my friend. And I really appreciate the kudos. To be honest--and I'm not trying to be/sound élitist when I say this--I had to stop reading GR reviews a while back. I'll leave it at that. Indeed, McCarthy has given us a sort of "eternal golden braid" composed of the humanities _and_ the sciences (sort of like what Hofstadter did in _GEB_ )! Again--thanks so much for the support and encouragement.
Quantum entanglement is one of the first things that occurred to me when reading both of these, because someone just said that there was an element of quantum "stuff" before I got them to read. They, the brother and sister are always together no matter how far apart.
"Tower of ivory, house of gold," aren't Tarot references, they're titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, prayed in the Litany of Loreto.
When I want to find amazing reviews on books, I always know where to go. Chris, you are an astonishing books' reviewer
(the best on youtube) and a true source of inspiration. Thank you very much! I owe you so much.
Wow, thank you so much for such kind words! :)
If nothing else, I think the characters of Robert and Alicia Western are some of his most interesting characters he's put to paper. After reading The Passanger, Stella Maris and then the Passanger again, I found myself already missing these two siblings.
I bought the slip cased edition and they were signed by McCarthy. That only added to their greatness. Thanks for your fine work.
Niiiiiiiice! I bought the same edition. No sig.
You are killing me, I read these books the same way you did, though I confess it took me several readings. I have thoroughly enjoyed your video. These may well be my favorite books, and they form an organic whole. I saw "The Passenger" as a narrative orbiting the massive object of "Stella Maris;" "Stella Maris" transforms "The Passenger," as opening and closing blinds with contrasting patterns not only reveals the view outside, but changes the view depending upon the pattern on the side of the blind we look through. You've done very well. Thank you.
Thanks so much! Very well put!
The passenger is one who waits to arrive at a predetermined destination, as opposed to a “traveler” or “driver.”
The heart of the book summarized in a single and bright phrase. Jacob's ladder is also a good movie. Sincerely
@@DavidGonzalez-xt3so thanks David! I did like Jacob’s ladder too
I'm re-reading them in reverse order right now and looking up the philosophers referenced as i go this time
That's a cool idea! You're basically reading them in chronological order now. :)
What a marvelous summation of the deep mystery that is the late Cormac's McCarthy's last masterpiece(s). These are books that demand multiple readings. He doesn't take you by the hand. He makes you do the work. I speak of him as if he is still with us. And in a sense, he is. Thank you.
Literally just finished Stella Maris a few hours ago, timing couldn't be better. So excited to watch this!
🙌🙌🙌
a lot of david foster wallace on that back chair… something coming?
Good eye! Yes-and I’ll be announcing it soon. 😁
If you view your video analytics, just know that I'm bailing on your video at the 2 min 30 sec mark not because it's bad, but because I haven't read my copies yet but now I'm more enthusiastic to do so than ever. I'll be back to this one in a few weeks. Thanks for your channel!
Ah, don’t worry-I don’t look at any of those metrics at all. Very nice of you to say this though. Happy reading!
Excellent analysis of both books, I smiled every time you mentioned that you'd read a passage. I personally found the scientific thoughts and references that feature heavily in SM to challenge the reader - who whilst maybe relatively well read (Shakespeare, Homer, The Bible) has minimal mathematical or physics knowledge and that considering the volume of written work on these subjects, we as enjoyers of novels are wholly ignorant of that World - let alone the World that they attempt to discover.
A solid, valid point.
I’m still working my way through the passenger and I’m stunned at times at how good it is. I’m about halfway through and I’m in no rush to finish it.
Yes, it is one to slow down with and to savor! Enjoy!
Thank you so much for shedding light on these magical books. Listening to you breaking down the structure and highlighting the subtle, and not so subtle nuances really filled me with joy and the desire to reread
My pleasure! You've given me the biggest compliment/validation: "filled me with joy and the desire to reread"!
Part 1
"In one of Plato’s last dialogues, he describes a metaphysical debate that was raging during his own day. In Sophist 246a-c we read:
Stranger: What we shall see is something like a battle of gods and giants going on between them over their quarrel about reality.
Theaetetus: How so?
Stranger: One party is trying to drag everything down to earth out of heaven and the unseen, literally grasping rocks and trees in their hands, for they lay hold upon every stock and stone and strenuously affirm that real existence belongs only to that which can be handled and offers resistance to the touch. They define reality as the same thing as body, and as soon as one of the opposite party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not listen to another word.
Theaetetus: The people you describe are certainly a formidable crew. I have met quite a number of them before now.
Stranger: Yes, and accordingly their adversaries are very wary in defending their position somewhere in the heights of the unseen, maintaining with all their force that true reality consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms. In the clash of argument they shatter and pulverize those bodies which their opponents wield, and what those others allege to be true reality they call, not real being but a sort of moving process of becoming. On this issue an interminable battle is always going on between two camps.
In this text, Plato makes reference to a metaphysical dispute that, to put it in contemporary terms, centers on the existence of abstract entities. We cannot investigate the details of this debate here-some aspects of the dialogue will be covered in chapter ten. For now, it will help to clarify the nature of metaphysical issues and positions if we state what this debate is about and what the major options have been regarding it. Let us define the 'universe' as the total spatiotemporal system of matter and (impersonal) energy, that is, as the sum total of material objects, in some way accessible to the senses and to scientific investigation. The universe consists of individual things, events, and processes that exist within space and time, for example, atoms, rocks, rivers, osmosis, and flashes of lightning. For any entity in the universe, it is appropriate to ask where and when it is.
In addition to the universe, many philosophers have, like Plato, believed in another realm of entities that are called abstract objects. Abstract objects are immaterial (i.e., nonphysical) entities that do not exist inside space and time; instead, they are timeless and spaceless. It makes no sense to ask where or when they exist.
There have been many examples of abstract entities: properties, relations, sets, numbers, and propositions. On this view, 'properties' are entities that can be exemplified by many things at the same time (e.g., redness, goodness, triangularity, humanness) and 'relations' are entities that can relate two or more things and can be in more than one group of things at the same time (e.g., brighter than, father of, larger than). Properties and relations are called 'universals' because, as was mentioned, they can be in more than one thing at once or can relate more than one group at once. Several apples can have the same color of red and several groups of people can enter into the “father of” relation.
I have a selfish appreciation for the mixed reviews that these books received, because having my expectations lowered just meant I was that much more blown away when I finally got around to them. They're now among my favorite works of fiction. I haven't been able to shake the idea of The Kid actually being something of an "interdimensional being", like you said... I think this is as close as McCarthy ever got to writing an actual sci-fi novel, with actual aliens, haha. Especially in light of the Archatron, and what Alicia says about The Kid being "sent" and "salvaged up out of a bleak sea"... which made me think that the strange nature of that plane crash might've been even stranger than is let on, hence the government's involvement. Maybe it's far-fetched, or "not fetched far enough"... Regardless, these books' emphasis on "we'll just never know", all the way to the end, is perfectly fitting. It's masterwork, no doubt. Thanks for your review.
the fine sweet edge of his grief was thinning...............white as applhalves.........smallmouth water.....there is no greater writer in english alive.....a brilliant and loving tribute.....i will share more on your ig, ....this novel (i take both as 1 book) is THE great reading experience of my 2022 as well.....a beautiful brilliant analysis chris....just beautiful and fitting....thank you, b....shaped in the rim lighting.....
Thanks so much! Indeed, dazzling writing every time.
Great video and great two books. I’m surprised you didn’t bring up anything about Alicia describing drowning in lake Tahoe, it was one of the most uncomfortable scenes i’ve ever read in a McCarthy novel. Brilliantly terrifying.
He's talking about the "Kekkule' Problem" in that part of Stella Maris, I think. We don't think in "language" and yet we do think. No one knows where the thoughts come from. The language comes after the thought.
I really like thinking about this sort of a things. Just recently started reading Blanchot and he talks about the "Tyrannical Prehension." The writer grasps his other hand that hold the pen and refuses to let go and the "sick-hand" grasps for the pen as it falls, the pen is however the shadow of the pen, not the actual pen (not the actual words). If we can't grasp where are thoughts come from, are we the passenger? Not saying this is what the book is about but the passenger theme makes sense when you think about the paranoia and mental illness in the novel.
Amazing once again, and so relieved by your typically powerful insight. Always blown away by what can be gleaned from a run-through like this. McCarthy's prose is laced with kernels of vocabulary and grammatical pieces, and it requires the reader to be a bit unflinching and okay with stopping and really thinking about these highly concentrated kernels. Thanks Chris!
Very kind words-thank you so much. 🙏
Indeed, McCarthy gives us quite a feast, once again.
Good find with that number 7. All McCarthy novels have some sort of numerology to them. Blood meridian has number 8, The Crossing has 3, Outer Dark has 2 etc. The Orchard Keeper also puts importance on the number 7 btw.
Secondly, I think TK is Clairvoyant. His rambles are unmediated because he can't seem to separate the events temporally.
P.S. Recommending Robert Walser.
I should've known the numerological element wasn't new (it only stood out to me in these books). Thanks for this edification! Great thinking around TK, too.
Walser is firmly on my radar!
Part 2
A 'set' is a group or collection of things called the members of the set. The set of all numbers from one to ten is an example of a set. 'Numbers' are the things that enter into certain mathematical relationships, for example, addition, subtraction. 'Propositions' are the contents expressed in declarative sentences and contained in people’s minds when they are thinking. Propositions are also the things that are either true or false and that can be related to each other by means of the laws of logic (e.g., “if, then,” “if and only if”).
Let us call the 'world' the sum total of everything whatever that exists including nonspatiotemporal abstract entities as well as the spatiotemporal universe of physical entities. The metaphysical debate alluded to by Plato can now be put as follows: Do abstract entities exist? Or put another way: Does the world exist or is there only a universe? 'Ontologists' are those philosophers who, like Plato, believe in the world and abstract entities. The term 'naturalism' has many different meanings, but a standard use of the term defines it as the view that the universe alone exists. Since most current forms of naturalism are physicalist in flavor, naturalism has come to mean that reality is exhausted by the spatiotemporal world of physical objects accessible in some way to the senses and embraced by our best scientific theories. The naturalist has three tasks before he or she can defend naturalism as a broad metaphysical view:
-The naturalist must show that mental entities are not real (a) by denying their existence outright (e.g., since beliefs, if they exist, must be mental, then we should treat beliefs like a flat earth and deny that there are such things) or (b) by reducing them to physical entities in space and time (e.g., beliefs exist, but they are really nothing but states of the brain) or (c) by trying to show that in some way or another they depend on the physical world for their existence.
-The naturalist must deny that properties and relations are abstract entities by either (a) denying that they exist (extreme nominalism) or (b) accepting the existence of properties and relations but treating them as material realities that are wholly inside of space and time (nominalism and impure realism).
-The naturalist must show that abstract entities are not real by either (a) denying their existence outright (e.g., propositions, like witches, do not exist at all) or (b) reducing them to physical entities in space and time (e.g., propositions exist, but they are really nothing but physical scratchings called sentences).
The debate between ontologists and naturalists is a clear example of a metaphysical dispute. We mention it here only as an illustration of metaphysics and not as an occasion to journey into the nuances of the dispute. However, proposition (1) will be discussed in chapters eleven through fourteen and to a lesser degree in chapters fifteen and sixteen. Propositions (2) and (3) (especially 2) will be a major center of focus in chapter ten. However, before we can look at these issues, a more fundamental set of metaphysical notions should be clarified (see chap. 9): the nature of existence, identity, and reductionism. To these issues we now turn."
-J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig
It’s here!!!! I am so excited!! Thank you, Chris! I’m so looking forward to watching this.
Hope you enjoy it! :)
I just started a book club in the local library in Lisbon inspired by your passion in reading and sharing your thoughts this genuinely. First session will be happening this coming April, and I'm hoping to do Roland Topor's The Tenant. Sending you love from the Portuguese capital, love your channel more and more each time you upload a new video.
That's such a wonderful initiative! Congratulations on spearheading the book club. As for Lisbon, I feel so desperate to get Pessoa and Saramago on this channel! All my best to you!
Thank you for posting this, I very much appreciated the considerable time you took putting this together and the thought you put into it as well.
Although I have no background in computer science I have always been a science geek and a massive McCarthy fan since reading Blood Meridian and was instantly hooked. The physics and mathematics in both books are in fact what make them so enjoyable. Admittedly my degree in philosophy helped, and since that included a lot of philosophy of science the themes McCarthy treats were like candy, I just enjoyed reading them so much and having being crafted by a poet made them all that more delicious.
I viewed the story as more of an excuse to get the characters into situations where these conversations could occur and that doesn’t bother me as much as it would for some who wanted a story and found the discussions rather tangential. I suspect that no one can truly understand how these two novels hang together or what McCarthy is trying to convey, in one reading. These books will need to be read and considered over and over as they probably should, for years to come. We may find them to have actually been the pinnacle of his career rather than a so called ‘misfire’.
I flew through these books when they came out last year. For whatever reason a New Orleans setting always fascinates me. I'm excited to make my way through your video!
I listened to both of these on audiobook last December while I was working lonely night shifts stocking grocery store shelves, and it rocked me. I felt like McCarthy had opened a trap door into the depths of his mind and I was a "passenger" being drawn further and further into a mystery with no end and no solutions. They feel so strangely personal, which only adds to their power. I have a deep gratitude for McCarthy's final gift of these novels.
Just found your channel after finishing Stella Maris last night and wanting to read and listen to other people's thoughts and reactions. Great video. I really didn't enjoy The Passenger because of the lack of conclusion to any story arc, but I immediately started Stella Maris hoping it would redeem it. Somewhere about halfway through Stella Maris I made the particle entanglement connection and both works just completely opened up for me from there. Together they're really something very special. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on other videos.
Yes, yes! Exactly! After I had that connection in mind, it was like the whole experience moved into a new realm. My thoughts have started to consider the parallels between how entangled particles work and the way Bobby and Alicia operate throughout the book. Thinking about how flipping one entangled particle to + (positive) automatically flips its connected mate to - (negative), I've thought about how when Bobby was in a coma (-), Alicia was most active (+); and when Bobby awakened (+), Alicia was dead (-). I also have a new way of thinking about the +/- style of the contractions and omitted contractions. It's time to read the books again!
Oh my. Chris has set the standard for Booktubers. He is the best.
🙏
@@LeafbyLeaf And it's observation that cements the +/- of the entangled particles. Alicia says multiple times in Stella Maris that in her suicidal ideation, she plans for her body to not be found. Yet on the opening page of The Passenger, she ties a red ribbon around her. McCarthy tells us she intended to be found. Why? Because when the hunter observes her dead, he collapses the wave function. Death itself wasn't enough; observation of her death was crucial. Alicia's death means Bobby must be alive.
!!!
Thanks for this review. Reading these two books was a mysterious and wonderful experience. The Passenger was an overwhelming and and all-consuming enterprise for me, so much so, that I immediately read it again as soon as I had finished it. If any other author had these redundancies, plots not being resolved, didactic set pieces and characters like this that seem ridiculously implausible I would have scoffed and stopped reading. However the overall effect was one of almost unbearable poignancy. I have read "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian" but The Passenger is far and away Cormac's best book. It is a shame he is no longer with us as I wonder what he would have come up with next.
cheers from Australia.
Yo, love your work!
Haven't heard this discussed elsewhere-what do you think of the possibility that the incestuous relationship between the siblings may have been consummated? Although both characters vehemently deny it, we have two dream sequences in The Passenger that toy with the possibility: the first describes "the floor lay littered with the stillborn forms of their efforts and still they labored on, the raw half-sentient mud quivering red in the autoclave." (woah); the second is a dialogue with a doctor who seems to be discussing a stillborn fetus with Bobby and asking whether Alicia should have to see it. I get that they're dream sequences, but they're rather specific in echoing each other. To cap it off, we have the Thalidomide Kid-perhaps thalidomide played a part in a potential stillbirth from Alicia, hence the halluncination?
This is all I've got, but would be interested if you (or anyone else) had found any other relevant passages!
I think you've offered a striking show of evidence to support the claim of consummation! I remember when I encountered one of the surreal sequences, it made me wonder if Alice and Bobby were born at the same time, with Alice trailing slightly behind. But then I remembered their age difference. The consummation is unquestionably hinted at, and it's a familiar trope in the McCarthyverse, but, unlike, say, _Outer Dark_ , there's a reason we're left ambivalent. The next logical question is: what changes about the literature if the consummation did v. did not happen? (Re: "woah": Whoa indeed! What a writer.)
While at Ibiza, Bobby has a conversation where some "interesting criminals" who used to live there are mentioned. One of them was "a first class art forger". This is a reference to Elmyr de Hory, who was a subject in Orson Welles' "documentary" movie F for Fake. It was probably just there for flavor but I thought it was neat. Wonder how many other easter eggs are hidden in the text.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Thanks for sharing this!
McCarthy had a real life friend who used to do art forging while living in Ibiza
@@alphonseelric5722 McCarthy would've been living in Ibiza at the same time as de Hory, but I'm not aware of any connection between them. Feel free to share if you know!
When a person speaks or writes, the person will use a certain structure again and again, and most of the time the person is not even aware that he or she is using that structure repeatedly - for example, using an apostrophe in "would have" but no apostrophe in "can not." The FBI and CIA know this, and this is one way they hunt criminals. When the FBI was hunting the Unabomber, they analyzed his 'manifesto' and compared it to a letter they obtained from a man who had received the letter from his brother, a highly intelligent mathematician-turned-recluse named Ted Kaczynski. Both writings had the same underlying structure, and the FBI knew Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber.
@@Barklord would of and should of is really common in southern gothic literature.
I know some people who attended five years of elementary school, three years of middle school, four years of high school, and four years of college, but still cannot properly use 'there, their, and they're.' Those tricky homophones!
Yay, im so glad, I just started The Passenger. 100 pages in, and I'm glad to get your encouragement!
Ok you just moved beyond my place, I will return, thank you for your insights!!!
Glad I could lend some cheering on of your reading! Go, Barbara, go! :)
@20:10 "water droplets on a wire".
Electrons are quantum.
Wave-particle duality:
It's just such a beautiful concept!
Along with all other quantum objects, an electron is partly a wave and partly a particle. To be more accurate, an electron is neither literally a traditional wave nor a traditional particle, but is instead a quantized fluctuating probability wavefunction.
Electrical energy does not travel though the wire as sound travels through air but instead always travels in the space outside of the wires. This is because electric energy is composed of electric and magnetic fields which are created by the moving electrons, but which exist in the space surrounding the wires.
I think one of the great things about these two books is I didn't understand almost any of the maths stuff and alot of this went over my head... I think but these books really spoke to me. I read them faster than any novels I've read before and think about them all the time. Anyway that's all I wanted to say ❤
I think McCarthy did a great job keeping all of the heady material very evocative, such that, even for those of us who didn't understand it, it was still sort of exhilarating. Plus, it helps us to see just how brilliant Stella was.
Hey Chris. I preordered these books and got each of them when they were released. They’ve been sitting on my shelf (like many other unread books) and I kind of decided not to read them any time soon. Then I listened to the first 2 minutes of this video, and now I have to read them! You have made a major contribution to my already high level of book-FOMO 😉. Thanks Chris!
On a more serious note, you are awesome! Jeff.
Book-FOMO-haha! I hope you enjoy the books, Jeff. Thanks for everything! 🙏
On my youtube site, SCOTT SHEPARD, I have recently posted an analysis in which I compare THE PASSENGER and STELLA MARIS to Robert Pirsig's ZEN AND THE ART of MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE and LILA. One of the key elements in my study is how the creation of the atom bomb influences Bobby and Alicia, because of the roles played by their parents.
CORMAC MCCARTHY & ROBERT PIRSIG, GENIUS, DEATH, & INSANITY. Some fascinating characters here: Bobby, Alicia, and for Pirsig, his alter ego, Phaedrus.
OK, you got my attention! I happen to have really been moved by those two Pirsig books. I consider them part of the books that directly helped form my Weltanschauung!
Thank you for another in-depth and riveting analysis on this important writer. My only experience with McCarthy the writer (I have seen, and loved, the movie adaptations of NCfOM and The Road) is with Blood Meridian which I could only read in short snippets with long breaks in between (hey, I'm a sensitive reader, what can I say...). This video has inspired me to get back into him. I have started The Road as a read aloud with my teenaged kids. I am as much interested in their reaction as my own. Thanks for the videos, Chris!
Coincidentally, _The Road_ was my first McCarthy. Incredible experience. I bought it in Sweden for my return flight. Started reading it in the terminal, then the plane was delayed on the tarmac for almost four hours. I had finished the book before we even lifted off! I then spent nearly the whole flight under the book’s spell. I was almost physically and emotionally immobilized.
Damn. Listening to all this, you make me feel like I didn't read them at all.
Guess I'll just have to reread. Well done
As I've talked to others about these books since making the video, I've felt the same way.
It just shows that one reading is insufficient for what McCarthy has given us.
Thanks for the encouragement!
Wish I could like a second time😅
I must bow out again as I await Stella Maris in the mail. Thank you for your diligence in explaining the physics passages. I will be back after I finish part 2. (Stella)I'm glad I hung in there. It really picked up for me 1/3 of the way in. Of course, the opening scene was masterful, I had to get used to the "kid" -gratitude to you again
Very kind of you to say. It's such a pleasure to share in literature with you all! Happy reading. //Chris
1:17:50
reminds me of the suttree qoute. But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse
great video!
Pure McCarthy!
Building a PC later today. Loved the review and worthy of the time put in to it.
Thanks so much! How all went well with the build!
I've been waiting for this video. McCarthy is a rockstar.
Indubitably.
This is a really fantastic review for a couple of really amazing books. Thank you, Leaf, by Leaf, and thank you, Cormac McCarthy.
Alicia asks the Kid how he gets around. He talks about being a passenger on a bus. When she moves it takes him a while to find her. Seems like he does move around on yhe physical plane is what I'm getting at. Maybe he took a plane ride to find Bobby and give him a sense of closure. Maybe he was the missing passenger on the plane. And the men who were following Bobby knew that he was connected to this otherworldly visitor.
Thanks for this, including the review & podcast responses. I’m wondering if Dr. Cohen, not Alicia, is closer to a stand-in or loose mouthpiece for McCarthy, based on his Santa Fe Institute experiences (and maybe whether Alicia is a surprising amalgamation, as seen through a novelist’s eyes, of all the experts he’s chatted with).
A mere mortal such as myself dare not even turn one leaf!
:P
Enjoyed your synopsis tremendously. I loved these two books and you brought up some things I missed. My feeling is that in these books he polished the story and dialogue to say exactly what he wanted to say- I don’t think he could have improved on them. I read the two books in three days- I could not put them down.
I think the titles are also important. I believe McCarthy, throughout these books is saying that all the characters (including the reader) are the passengers. McCarthy is constantly hammering at the question as to who is the pilot (the creator)? He leaves two options open- either there is no creator and that is why the world does not make sense, or that, like the Gnostics he believes the world is fundamentally flawed. I kept wondering who sent the Kid? I believe the Kid is trying to be helpful but he himself is flawed. The Kid is either an external agent and somewhat inept, or a figment of Alicia’s mind that shows even she is not able to have the world make sense. He may be a helpful Archon that is trying to band aid a broken world. Since the Kid is physically flawed and also ultimately fails at helping Alicia McCarthy is saying that the Kid was made by the same flawed creator. I think of Melville's line when Ahab is discussing Moby Dick-McCarthy wants to know who was behind the pasteboard mask?
The story is about as tragic as possible. It seems that the final straw that pushes Alicia to suicide is she thinks her brother is either going to die or will be a vegetable. How can the world be so cruel with the ultimate irony that Bobby survives and finds out his sister who he loves above all else has killed herself?
Finally- Stella Maris also means guiding light. What does it mean for her to kill herself under their care? I believe McCarthy is saying that we are ignorant (and through no fault of ourselves) ultimately just passengers- but I will have to think about that title some more.
Also, there are several indications of a Demiurge and Archons either trying to keep us from the truth or perhaps trying to protect us from the truth so we don’t go insane.
I think McCarthy feels the closest we can come to understanding the truth is our subconscious and that math may be the language pointing to the truth. However, McCarthy references some physics concepts (including the double slit experiment and quantum physics) that imply that at a fundamental level the universe does not make sense. This may be him emphasizing that truth is beyond our understanding- or conversely that we may not like the answers.
Finally, I think the ultimate proof of the fundamental flaw in the universe is that Alicia and Bobby have a pure love for each other and part of the sadness in this world is that this sort of love is doomed. Also, a similar theme is shown with the transvestite who loves Bobby. Bobby’s reply to her is devastating- “I know. Another time. Another world.” In physics there is nothing that prevents the existence of parallel worlds. Bobby may be saying that maybe there may be some other world were things may be different- but not this one.
I have an engineering degree so I don’t know if that is part of the reason I loved these books- they are gorgeous. I think these are right up there with Blood Meridian. Also, I like the idea of entangled particles- that was something I did not think about.
Wow, these are very provocative reads. I keep thinking he was weaving his SFI gleanings on mathematics into a story. 1972 and 1980 transposed, via coma?
And the Romeo and Juliette dilemma, in a way. The idea of them being two entangled particles is great! And since Mathematics and the Unconscious are beyond language, his attempt to have " literature" - not just language - participate or function bearing primordial truths. He really has stretched, to touch the sun, in this one.
▫️just finished reading these two books published in Brazil. Your videos are great! I used to come here and watch this video by pieces to avoid spoilers while moving forward with reading. 🐝💙✨✨✨
Hello my friend,
Ive been itching to read a novel lately so I came to see what you've been talking about. I received the hardcover books for Christmas, so I think that ill watch your video and start reading!
Do you feel like these absolutely have to be read together or could one be enjoyed alone for a time before reading Stella: in other words could I read them with other books in between? I barely have time as it is hah
Absolutely.
I have to ask: is there any chance Bobby and Alicia are lying about their relationship? They both deny that any consummation happened, but there are multiple references to babies, crying babies, Alicia’s desperate desire for a child, the reference at the end of the Passenger to the baptism of a dead baby, the physicality of the Thalidomide Kid… and then a scene in the Passenger with nothing really preceding it or referencing it again, where Bobby talks to a doctor while Alicia is ostensibly anesthetized, where they talk around whether she’s “seen it” and the doctor advises him that he doesn’t have to tell her. Was there a child?
Check out the contractions without apostrophes and see if they align with an uneducated character. Perhaps he's showing how they would write these words... or perhaps he's redefining how we should treat these contractions in the future. Kinda like saying AX is a perfectly good alternative for ASK. Actually easier off the tongue. Perhaps he's expressing the need to simplify writing.
I found the Turing test comment interesting. especially in relation to her psychiatric evaluations and how she had such an understanding that she could aim for a given result /confound the tester.
Indeed! She could essentially assess and figure out the algorithm that was supposed to be assessing and figuring out her. :)
Absolutely fantastic video as always, Chris! I’ve got the box set waiting on my shelves, and I can’t wait to get to them (I couldn’t help but ignore your advice regarding watching before reading!).
Question: do you plan to read/make a video on the latest edition of Divine Days by Leon Forrest?
Thanks so much! I don't _think_ you could really spoil these books, to be honest, so you should be OK.
As regards Forrest, I've been at work on a long essay of his life and work for going on something like 3 years now--I can't seem to bring it to a satisfactory close. But, yes, out of this effort I want to do videos on all his work. Amazing writer!
Holy hell. Chris Thank you so much. This work elevated my understanding and appreciation of these books. I’ve loved McCarthy for years but Ive always known I’m staring up at a mountain. I know it’s beautiful and significant but I’ll never truely get it. You’ve helped me get a bit closer. How can I support your work? I couldn’t see a Patreon?
Very kind of you. I don't have a Patreon, but you can "buy me a coffee" using the KoFi link in the video description, if you so desire. When it comes to writers like McCarthy, we're always ascending the mountain with an ever-receding summit. All best to you!
@@LeafbyLeaf oh I see, it was right in front of me, in several places. Thank you!
🙏🙏🙏
This was excellent. Thank you so much.
My pleasure!
Confession: I'm not a McCarthy fan. However, buzz was substantial enough for me to feel the need to at least take look at these two books. The first put me off within a few pages, and I gave up. The second grabbed me instantly within a couple pages. But I have to hold off on finishing it till I'm done with "You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine".
Update: I liked Stella so much that I went back and gave Passenger a second chance. It turned out to be 10 times better. Great, serious book. Not easy; a tad over my head. For some reason Passenger brings Coetzee to mind.
Wow, yes entangled particles...I keep thinking the two are involved in some bending of time...1972 and 1980 seem to not be part of linear time(?) I don't know how to explain. I could be trying to justify the disjointedness, but I can't help but think he is weaving these SFI gleanings of mathematicians into a story.
Not-and does not mean “not and”! It means Neither! It means two things are both NEGATED…two things like maybe a brother and sister…
It's a great intention, thank you very much.
Tower of ivory… reference to the Virgin Mary
Hey there! I think your method of going in completely blind really helped your reading of these texts. My good friend sent me this interview he found ahead of the books release: m.ua-cam.com/video/HrUy1Vn2KdI/v-deo.html - not realizing that this would in some way influence my reading, I watched it. What makes it interesting is that there are lines almost verbatim in this interview that are in the passenger and Stella Maris - it felt almost like these texts were the most “transparent” texts of mccarthy yet in that we see in Alisha a female mccarthy-Ian intellectual- it’s as if Alisha is a mccarthy we could see ourselves loving and or fucking. We could read Bobby as a prototypical McCarthy protagonist- the intelligent but rugged intellectual who reveals his intelligence indirectly and almost seems to keep it at bay lest he reveal too much; Alisha is mccarthy but almost like who mccarthy would like to be- Alisha too isn’t completely revealing and plays a kind of game with her analyst- but her concerns are McCarthy’s intellectual concerns- his own sense of wonder at “brilliant” people- the interviews focus on “intelligence” is really interesting. I highly recommend watching it along with the reviews before your next video. His admiration for Oppenheimer comes through in the book and in the interview. I find it odd (or perhaps fateful?) that we are about to get an film from Chris Nolan on Oppenheimer just shortly after these texts were published. I see the relation too between the Sunset Limited and this text as well with White’s speech on “Dachau” - - What if the incest theme also touches the relation between mccarthy and his reader with incest as also a kind of relation of the reader and McCarthy with Alisha being a kind of acceptable link between the meeting of two minds? I suppose that’s kinda what you are getting at with the 2 halves (I assume you are referring to Aristophanes myth in Plato’s symposium?
Yep, I precisely intended the Aristophanes allusion (couldn't think of the exact citation at the time of recording). Speaking of coincidences with the upcoming Noland film: I just finished reading _Solenoid_ by Mircea Cărtărescu, and not only are the same themes of topology and quantum mechanics in the book (it was originally published in 2015)--but there is also explicit use of Charles Hinton's conception of a tesseract that mirrored Christopher Nolan's depiction at the end of _Interstellar_ ! Thanks so much for the link to the interview. Now that I've read the books, I'll check it out.
I haven’t read Pynchon-the parts you found Pynchonian remind me of a dark Lewis Carroll or Phillip K Dick.
Enjoyed listening to your discussion and glad you enjoyed them so much.
Unfortunately The Passenger didn't really work for me but Stella Maris was a very poignant and moving read. It was a difficult read (emotionally) but I found Stella Maris to be the superior work of fiction.
Thanks so much! It has been really interesting to see all the variations in reception.
Remarkable. Thank you.
My pleasure 🙏
Super excited to watch this, I've been waiting for you to release a video on these books. These were my first McCarthy novels and I couldn't put them down. The conversation between Bobby and Debussy in the latter half of the second chapter had some of the best and most poignant writing I've ever read. I can't wait to read the rest of his work!
Yes, indeed--I wish I had lingered on the Debussy character in the video. Welcome to McCarthy's world!
Alicia took ballet…hence
“glissade.”
Question: Why does she see a "thalidomide Kid?" Has she used this drug, for some reason, without having a child yet an effect of the drug shapes the hallucinations? No defected baby but just the image in her mind? Maybe her own , Alicia's mother, had the drug? Wondering...weird.
The last sentence of Stella Maris may be the most beautiful last sentence I’ve ever read.
Amazing video 🙏 Thank you
Thanks so much!
I came to these new books only about a month after I discovered Blood Meridian-and was blown away by it. I don’t know if McCarthy’s other books follow the Blood Meridian pattern, but because of Blood Meridian I came to The Passenger and Stella Maris on high alert for cleverly hidden clues to DEVASTATING REALIZATIONS to come. I was ready to interpret characters partly as allegories. I was also looking for a momentous climax of some kind in the book’s last few pages, like in Blood Meridian.
Right now I judge the new books POSITIVELY: they tried something original and ambitious and arguably succeeded. But I can see a rational reader taking a NEGATIVE PERSPECTIVE, which might be summarized something like this: “McCarthy is just vomiting up his pet philosophical musings through the mouth of a genius character in his story; the genius character is not realistic; the love story is not compelling.” I’ll mention one other specific concrete flaw in the books below, but now let me turn to my positive interpretation of the story.
The story can be said to be “about” multiple things, but let me start with the suggestion that The Passenger is about schizophrenia, or more broadly: ways we try to attribute meaning to the events of our lives. We are reminded in the text that there is a genetic component to schizophrenia. The sister is diagnosed with some kind of (atypical) schizophrenia. Meanwhile the brother discusses various paranoid theories with people he knows. To quote Nirvana, “just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.” When The Kid comes to visit the brother, I saw that as a dramatic confirmation that the brother has a milder case of whatever the sister has. No magical (or quantum physical) explanations are required, since he has heard her describe The Kid in detail.
Two possible, hypothetical routes to some kind of salvation for the brother or sister appear in the story. One is their LOVE. In other works of literature, love is often presented as the purpose or meaning of life; and we are told that love conquers all. The brother and sister represent a deep and pure tragic love like that between Romeo and Juliet. The other potential path to salvation in the books is MATH, PHYSICS, PHILOSOPHY-some kind of intellectual or transcendental insight or mode of being that might “make it all worthwhile.” As I read I was looking for some way the two (love and math-physics) could be married to create some kind of consummation of their love, or redemption and peace, or something.
So now the story is not just about schizophrenia, and I would say it’s not really about math, or the atomic bomb, or the Kennedy assassination either. It’s about whether there is a way to interpret life that is not…nihilistic or absurd or tragic. At least for these characters.
We start with the puzzle of the missing passenger in the submerged plane. We realize that is not where we are going to get answers. These characters are also past looking for ultimate answers from organized religion. So we (they) are left with love, or modern physics and math.
Over the course of the story we are presented with various dreams and hallucinations that might be clues to some transcendental reality in which the lovers are able to fulfill Alicia Western’s impossible dream of having a child with her brother. We have Miss Vivian, the older woman obsessed with the screaming of babies-could she be some kind of future-past Alicia? We have the possibility that the pair did have sex but lied about it or repressed the memory. Maybe there was even an abortion, and the Kid is an image of that and mechanism for “not thinking about that.” We have some characteristically McCarthian passages describing dark creatures emerging from strange primordial demonic soups. Most dramatically to me, we have the moment where the Kid brings a trunk and inside the trunk is a doll and the trunk is labeled Property of Western Union but the Kid reads it as “PROGENY OF WESTERN UNION.”
Given that the siblings are named Western, “Progeny of Western Union” was like a slap in the face. On the next page Alicia is crying and saying she’s sorry to the doll. I thought that had to be a baby. The only thing that didn’t fit is that she said “I was only six years old.” What could that mean, I thought.
Maybe the answer is in the unread letter in The Passenger. Nope. (Spoiler answer: she was six years old; the doll was just a doll. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”)
I was also carefully noting the allusions to physics and math. The main way I could see modern physics contributing to actualizing their love would be through the phenomenon of ENTANGLEMENT, whereby distant parts of a quantum system can be in instantaneous interaction no matter how far apart. Interestingly, this central concept in quantum physics was not really discussed explicitly but only hinted at for example when Alicia says she’d like to discuss BELL’S THEOREM in Stella Maris. In Stella Maris we also get references to the possibility of loops in time, and the possibility that “simulation” will be the real “afterlife.”
Will the final pages reveal that they had sex and a baby? Or that their love created a quantum baby “made purely of light” that needed to be protected in some platonic realm? Or that Bobby’s life was just a simulation his brain created in a coma? Or that they are their own parents and that somehow that’s why Bobby or Alicia or maybe their mom is the missing passenger in the plane? (That last one isn’t even coherent, I don’t think.)
No. We get a bit more about sex-talk and dreams between them, but no consummation nor any baby. I don’t think we get any far-out modern physics interpretation such as Philip K Dick might have written. No, the “boring” interpretation of the story works just fine: they had a forbidden love, they were miserable, and they died lonely and apart. They were preoccupied with things that could never solve the real problem: we’re all dead in the end.
None of the potential “reveals” I could imagine as a reader would really solve the existential problem the characters face. But if the book did end with a reveal like that, that would give us as readers a sort of satisfaction that the characters can’t access-and neither can we in real life.
So if there is an articulable point to the story, it might be a sort of warning to us newfangled atheistic types who get intoxicated by the apparent profundities of math and physics-that although they might appear to give us alternatives to traditional religion for making sense of the world, and making it appear benign or intelligent (as in the line in Stella Maris where she says the issue is whether the universe might be intelligent)-we might trick ourselves into thinking science offers an alternative optimistic worldview-but no. This book is a smack in the face to wake us out of our smug scientist-minded worldview.
So ultimately, we pass THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS LIKE ALICE AND LEWIS CARROLL, BUT END UP BACK IN THIS BLEAK WORLD WITH SCHOPENHAUER. In Schopenhauer’s view the universe does have a mind, but it’s not conscious except in us and other animals. The mind of the universe is a blind will to exist that leads to different parts of the universe eating each other not realizing they are eating themselves. So everything lives according to urges we don’t understand, suffers more or less, and disappears with no lasting trace.
Aside from the many funny parts in The Passenger (perhaps unexpected in such a dark story), the faint happy notes in the story result from human connections, such as the holding of hands at the end of Stella Maris. One other point I have not seen mentioned by others is THE RED SASH that Alicia’s body is wearing at the start of The Passenger. In Stella Maris she says she wants to be completely erased from existence and not found, but in the Passenger we are told explicitly that she wore a red sash “so that she’d be found.” So maybe she had developed her relationship with Dr. Cohen enough that she wanted to reestablish a connection with the rest of humanity-if only after her death.
In summary: the worst spoiler for this story is: there are no spoilers. What appear to be spoilers are decoys. There are no spoilers because there are no satisfying answers that can be revealed, to the problems faced by the characters-or us.
Final note regarding an apparent flaw: the author uses “dubious” multiple times when he appears to mean “doubtful.” This is not so minor because the characters are supposed to be hyper-intelligent and hyper-educated, and they make a habit of correcting others’ pronunciation and grammar. So it broke the spell for me (to some extent) when it turned out they don’t know the difference between DUBIOUS and DOUBTFUL.
You didn't understand the novels.
@@johnshannon9656 hee hee
That was great. Thanks.
My pleasure!
Dear Sir, I’m saving your intellectual erudition (including the balletic glissade……) for further examination. Quiet bedtime and my notes may blot out the depravity of US capitalism for the near insomniac future……..I’ll be including Descates! ….. again, with much admiration, Miss Jenny (music & mathematics theory teacher), Manhattan.
Spelling correction: Decartes.
Music and mathematics theory teacher, eh? Sounds fun! All best to you, Miss Jenny.
There's an excellent documentary on UA-cam re thalidomide children and the pure evil of the family who owned the company and continued distribution even though they knew what was happening. Another reason countries should produce their own pharmaceuticals.
Ugh. Sounds like another Sackler family atrocity.
In addition to this duo, I've tried other McCarthy novels before and both in tone and concept, it was incomprehensible. I truly believe it is the great "white male barrier" -- only the same audience as the author can afford the greatest lucidity. I say this because I struggled also with books like Fight Club. P.S. My undergrad was in English and I work at a public library, so no, it is not necessarily a cerebral blockage.
Do you think it's perhaps the _violence_ factor of his books (notably you thought of _Fight Club_ as a related case; I'm not a fan of _Fight Club_ myself)? I know a lot of people, even white males, who cannot connect with McCarthy because of the harshness of the tone and concepts, stemming from McCarthy's violent conception of the world. For whatever reason, I'm able to bracket off some of this (not sure that's a good thing!). Thanks so much for your comment!
I have a question. Why don't your write novels yourself? Maybe I have not watched enough of your videos to know what you do career-wise, though I was curious since you've read a lifetime worth of literature.
He has done a 4-part AMA series where he gets to that. If I remember correctly, he works in something something IT related and did always program etc on the side. I don't remember if he studied IT or only literature.
In the same video he said that he writes everything out in longhand, which I don't rember if it is a reference to a book/s he is writing or just his rare book reviews. Greetings.
@tobsi2256 did a great summary here. I've worked full-time in IT, mostly as a programmer, since I was 15 (I'm now 38)--but I'm a lifelong reader raised by educators. I've got an AAS in Programming, a BA in Computer Science, and an MA in Literature. I've written several novels, a ream of short stories, and poems that will never see anyone else's eyes. But I've not had any of that published. Starting in 2018, however, I have been writing reviews and essays, which are published in various places. In general, when it comes to writing my own novels, I find that I'm much happier reading than writing. And I have read so many novels to have achieved far greater than I ever could. Not that it's a competition and I am bowing out because I can't be the best. It's just the simple fact that I'm more fulfilled as a reader. So I tend to spend my time reading great work and imploring others to do likewise. There is a novel I've been at work on for over 5 years now. Still in the first draft, writing it out longhand. I'm not rushing it. Just pouring into it when I'm inspired. One day it will reach a point where I'm ready to type out the second draft. Eventually, I'll shop it around. But it'll likely be my last attempt to publish original imaginative work. Harold Bloom published a novel early in his career and he realized that the temptation for readers/critics to write their own novels is not necessarily one that should be pursued. In the end, I have gotten so much deep respect for those who do the craft of writing well.
@@LeafbyLeaf wow, thanks for responding! I ask simply because I do hear, when it comes to writing, people should be full-time writers if they have the talent for it. I'm interested in doing just that, though I fail to recognize how one has the "talent" for such vocation.
If you want my insight, I’d say, these days, there’s no clear-cut path for writers. There are great, best-selling authors who are also full-time professors. I personally know one writer who, even after spending 20 years working full-time as a writer, with successful publications with Doubleday, is now getting a supplemental job in the private sector. Most people who recognize that they have tur vocation of a writer end up going to MFA programs and then get a job as a staff writer, journalist, teacher, etc., while pursuing their own writing on the side until they’ve established themselves enough to support full-time writing. Then again-there are plenty of phenomenal writers who never took even a single writing class. I think it’s mostly about the lifestyle you’re comfortable with that will dictate which path you take. But, in the end, those who are the true writers cannot stop writing. No matter their circumstances, they are absolutely compelled to write, write, write.
You sound like Shatner doing Captain Kirk
just read all the pretty horses it was great just wish it was all in English lol
lol
Wow. I'm surprised you enjoyed this so much. I read 200 pages of The Passenger and could not go on. It seemed like a parody of bad pretentious writing.
It's pretty straightforward and genre-like, it's far away from pretentios.
@@AleksandarBloom there's little genre like The Passenger.
gm
☕️
Bookmark.
Cont @ 46:00
@ 25:21 Bobby dives the wreck with a friend named Euler? Is there a reason for this? What is Bobby doing with a great mathematician?
"Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus.
* He introduced much of modern "mathematical terminology and notation", including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and *music* *theory* ."
@ 27:00 P108 auto? Autobio?
"
"Otto" "Robert" Frisch, *Austrian-born* British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Lise Meitner he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission (coining the term) and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator Rudolf Peierls[1] he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940."
@ 29:30 who is "the missing passenger"...?
@ 33:15 Greatest line ever:
"The purpose of all families in their lives and in their deaths is to create the traitor who will finally erase their history, forever."
@ 33:35 who is the traitor here?
Good question. Why does he call the kid "the kid" just like in Blood Meridian? You know, that incredible "Western" novel of McCarthy's..."
@ 36:10 "The world does not know you are here. If you knew that, you'd be terrified." ~ Alicia
I know. I am.
A
@40:30 "The starry skies above him, the moral code within him." Kant
@ 42:20 I hear Hofstadter's Strange Loop coming...
@ 44:00 penetralium def.
*inner sanctum
* penetralium (plural penetralia) the innermost (or most secret) part of a building; an inner sanctum; a sanctum sanctorum.
Don't =/= don't,
' =prime;
" = double prime.
Squire (why?):
A man of high social standing who owns and lives on an estate in a rural area, especially the chief landowner in such an area.
A young nobleman acting as an attendant to a knight before becoming a knight himself.
@ 45:30 an ongoing stream of time made up of discrete physical quanta. Hence.
@ 45:55
"A thin skift ✅️ of snow."
Skift [noun]
(pronunciation of skiff):
"A slight amount, thin layer (especially of snow)."
Skiff or Skift?
/skɪf/
"A skiff is a small boat."
@ 51:25 GEB
How much of us is data?
Gödel Escher Bach;
You are a Strange Loop.
- a Douglas Hofstadter
The Eternal Golden Braid
D. Hofstadter's Law
[D.] Hofstadter's law states that a project always takes longer than expected, ***even when the law is taken into account!! Simply put, time estimates for how long a project will take to complete always fall short of the actual time required to complete it."
"Called the planning fallacy, it means that a sense of optimism causes people to underestimate how long it will take them to complete a task. In other words, we're too busy thinking of the best-case scenario to consider how the project could go wrong or where we might hit a snag and need more time."
*** we're too busy thinking of the best-case scenario
@ 56:30 "the thin cranking of their [birds] calls and the truck droning on the grade".
Switched behavior.
Penultimate. There will be nothing that cannot be simulated. This is the ultimate privilege.
@ 01:00:22
Suffering is a part of the human condition that must be borne.
Misery, however, is a choice.
You're hired!
hug. just hug.
:) just :)
Absolutely my new favorite books, and I can’t stop reading them ❤. I’ve really enjoyed your insights into the book, and I’m itching for someone to discuss the concepts with - I’ll hit you up on IG, maybe we can connect!
Looking forward to it!