“A friend once told me that those who choose a love that can never be fulfilled will be hounded by a rage that can never be extinguished.”
The companion novel to "The Passenger," "Stella Maris" provides the origin story for the troubled siblings Alicia and Bobby Western, offering insights that help inform one's interpretation of "The Passenger."
“If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be?"
“It would be this: The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.”
This work gives Cormac McCarthy a format to explore esoteric, existential, and mortality-tinged questions about math, philosophy, quantum mechanics, and even music theory. The book is comprised of transcripts of the sessions between 20-year-old Alicia -- diagnosed with schizophrenia -- and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen, at the Stella Maris facility.
“If you’re sane enough to know that you’re crazy then you’re not as crazy as if you thought you were sane.”
The banter meanders between disturbing, humorous, flirtatious, and challenging, at times stifling the narrative flow. McCarthy mentioned that he had been wanting to write about a woman for half a century, and the departure for him is apparent.
“The dream wakes us to tell us to remember. Maybe there’s nothing to be done. Maybe the question is whether the terror is a warning about the world or about ourselves. The night world from which you are brought upright in your bed gasping and sweating. Are you waking from something you have seen or from something that you are?”
A very touching and moving ending -- particular in the context of McCarthy's impending death -- adds a redemptive value to "Stella Maris," which could otherwise be dismissed as offering questionable value to pushing the story behind "The Passenger" forward.
“Nowhere like nothing requires for its affirmation a witness which it cannot supply by its own definition.”
Some readers have wondered whether "Stella Maris" actually works better as the precursor to "The Passenger" instead of the sequel. Though I'm not sure I agree with that assessment, all I know is that deciding which book should serve as the ending will do nothing to diminish the chasm represented by the loss of McCarthy.
“I think our time is up.”
“I know. Hold my hand.”
“Hold your hand?”
“Yes. I want you to.”
“All right. Why?”
“Because that’s what people do when they’re waiting for the end of something.”
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