‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’ form a diptych in which the legendary author of ‘The Road’ returns to his narrative obsessions
Cormac McCarthy is back. At the age of 89 and after sixteen years of editorial silence, the legendary narrator of ‘The Road’ reappears with a double novel, ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’. Eight years in a row, the Random House Literature label publishes them in a single volume that hits bookstores next Thursday the 10th. With this diptych, McCarthy is rich in the worlds of quantum physics, the philosophy of mathematics, and madness. The existence of God and the notions of heaven and hell are also questioned by the haunted history of siblings Bobby and Alicia Western, obsessed with the role of their father, a physicist who participated in the development of the atomic bomb.
Engrossed in the metaphysical world, ‘The Passenger’ is the story of a rescue diver obsessed with loss, afraid of the watery depths, haunted by a conspiracy beyond his comprehension, and longing for a death he can’t with God. reconcile.
Set in 1980’s New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Bobby Western is haunted by memories of his sister Alicia, a brilliant creature who eventually committed suicide and whose story is set in the wreckage of a sunken plane. Stella Maris’. There are appointments to Ibiza and Formentera, where McCarthy wrote one of his first novels.
Set in 1972, ‘Stella Maris’ is presented as “an intimate portrait of pain and longing” by the young Alicia Western. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she is admitted to a Wisconsin psychiatric center where she tries to make sense of her own existence. Raised as a dialogue between the doctors and the patient, it tells how his search for original mathematical theories brought him to the brink of madness.
Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933 into a wealthy family of Catholic descent. But he spent his childhood in Knosxville, Tennessee, where he set his first four novels. Heir to the tradition of William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor, he is one of the giants of American literature, at the top of his generation alongside Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.
The biography of this elusive narrator is a mystery. He’s only given 12 interviews, the last to Oprah Winfrey in 2007, when he won the Pulitzer for “The Road,” clarifying that writing is “a compulsion” to him.
Extreme violence and moral devastation characterize novels such as “No Country for Old Men” (2005), which traverses the brutal southwestern United States, and “The Road” (2006), the epic escape of a father and son into a world -apocalyptic, whose success was universal.
After novels like ‘The Guardian of the Garden’ (1965), ‘The Dark Outside’ (1968), ‘Son of God’ (1973) and ‘Suttree’ (1979), McCarthy triumphed with ‘Blood Meridian’ (1985), and especially with the ‘Frontier Trilogy’ (1992-1998), consisting of ‘All the beautiful horses’ (1992), ‘On the border’ (1994) and ‘Cities of the plain’ (1998). He has received awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his fiction.
The first film adaptation of one of his works was ‘All the Beautiful Horses’ (2000), directed by Billy Bob Thornton and starring Matt Damon and Henry Thomas. They were followed by ‘The Highway’ (2009), directed by John Hillcoat and starring Viggo Mortensen, and ‘No Country for Old Men’, directed by the Cohen Brothers, starring Javier Bardem, who plays hit man Anton Chigurh plays, and winner of four Oscars, including best picture. ‘Outer Darkness’ (2009) was adapted by Stephen Imwalle and ‘Son of God’ (2013) by James Franco.
“These extraordinary novels are unlike anything Cormac McCarthy has written before, and while they should both be read and experienced separately, they represent two sides of the same narrative coin,” he clarifies of ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris,’ Reagan. Arthur, executive vice president and publisher of Alfred A. Knopf.
“For nearly six decades, Cormac McCarthy’s books have changed the literary landscape and influenced generations of authors and artists,” adds the publisher, “very proud” to publish “his extraordinary and inimitable works.”
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
