If you've ever read anything by Cormac McCarthy then you know he's a bit of an odd duck as regards his writing. If you haven't read anything by him, you will soon find that out. He eschews quotation marks and apostrophes and he rarely gives you even the slightest hint of transition. His prose is like the handle of an ancient, well-worn shovel that has been outside in the elements for uncounted seasons. It might seem like this would be the tool one would skip over in order to use the sleek new, fiberglass-handled spade, but unlike the new one, the seasoned tool doesn't give blisters and is—mysteriously—a joy to use despite how it appears. McCarthy's economy of line is sensual, even when he is describing actions that do not forward the plot an inch.
The Passenger is not a "story". It doesn't have a plot, per se. Rather, it is primarily a series of non sequitur conversations between the protagonist, Robert Western, and the people he knows, as a part of his life unfolds before us. In between these conversations, McCarthy flips to intensely explanatory passages of Western's wanderings and doings and his memories. Then also, intermittently, McCarthy inserts sections describing dialog between Western’s sister Alicia, who has recently hanged herself, and a part of her psyche called the Thalidomide Kid, who entertains her with unspeakable acts of vaudeville, infernal minstrel shows and bizarre revivals of long dead Confederates.
Alicia was a genius schizophrenic mathematics student before she killed herself. The conversations and dark entertainments all appeared from her tortured mind. Her brutal repartee with "the Kid" is seemingly inane, but it does feel as if they will eventually get to the solution of an equation that we cannot fathom. Whatever that solution is, it refuses to respond to the reader’s desire to make it all make sense.
McCarthy’s prose wanders close to the edge of something profound, but as it does, it also tiptoes through the madness unraveling at the edges of consciousness; stage-lighting briefly the limits of our menial cerebral tools to codify the dark spaces beyond what we can see and what we think we know.
Actually, no part of the book makes total sense as it fits into the larger idea of a narrative within the text. The reader wants to understand, wants to negotiate the passages into something meaningful, something larger; maybe to create some explanation or point. As such the pressure to finish the book in the hope of finding a resolution is strong. I felt continuously as though I was yanking back on a dog pulling ferociously at the leash, understanding nothing about what compelled the dog to pull, nor knowing my own reasons to tug against it.
Bobby Western's isn't a story that makes sense even to him and although he and his late sister and the many characters are relatable and even likeable to us, they create a discordant, jangling universe, where conversations about race cars, mathematics and physics, the atom bomb, time, death, suicide, forbidden love, nature, lost cats, a parrot, reality, perception, chaos, solipsism, what it means to seize the day, a rather interesting take on the Kennedy assassinations (both of them) and the meaning of madness are just there to be digested, if not understood as a woven skein of story.
McCarthy is so well-loved an author that he can get away with writing a novel that doesn't have a novel in it. And though it generally follows a wobbling, befuddling course—except for the italicized sections referring to Western’s sister which take place in the past—it keeps fairly linear, if what we see in a kaleidoscope can be called linear. The book just doesn't feel like anything is resolved by the end.
What strikes me most about The Passenger is that only Cormac McCarthy could write and get this novel published. Anyone submitting this as their debut book to agents or publishers would get laughed right out of the business and into long-term employment at whatever food service job mirrors a form of eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire. The manuscript, eventually moldering, would lay forgotten in a ratty old Nike shoebox in the attic.
I admit that this may well be as much a castigation of the writing industry as it is a lament that only great writers get to write what and how they want. No quotation marks? No punctuation? No apostrophes? Get real, pal. Here’s your form rejection letter. Get a degree and try again. No serious member of your local writing group, just humoring you, would even let that fly probably.
This is not to mention the fact that, on top of this flagrant disassociation with the norms of style and composition, the story doesn’t do anything or really go anywhere (except maybe eventually to Spain). What remains is this question: who decides what makes a great writer; the readers or a cadre of gatekeeping agents and editors who use chimerical, nebulous goal post-moving standards to block the gates to the next Hemingway because "this style isn't popular right now"?
However that question is answered, The Passenger is not, in my humble opinion, a must-read book. If your reading is eclectic enough to withstand a few massive variations in style or if you're omnivorous enough to accept a book that isn't really a coherent story, or if you’re daring enough to risk a book that may not change you at all or that may change you entirely, then you should be alright picking this one up.
You will, in the course of reading, come across the compositional miracle that is McCarthy's ability to neatly explain complex concepts in compelling words that even lay people can understand. Therein methinks, lies his true genius. In fact, it might be that the book is a kind of tasting flight at a brewery, wherein McCarthy places several topics he’s interested in sharing before you, but you will have to take those moments (and they are golden and beautiful and rare) as they come and not expect them to last or be comprehensive or to contribute to the whole or at least, not to a coherent plot.
My wife's English cousin recommended the book to me earlier in the year and said that The Passenger was wonderful because it contained all the things mentioned above, but that he wondered what the critics would make of it. This was enough for me, no matter what the critics think. If they’re being hard-headed, it might be something really good.
The reviews are in, though, and the critics are generally slobbering over The Passenger. Perhaps this is their default when it comes to McCarthy, who is nearly 90, long overdue for a book and whose Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men are part of the cultural landscape of the modern era of American literary composition.
Overall, the characters are deep and well-crafted if uncertain and sometimes tantalizingly unfamiliar. They speak about things we’re maybe interested in and they all seem diverse individuals and relatable to that end. There are many who we might wish we got more of throughout these pages. The book captures a rare slice of Southern life in the late 20th Century and McCarthy's prose is Olympian—otherworldly—in its stark, terse construction.
Incidentally, the title refers to the opening section of the book where Robert Western, who moonlights as a salvage diver, and his team are called to investigate a plane that lands intact and undamaged in the waters off the western coast of Florida. There is obviously a passenger missing. However, having finished the book, the passenger may well be Robert himself witnessing with us his own life passing. Perhaps the title should be The Passive Passenger.
Will you like it? Who knows? Did I? Jury's out, but there is hope in knowing that you may miss the point of it and still enjoy the hell out of the journey as a passenger watching Western's life unfold, even if you wind up more than confused and unsatisfied by what exactly is going on and why. I guess that much is how we all sometimes feel as we appraise our lives passing.
I'd love to know what you think about The Passenger. Leave your comments below!
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