We don't think

>>25272289
I think the Britt interview gives a pretty good picture that it was less a complete and contained work than a mostly-functional assemblage of his last attempts to write while implicitly acknowledging that the scientism arc was a dead end. I liked it for that. A lot of the scenes were soulful.

Stella Maris sucked as the apparent repository where all his smarmiest and least contextual notes went.

>>25272289
Awful. Gross troon propaganda and all the "super genius but mentally insane" sister perspective scenes made me cringe.

>>25272418
Actually pretty insane McCarthy decided to stick a tranny in a novel that takes place in the 70s, has MC say that said tranny has a "sexy" husky voice, and offer to pay for his sex change

>>25272418
>he was joking about being/getting fat and his loose clothing

Practical joke and awards bait.

>>25272289
I love McCarthy, but this and Stella Maris were both garbage. He finally became one of the rambling gnostics he idealized so much in The Crossing (his 3rd worst book).

>>25272289
Loved it. Not S-tier McCarthy, but A-tier. I'd put it with the border trilogy. Stella Maris was alright, but didn't like it as much as The Passenger and I'm not sure what to do with the reveal that the siblings are partially jews. It makes sense, but I pictured Bobby as an all American guy. But I guess all American guys don't want to fuck their 13 year old sisters. Also what was the deal with the timelines in the two books not fitting together? I remember reading about that here after finishing The Passenger but before starting Stella Maris and thinking anons were schizophrenic, but indeed the timelines do not fit unless you make some retarded gymnastics. Plus Bobby is mentioned as dead in Stella Maris, not in a comma. Sure, she could mean that it's like he's dead, but still an odd detail.

we don't read

>>25272542
I know McCarthy is not the type of author to theory-slopize about, but it really feels like the different timelines can't be a mistake and we're meant to take away that in The Passenger Alice died and Buddy lived on and vice-versa in Stella Maris, I guess representing the two possible spins of entangled electrons.

>>25272542
>Also what was the deal with the timelines in the two books not fitting together?
What are you talking about? They fit fine. Where's the discrepancy?

I didn't like them at all. Bobby came across as a Llewellyn Moss-wannabe and his sister was preachy and annoying. The books also didn't have enough of a plot. McCarthy has always been a minimalistic writer, but these books took it too far. It's a shame he went out on such a whimper.

>>25272799
I read them too long ago to remember the exact details, but look up on the archive or probably even on reddit (yes I know, but likely there are some posts about it in the Cormac sub).

>>25272289
“We” don't think at all. I've written several long posts on it which are easily findable in the archive.

In summary:

— It doesn't really work. He had a good basic story framework (brother grieving for sister) but he stuffed it with everything he had lying around that he hadn't managed to put into a book yet, and the whole thing is a mess.

— It's still worth reading. There are dozens of nice moments. (I suspect the bits written longest ago are the best.)


A FEW NICE MOMENTS

He held up the bottom of his glass in his fingers and rotated it slowly. The icecubes held true north.

— p. 244

This is what icecubes do when you turn a glass. Like most of us, CM notices these little things, but unlike most of us, he remembers them and writes them down and puts them in his novels exactly where they're needed. This one reminded me of a paragraph in Cities of the Plain:

John Grady let the curtains fall back across the glass and turned and sat staring into the empty cup before him. There were grounds in the bottom of the cup and he swirled the cup and looked at them. Then he swirled them the other way as if he'd put them back the way they'd been.

~

Why is the lamp of wrong always sheltered from the wind?

— p. 282

Just a perfect epigram. You couldn't express this thought better and quicker.

~

There were owls in the barn gable even before the snow was gone. He stood in the bay and played the light up into the loft. Two heartshaped faces peered down. Pale as applehalves in the light.

— p. 317

"Applehalves" is purportedly only there for the colour, but the shape evokes an owl's face as well. CM often does cute tricks like this with similies and metaphors. For example, when Billy sees the woman bathing naked in the river in The Crossing, we're told she immerses her hair sideways in the water and then flings it back in a "great hoop" of spray. The "hoop" is just describing the shape the water makes, but describing it like that automatically puts it into slow motion, which is just what the doctor ordered for that particular scene.

And let's not forget the lovely "P" and "L" sounds here. People who don't subvocalize miss these effects. I pity them.

>>25272753
This is what TK says in his first ramble:
>Look, Presh. At bottom it’s pretty much about structure. Something not all that thick on the ground around here, I think even you might agree. But you cant do anything until you lift the mood. Get everybody together. A little comity. Okay? We’re trying for a baseline. Otherwise it all starts to unravel. You got to use your best judgment. Work with the materials at hand. There’s a number of ugly scenarios here. Like what? Chalk outline? That’s easy. Nothing to be done. But you been peekin under the door, Doris, and we dont have much of a file on that. So if you get the impression from time to time that we’re sort of winging it here so be it. The first thing is to locate the narrative line. It doesnt have to hold up in court. Start splicing in your episodics. Your anecdotals. You’ll figure it out. Just remember that where there’s no linear there’s no delineation. Try and stay focused. Nobody’s asking you to sign anything, okay? And anyway it’s not like you got a lot of fallback positions.

>>25272289
One of the best novels from the century so far.

>>25272799
>Where's the discrepancy?
Stella Maris is impossible because Alicia is already dead, according to the timeline of The Passenger, when the psychiatric interviews that comprise the book take place.

>>25273636
I tried to reply but the post seems to have vanished somehow. Not sure what's going on.

What do you mean, "impossible"? Be specific. Where's the discrepancy?

>>25273636
I thought Stella Maris took place before the suicide while Bobby was still in a coma

>>25272319
What really made me cringe about Stella Maris was that McCarthy wrote this super genius character and put his own pet theories in her mouth. She practically quotes his essay "The Kekule Problem", except it's her own idea and she's literally the smartest human ever

>>25273758
>What do you mean, "impossible"?
Just what I wrote. Bobby is in a coma during the year Stella Maris takes place whereas in The Passenger he was awake (and Alicia supposedly died while he was comatose). Therefore the timelines of the books when taken together are discrepant to one another.

>>25273925
>I thought Stella Maris took place before the suicide while Bobby was still in a coma
Bobby never woke up.

i have an opinion but i'm not telling you. i'm not a part of your "group"

>>25273985
You aren't giving any passages from the books. There's nothing in The Passenger that I remember that makes it impossible Bobby was still in his coma in Christmas of 1972 when Alicia committed suicide.

>>25272289
>random scenes and dialogues: the book

>>25274056
>There's nothing in The Passenger that I remember that makes it impossible Bobby was still in his coma in Christmas of 1972
Bobby never woke up.

>>25274056
This is from a redditor that tried to do the math:
>Wednesday. At the end of the chapter, Cohen asks her, “Will I see you on Wednesday?” I thought the “Wednesday” was useful for helping clarify the timeline. We know she checked herself into Stella Maris on Saturday, October 21, 1972. The prologue is dated October 27, 1972, and states that she arrived six days prior. Chapter I isn’t dated, but if it occurs the same day as the prologue, that would be Friday the 27th. At the start of Chapter II, it’s suggested that they skipped a week (“I missed you last week”), which seems to denote both a weekly schedule and one missed appointment. If Chapter I starts on October 27, that would put Chapter II at Friday, November 10. I haven’t spotted any other indications of missed appointments or a change in the schedule. That would put this chapter, Chapter VI, on December 8, 1972.

>We know from the prologue of The Passenger that her body is discovered on Christmas, December 25. But we’re also told in Chapter I of The Passenger that she is in a roominghouse in Chicago “in the winter of the last year of her life” and that “in a week’s time she would return to Stella Maris and from there wander away into the bleak Wisconsin woods.” That means Chapter I of The Passenger takes place on December 17 or 18, 1972. But if Chapter VII of Stella Maris takes place one week after Chapter VI, that would put it on December 20, which is already too late to be back in Chicago one week before she returns to Stella Maris. And if we try to say Chapter I of The Passenger is before this visit to Stella Maris entirely (that is, set around October 14), that doesn’t jive with the description of it being “winter of the last year of her life.”

Another odd details. In Stella Maris, Alice alludes to both Godel's death, which happened in 1978. She also makes the connection between her and Bobby's names being the typical names used for the hypothetical subjects in thought experiments. This convention started in also 1978.

Another weird thing. The plane Bobby finds as a child, it's a unique plane. Only one was ever built. The novel has the serial number wrong by one digit. Has to be intentional.

>>25274314
Ah, OK.

I don't think this really changes the big picture. It's just arguing about the timing of the Kid saying goodbye to Alicia (Chapter One of The Passenger).

The big picture:

Bobby digs up the gold — 1968
Sells the gold, splits the money with Alicia. She's dropped out of her PhD and is working in the bar.
She buys the violin, he goes to Europe to race cars.
She comes out to visit him, possibly more than once.
She is in Germany long enough to try to learn the language.
He crashes — presumably in Italy, 1972 (summer?)
Bobby in coma in Italian hospital with Alicia.
A. refuses to give permission to pull the plug, comes back to USA
Checks into Stella Maris — October 1972
Therapy
Kills herself — Christmas 1972
...
Bobby wakes up (unclear exactly when)
Embarks upon life of grieving.
...
Plane crash etc, main events of The Passenger — 1980+


The issue is when the Kid says goodbye to Alicia (Chicago boarding-house). It could be BEFORE the Stella Maris therapy sessions or AFTER. There are slight problems with both.

BEFORE:
Would you call October "Winter"?
Also it says "she would "RETURN to Stella Maris". But remember she went there before 1972. So it could refer to that.

AFTER:
As the guy says, there's not quite enough time for her to have seven weekly sessions plus miss one plus a week in Chicago.

But I don't think this is a big important "deliberate mistake". I don't think it means it's all Bobby's dream in a coma or anything. It just means, Cormac was old and pulling together a bunch of stuff written over a long time and he messed up a little bit. There are other slight problems / loose ends too. Among others:

1. What happened to the violin? A. said she "took it back to the shop" but what does that mean? I think it COULD mean she took it with her into the woods. Remember in Stella Maris she talks about that first Italian guy going into the forest to get the wood for the first violin and he is "very dear to her heart". She might think the forest is where the violin "came from".

2. This passage from Stella Maris:

You didnt go to your mother’s funeral?
No.
What did your family say? Did your brother go?
Yes. Of course. I was twelve. I was going through a religious crisis. I did not want to sit through a High Mass featuring my mother’s coffin in the center aisle of the church. I couldnt.
What did your brother say?
He kissed me on the cheek and whispered to me that he loved me and that it was all right. And then it was.
And then it was.
Yes. Look. It’s a broken record. I’m doing this for you, not for me. I was given a letter to deliver and told not to read it. And I read it. And I cant unread it. Time’s up.
Oh. Yes. Of course.

What's the letter she read? Is it a metaphorical letter?

3. At some point Alicia says something like "every family must produce the one that will destroy it". What's that about? Did she betray her family to the FBI, or is it a metaphorical family?

>>25274858
>Checks into Stella Maris — October 1972
>Therapy
>Kills herself — Christmas 1972
It can't be, because she kills herself on Christmas and in The Passenger she's in Chicago a week before.

>>25274858
For what it's worth, I think Chapter One of The Passenger (Kid saying goodbye) happens AFTER the therapy sessions in Stella Maris and CM just got the timing wrong by about a week or two.

The tone at the end of Stella Maris segues perfectly into that chapter. It's very downbeat. Alicia has decided definitely to kill herself.


There is this in Stella Maris of course:

The Kid once told you that other people could see him? Did you say that?
Some other people.
What do you think that means?
I dont know. You’re the psychiatrist.
You wont see him again. The Kid.
You’re fishing again.
But you said goodbye to him.
Yes.
What did he say?
Not much. He wanted to know if I would miss him.
If you would miss him.
Yes. He recited a poem to me. Which was a surprise. I dont know what it means.
Do you remember how it went?
Yes. Pretty quickly.
I meant do you remember the poem.
I know what you meant.
I guess I should just ask if you would say it.
No. I wont.

And that doesn't really fit Chapter One of The Passenger perfectly, but it sort of fits it. Is it possible she THOUGHT she would never see The Kid again before she went to SM in October, and said goodbye, but then he popped up unexpectedly one last time in December?

Again, I think Cormac had lots of drafts and lots of little Alice-Kid conversations and just got things a little bit mixed up.