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Just read The Passenger. Will post my hotly-anticipated review when everything is back up; in the meantime, objective Cormac McCarthy ranking will be in the comments of this thread. (Also general The Passenger discussion thread)
1. Blood Meridian 2. The Crossing 3. No Country for Old Men 4. Suttree 5. Cities of the Plain 6. The Road 7. Child of God 8. All the Pretty Horses 9. Outer Dark 10. The Orchard Keeper *The Passenger *: The Passenger is on a wavelength where it's simultaneously at the top and bottom of this list
surprised to see the road down so far. granted, i haven't yet read it myself, but I've read so much praise about it. BM is absolutely a masterpiece though
typical glanton-brained nonsense. trances bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent are a dime a dozen, my guy. you want some real americana, catch me in a shack by the river watching the cupreous and dacebright carp, worried sick over my melon-fucking friend's latest scheme
Late comment but I felt Stella Maris was much better. Some aspects of The Passenger fascinated me and were great. Partly it frustrated me because the plot is perhaps deliberately incomplete. I'd have loved for the salvage to be more prominent; he set it up so well and it goes nowhere. The money storyline is great. I think I just felt the execution of the book was uneven. Everything the book tries to do philosophically is done much better in Stella Maris. The form of the book, which is just several extended conversations between Alicia and her psychiatrist, works beautifully. McCarthy somehow balances her and her brother's relationship with wide-ranging, challenging discussions of mathematics, language, and psychology in such a memorable way. A 10/10 for me. The Passenger is good, it just never manages to sustain the heights Stella Maris achieves for its entirety.
I feel like I always comment the same thing anytime The Passenger/Stella Maris comes up (though usually its in defense of SM, so its cool to see someone prefer it!) but I think the reason SM “works” is because it brings home emotionally all of the themes which were explored intellectually in Passenger.