Cormac McCarthy’s final will is contained in two novels.

When it comes to American literature, few names are as revered as Cormac McCarthy. His brutal and haunting meditations on the violence and wildness endemic in American history have earned him a place among the greatest writers of the 20th century.

McCarthy’s work was even included in Harold Bloom’s controversial list of the great works of the Western tradition, which drew both praise and ire for its selection of authors. Bloom, a literary critic known for his lack of political correctness or bias in his judgments, hailed McCarthy’s 1985 Herman Melvillian Western “Blood Meridian” as perhaps the greatest American novel.

But McCarthy is much more than just the author of “Blood Meridian.” He has become known for four major works, including the “Border Trilogy” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Road.” And after a long hiatus, McCarthy has returned with two new novels, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris,” which feel like a moratorium on the 20th century.

The Passenger

“The Passenger” tells the story of Bobby Western, a mathematics prodigy turned race car driver turned salvage diver eventually turned recluse. Bobby and his sister Alicia are haunted by the memories and guilt of the great 20th-century atrocities of the Second World War.

Despite his own Irish-Catholic background, McCarthy seems most at home in the Protestant South or the wild and seemingly irredeemable American West. In “The Passenger,” the Tennessee grandmother’s home is a sanctuary for Bobby, and devoutly religious people provide a sense of stability, kindness, and comfort to McCarthy’s tormented heroes.

If “The Road” is about the death of 20th-century America, then “The Passenger” is more about the memory of that America. The world of “The Passenger” is the lost world of industrial and “electronic age” America that is rapidly being replaced in our own time by the “digital age.”

Stella Maris

“Stella Maris,” the weaker of the two novels, is essentially conversations between Alicia Western and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen. The book is a philosophical-theological meditation on how Western science lost and then found God again in the 20th century. At the same time, with McCarthy’s William Faulkner-like fixations on perversion and sin, “Stella Maris” is about the brokenness and torment of the human condition.

“Stella Maris,” like “The Passenger,” is about the loneliness of the intellectual life and the profound sense of alienation that intelligent people often feel. The books are, on one level, a last will and testament of McCarthy and a moratorium on the 20th century in which McCarthy lived most of his life.

Looking to the Future

McCarthy’s work is a hard and sober realism of the past, but it also offers a glimpse of hope for the future. As we navigate the challenges of the 21st century, we must labor to create a vibrant and hopeful future and a renewed America.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases