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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
I very much enjoyed this dialogue. Couldn’t shake that McCarthy had to learn and understand a lot about a lot to write it, but I loved the woman, Alicia, though her name is only used in the beginning.
Amazing partner of The Passenger; all in dialogue between two people.
Matamatician checks herself into a psych ward. Loved the dialog
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’m following up my review of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Passenger” with my thoughts on “Stella Maris”, the companion novel. I had initially thought that I’d take a breath between the two – particularly since “The Passenger” was such so intense – but ultimately I couldn’t. I had become so committed to these characters and this world that waiting wasn’t possible.
And so… whelp, if I worried that “Stella Maris” might pack any less of a punch than “The Passenger”, let’s make it clear off the bat - it doesn’t. It is a very different book, in style and story, but it shares themes of grief and madness and existence and love and pain, that I was emotionally devastated once again.
I didn’t go into too many details on my last post, so why change now? While “The Passenger” was sweeping and complex, the strength in“Stella Maris” is in its perceived simplicity. The novel is entirely dialogue - a medical transcript - made up from seven session between Alicia, the sister we meet in “The Passenger”, and her psychiatrist at Stella Maris, the mental facility where she has admitted herself. These conversations are funny and sad, wildly thought-provoking and ultimately illuminating, as they provide some answers to questions raised in the first book.
So much of the power of this novel is how it plays on what the reader has already learned in “The Passenger”. The connections between the two novels make the emotions even more raw. Could this, as has been suggested, been woven in to the first novel, to make one complete epic story? Maybe. All I know is that it worked for me as written, and “Stella Maris” has one of the most devastating final lines of any novel I have read.
I am sad to be done with this world and these characters, though great art, as we all know, never really leaves us.
And so… whelp, if I worried that “Stella Maris” might pack any less of a punch than “The Passenger”, let’s make it clear off the bat - it doesn’t. It is a very different book, in style and story, but it shares themes of grief and madness and existence and love and pain, that I was emotionally devastated once again.
I didn’t go into too many details on my last post, so why change now? While “The Passenger” was sweeping and complex, the strength in“Stella Maris” is in its perceived simplicity. The novel is entirely dialogue - a medical transcript - made up from seven session between Alicia, the sister we meet in “The Passenger”, and her psychiatrist at Stella Maris, the mental facility where she has admitted herself. These conversations are funny and sad, wildly thought-provoking and ultimately illuminating, as they provide some answers to questions raised in the first book.
So much of the power of this novel is how it plays on what the reader has already learned in “The Passenger”. The connections between the two novels make the emotions even more raw. Could this, as has been suggested, been woven in to the first novel, to make one complete epic story? Maybe. All I know is that it worked for me as written, and “Stella Maris” has one of the most devastating final lines of any novel I have read.
I am sad to be done with this world and these characters, though great art, as we all know, never really leaves us.
A not quite necessary prequel. WAYYYYYYY too talky and nothing really happens. Grew tired of the main character and her precious savant schizo suffering. It was better having her as Bobby's enigmatic incestuous sister in The Passenger. The absence of an omniscient narrator or even a first-person POV by the Doctor or the female patient hurts the book. This format reduces the audience to at best a video camera, but actually more of a tape recorder. The poetic touches McCarthy's known for seem forced coming out of Alicia's mouth.
Also—and this was a slight criticism I get with the Passenger but became glaring with the self-serving solipsistic twaddle of savant-sister-nympho—the big historical backdrop of the Manhattan project hangs around the neck of both these books like a medieval torture device. Both brother and sister are so blase about it that it begs the question why even toss that into the gumbo, Cormac?
Still, who am I to question the master? The Passenger at least is shocking in its late-in-Cormac's-life literary perfection. Stella Maris is like a bonus track on the CD that we didn't really ask for.
Also—and this was a slight criticism I get with the Passenger but became glaring with the self-serving solipsistic twaddle of savant-sister-nympho—the big historical backdrop of the Manhattan project hangs around the neck of both these books like a medieval torture device. Both brother and sister are so blase about it that it begs the question why even toss that into the gumbo, Cormac?
Still, who am I to question the master? The Passenger at least is shocking in its late-in-Cormac's-life literary perfection. Stella Maris is like a bonus track on the CD that we didn't really ask for.
There’s a line in this book where Alicia’s psychiatrist, after hearing another one of her lengthy thoughts on mathematics, says, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
And this is what’s both amazing and frustrating about Stella Maris (and The Passenger) - it’s undoubtedly brilliantly clever. But there’s too often times when I just didn’t have a clue what anything meant.
And this is what’s both amazing and frustrating about Stella Maris (and The Passenger) - it’s undoubtedly brilliantly clever. But there’s too often times when I just didn’t have a clue what anything meant.
Interesting read on math, philosophy, and even feminism. Are women actual witches or histrionic, or do others not want to acknowledge they know more?
This book left me with questions, some good, some that made me uncomfortable.
paraphrase of a quote I liked:
The therapist has to believe that the patient is the doctor, that they have the ability to heal themselves.
This book left me with questions, some good, some that made me uncomfortable.
paraphrase of a quote I liked:
The therapist has to believe that the patient is the doctor, that they have the ability to heal themselves.
It's unlikely this book could have existed without The Passenger but it is much better. More satisfying. Consisting entirely of philosophical dialogue between an amiable psychologist and a self-admitted mathematician-patient, it snaps along briskly into an ever-deepening but somehow comforting sadness. Comforting, perhaps, because the words are shared aloud.
Stella Maris reminded me of The Sunset Limited except that not once did the dialogue feel stilted - which is very hard to do, especially with a conversation this grandiose.
There will deservedly be much discussion about what McCarthy is saying here, but what sticks with me is when Alicia (the patient) says that she is at the mental facility because "of the latitude extended to the deranged". It's because "everybody here pretty much agrees that everybody else who's here should be here. Where else do you get that?" There's that comfort thing again.
Stella Maris reminded me of The Sunset Limited except that not once did the dialogue feel stilted - which is very hard to do, especially with a conversation this grandiose.
There will deservedly be much discussion about what McCarthy is saying here, but what sticks with me is when Alicia (the patient) says that she is at the mental facility because "of the latitude extended to the deranged". It's because "everybody here pretty much agrees that everybody else who's here should be here. Where else do you get that?" There's that comfort thing again.
"We can see the footprints of algebras whose entire domain is immune to commutation. Matrices whose hatchings cast a shadow upon the floor of their origins and leave than an imprint to which they no longer conform."
It's my understanding that McCarthy has been rubbing shoulders with some fairly heady company in his later years (philosophers, scientists, etc.) and it more than shows in this second book from his most recent two-book release where he tackles everything from incredibly advanced mathematics to the meaning (or potential meaninglessness) of existence and what constitutes sanity. Unlike the first book, which has a partial plot used as scaffolding and peppered with numerous characters, here things are paired down incredibly: two characters and nothing but dialogue between them. Western's sister and lifelong love, Alicia takes center stage as the reader is privy to a series of sessions she has with a doctor at the Stella Maris psych ward
Spoiler
(presumably, shortly before she commits suicide)Funny, insightful, heartbreaking... This book continues the incredibly witty, fast-paced dialogue, but feels more exploratory---a kind of vehicle for probing existence and what we know about it from both the individual viewpoint and the social one. Alicia's status as both a patient with mental illness and a young female (albeit, likely a certifiable genius) felt like an intricate dance between prodigy and unreliable narrator, a tango between defying and bumping up against gender norms (McCarthy, in my opinion, is not well known for his female characters who often feel either absent or secondarily functional, so it was interesting to see him give center stage to Alicia).
McCarthy's fictional worlds continue to be brutal, unforgiving realities, but here we have a tinge of... hope? Romanticism? Maybe just the acknowledgment that the touch of another human can be a firewall against the yawning oblivion.
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The Verbal/Referential Shrapnel I'm Still Trying To Identify
topology/topos theory | Grothendieck | gedanken | noumenal | Quine | Frege | The Grundlagen | Langlands Project | hebephrenic | dybbuk | affine | Deligne | Oscar Zariski | atavistic | Archatron | demonium | Ogdoad | eidolon | Lysenko | cohomology | Cantor’s discontinuum | homological algebra | Velikovsky
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Tell me I'm not the only reader who wanted to see Alicia in a speed-dating scenario for the sheer comedy potential.