I have never bought a book by Cormac McCarthy, all of his novels that I have read have been gifts that I have received with pleasure and appreciation. And my gratitude has not been less, since the writer has been recognized as one of the greatest of the last century. Without going any further, the critic Harold Bloom has considered him one of the four greatest American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and Philip Roth.
The first book I read by Cormac McCarthy was “The Road” (2006), given to me for my birthday by an old friend of those who never fail, who warned me: this book will mark an era. It is a dark and desolate novel set in a post-apocalyptic world: a catastrophe has occurred, we do not know why it occurred, but it has ended most of life on earth, there is nothing but deserts and skeletons of cities covered under a continuous rain of ashes.
The light is barely perceptible and the cold is omnipotent. The story tells us the endearing journey of a father and his son along an endless road in search of food. The few humans who have survived have become feral and resort to cannibalism to stay alive. The relationship between the father and his son is the last thing that remains of humanity in that devastated world.
Honestly, there are gaps in my memory regarding reading “No Country for Old Men” (2005). This was due to a happy deformation that I had to experience: the film adaptation by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (2007) was to blow anyone’s mind. He received four Oscars, two BAFTAs and two Golden Globes.
A separate issue was the performance of Javier Bardem, playing an indecipherable and ruthless killer who uses as a singular weapon a tube with a compressor that launches nuts. Four years ago Business Insider published a study conducted by a group of forensic psychiatrists who, after reviewing 400 films featuring murderers, concluded that Bardem’s portrayal was the most clinically accurate portrayal of a psychopath.
Although it is much earlier than “Blood Meridian” (1985), I arrived much later, about three years ago (someone very well-intentioned gave me, this time, a second-hand book). Written in a Western style, it describes an extremely violent environment between the borders of the United States and Mexico in the mid-19th century.
The novel tells the story of a young fugitive (we never learn his name) who joins a band of mercenaries hired by the governor of Chihuahua to massacre indigenous people. The de facto leader, Judge Holden, is a violent and cruel being who indiscriminately rapes and murders children of both sexes. The panorama changes radically when the mercenaries stop murdering Indians and begin to exterminate the very Mexicans who have paid them. “Blood Meridian” is a masterful novel that everyone should read.
Cormac McCarthy maintained a rigorous literary silence for 16 years before publishing his last work, with which he said goodbye in style.
In reality, they were two novels published just six weeks apart, and in Chile and other countries they were published as a single volume: “El Pasajero / Stella Maris” (2022). By the way, this book was also a gift that someone gave me for my birthday: I am proud of her intelligence, her beauty, her creativity, her energy, and her optimism with life and, of course, I thank her for the unforgettable dedication that he wrote to me and that motivated me so much to read this very extensive book.
“The Passenger” and “Stella Maris” are two formally independent novels, but united by their twin plots. The first addresses the story of Bobby Western, a being tormented by his father’s contributions to the development of the atomic bomb, and who lives thanks to his job as a professional diver who performs rescues and repairs objects in dangerous waters on behalf of dark employers. This narrative is interspersed with the stories of a certain Talidomida Boy, a voice of schizophrenic origin that will wander throughout the mind of Alicia Western, Bobby’s younger sister.
The confluence of these stories only makes full sense when one arrives at Stella Maris and fully understands the incestuous love between both brothers. In the second novel we are allowed access to the psychiatric sessions of Alicia, a beautiful and brilliant mathematician who has fallen from grace. Chronologically, “Stella Maris” takes place a decade before “The Passenger,” and it is in this narrative that we learn that Alice has committed suicide and that her ghost will haunt the rest of Bobby Western’s life.
The first anniversary of the death of Cormac McCarthy will soon be celebrated, an author who left a mark that was too deep, too consistent and, for this reason, it is impossible not to miss him.