"Stella Maris" Book Review by Cormac McCarthy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
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This is a book review of “Stella Maris” by Cormac McCarthy. Today we will be doing a short breakdown of Alicia Western's life, her account of what happened with Bobby Western in Cormac McCarthy's "The Passenger," and some other crazy moments in this book. We will be discussing Cormac McCarthy's integration of math and science in Alicia's characterization, the effect of the Manhattan Project on the Karma of the characters, and a bunch of other fun things.
🚀 I would love to help you understand McCarthy’s novels better in my Cormac McCarthy course & book club. On my Substack, you can access the Blood Meridian For Writers Course and McCarthy’s unreleased interview. Click here to join: writeconscious.substack.com
📖Explore over 200 of McCarthy’s favorite books in my free guide to his favorite books
Access here: writeconscious.ck.page/e20249...
👕Want to REP some McCarthy streetwear? Go here! writeconscious.com
📚Want to WRITE better? Join my free writing school: www.skool.com/writeconscious
📕My Best Books of All-Time List: writeconscious.ck.page/355619...
🔥Want to READ my wife’s fire poetry? Go here: marigoldeclipse.substack.com
🤔My Favorite Cormac McCarthy Novel: amzn.to/3TVdzCQ
Insta: instagram.com/writeconscious
Yes, Alicia seems female - it is her deep grounding in logic and math that makes people see her as less effeminate. She is as female as they come. And the choice of format for the book is perfect.
Thanks for the comments. After a recent reread I agree.
@@WriteConscious i have not read all of McCarthy's work - but this feels like the best book i have ever read after 2 readings. Every page calls out to me.
I haven't finished it yet, so I'm not going to watch this until after, but I'm loving how Alicia is basically citing McCarthy's "Kekulé Problem" within the first chapter
Lmk what you thought John! Still have to respond to your email lol!
@@WriteConscious I really enjoyed it and have went back through both books about 3 times now. I might be biased though as it is basically a conversation about many topics I hold close, and I was able to follow along with the subjects and get the references to various items that many may not get. Very enjoyable though.
I’m watching this BEFORE I read the book… and honestly, I don’t find that this spoils anything that we haven’t read in The Passenger, but also just in Stella Maris. I think you comment on the big things mentioned, but the thoughtful questions mixed in between are stimulating interest and intrigue in paying attention to all the things in between to experience the true depth. Your question about karmic rhetoric is something that has been very present in my life lately. The way Cormac uses karma as a rhetorical device immerses us even deeper into the story as, less of a fiction novel, and more of a dialogue of the present-something happening in front of us and being translated into language… it’s amazing.. I’m so excited to read this novel, but even more now because of this video, and can’t wait to participate in discussion in your membership (when that drops I am sooo there).
Thanks Summer!
One of the things I noticed about Dr. Cohen was that he wouldn’t know something about mathematicians or physicists or math in the initial moments but in later sections he would. I thought this reflected that he would go research certain things between the sessions, which explains some of his background knowledge.
I didn't talk about this on my review, but Zeno and the idea of infinity was brought up a couple of times, and I think it has to do with unreachable goal. Especially, with the level of achievement that was made with the Manhattan Project already past, only a unified theory to link relativity to quantum mechanics would reach that accomplishment.
I think the conversation about the Kid implies that the Kid may have a divine origin, that he's been sent to protect/distract her from herself. If that is the case, it helps explain how he appears to Bobby.
Love this comment. This actually says a lot about McCarthy's personal life and philosophy too that I hadn't connected!
Cormac really said "fuck it, i'm writing the two best books of the 2020s (both of which I wrote a decade ago) and will likely never write another"
Exactly. Such an OG move to release two bangin' novels at 89 lmao.
Watching reviews and coming back to this video now after finishing Stella. I was blown away, this book is incredibly beautiful and sad. Was not expecting it to be this good. Now I have to reread The Passenger.
Let's go! You're on the journey Shane! Still got some of the best books to read.
A few thoughts.
Alicia is living in a very left brain self yet like most girls 12-14 is experiencing intense, developing feelings of romance: sometimes directed in intense fantasy to possible or totally improbable persons: a relative, a celebrity, etc. (Teens often fantasize about marrying a young rock star)
Alicia had no role model: her dad even chose to be at a meeting hundreds of miles away when she was born. Her grandmother acted as caretaker-but was more concerned with her deteriorating daughter-Alicia’s mother.
Her big brother, also growing up nearly parentless in the desert, deeply cared about his little sister, her interests and was protective of her. (He alone was at her little dance recital-feeling guilt when thinking how beautiful she looked)
In the freakish isolation these children found themselves in, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine they had no cultural mores that would restrain them from “falling in love. “
Bobby seemed to put breaks on acting on feelings, but never shook them.
I thought it interesting that at one point the therapist stopped Alicia when she started to really open up about her forbidden feelings saying “maybe we should talk about something else”: was it too intense for the therapist?
I don’t know what critics mean by Alicia not being feminine enough; or how many extreme left brain, 20 year old, STEM-genius-females they know.
I haven’t read other reviews yet, but wanted to comment on this “feminine” issue.
I think Alicia was more ashamed of something else apart from her desire for Bobby. And the therapist noted that sometimes patients reveal something shameful in order to cover up something even darker. I think Alicia's love for Bobby was self-serving, and deep down she knew it. She didn't love him enough to become his caretaker if he woke up from the coma and was mentally incapable. The Kid tells her that explicitly in The Passenger.
My theory, having just finished Stella Maris is that Alicia is the passenger. We recall in SM the story of the man in a coma who wakes up when he finds out he is terminally ill with an unrelated disease. Alicia fakes her own suicide, knowing that this will get to Bobby, as people in comas are said to be able some fashion pick up things said to them.
This grief awakens Bobby and is what keeps him alive throughout The Passenger. Recall the line in SM, about unfulfilled longing being stronger than fulfilled desire.
In the opening of the Passanger, Alicia's dead body is described as having a red sash(?) so she will be found. This runs counter to the anonymity she seemed to crave when talking about suicide in SM.
Bobby is visited by someone on the oil rig and also in the old shack whom is never identified. I think this might be Alicia as well.
Couple more thoughts....
Also, in SM, Alicia mentions a raft being used in one of her hypothetical suicide scenarios. Similar to the one Bobby finds on the island?
In SM, It's clear Alicia has thought through every possible suicide scenario, and I imagine that would include faking her own death.
It would also explain why the feds were so interested in Bobby. If his sister was the passanger on the flight.
And lastly, the cover (at least on the box set) has a woman whom I take to be Alicia in the water, which would be hiding the mystery in plain sight. Which I think is a term she used in SM, when she was carrying all her money in a bag.
Hey, just want to say you killed this analysis! Really good stuff!
But Alicia was found dead at the beginning of the passenger.
Very insightful post. This was the kind of review I've been waiting for since, predictably so, most critics are completely baffled by this book (Provincetown has a spectularly shit review) Really appreciate your approach to understanding a novel from the inside out and not the outside in.
That Provincetown review was really really bad lol. Thanks for the kind words!
I look forward to your extended review of Stella Maris, I just finished it and actually liked it more than the Passenger. But I have to say the packaged two are, for me, very different than his other writing. A cinema like consciousness in them. But what a PUZZLE!!! These works will take a lot of ruminating. I love your assessments and may actually dive back in and reread sooner than I expected.
The real story on why Cormac McCarthy published The Passenger and Stella Maris, beginning on a train:
Cormac McCarthy: *Sigh* Welp, i've finished the road, got a lot of good books, my life is well fulfilled-- hey, what are you reading.
Some random guy on the train: Oh i'm reading an airplane thriller. Also have you seen the new masterpiece by Colleen Hoover?
Cormac McCarthy:... Oh HELL NA-
And thus two masterpieces were written. Great review btw.
LMAO!
I just finished it today. The Passenger takes place in 1980, and Stella Maris takes place in 1972. Yet in The Passenger Bobby says his sister died ten years ago. I took this to be a sort of expedient way for Bobby to gloss over the pain of her death. I'd imagine he likely knew exactly how many days, or perhaps even hours or minutes had passed since she died. Just a little detail that I thought was poignant.
Does Alicia not sound like a female? It's hard to say because she's such a profoundly unusual person. Reading the novel definitely made me wonder about the people he's met that influenced her characterization.
Why didn't Bobby give in? I guess he was just less mentally ill, he participated in the world a lot more than she did, and I think he had more empathy for other people, namely their grandmother.
I absolutely loved these novels and I'm excited to read The Passenger again with all this new context.
I think the time line is all fucked up , the drugs they are talking about dont exist until 1988 this is not straight forward
Having read Cormac McCarthy's Passenger, and now as I'm into Stella Maris, I feel that McCarthy is now writing us Editorials, in Novel form.
Lol, he might feel weird that he hangs out with scientists and has never published any papers!
I didn’t feel that way at all. The way she talks and rambles is the way I talk and ramble, but in different topics. I listen to this over and over again because this is the first character I’ve wholeheartedly been able to relate to:
My take thus far is that dialog was really the only format that McCormac could have used for Stella Maris as the book represents the left brain hemisphere (verbal, analytical, scientific and organized).
This might seem fanciful but to me it solves a nagging question of why he would release 2 books and not just include the second as act II or part 2 of the first book? I’ve read comments that it was a money grab from an author who realized this might b his last book. But this seems highly doubtful if not laughable. My thought is that he wanted to physically represent the 2 hemispheres through 2 books. The left hemisphere symbolized through Stella Maris and the right -The Passenger (creativity, imagination, emotion and symbolism)
Very interesting!!! I like it. Thank you.
Hey, this is good stuff! It's 100% what's happening here. He refused to include a lot of the science stuff in "The Passenger." While also limiting emotional sentiments by Alicia for maybe ten pages total. Will make a video about this! Thank you!
I have a feeling that in a few years these two companion books will be transformed into an HBO limited series and I wouldn’t be opposed to that format. Maybe an intermingling of both novels through the timeline. Could be an interesting project.
That would be insane! The intermingling timelines would work so well.
Is there a video on you channel in which you talk about your (academic) background ? Just interested.
No! But, here is a quick rundown. Studied philosophy at Utah State University for a year and dropped out to pursue jiu-jitsu. After a few years of that, I got undergraduate degrees in English and Creative Writing and UNLV. I then started taking some grad courses in English and dropped out. But, other than learning some obscure authors and a couple writing tricks didn't learn too much in school. I've read 150-200 books per year for the last 13 years. So, I think self-education and hanging out with smart people are where I learned the most!
@@WriteConscious thanks so much for the rundown ! Keep up the good work and all the best for the new year !
You too Stefan! You will kill it this year!
Bobby DID give in to her advances... Read page 358 of "The Passenger": it describes their ABORTION. In Stella Maris she is an unreliable narrator, and it makes this clear: "It could be that she is afraid that the therapy is threatening to reveal some other intimacy she considers more private." (Stella Maris p.169) She is telling the doc clues but are actually diversions from this darker truth, that their love WAS in fact consummated.
Apparently theses questionable critics have never known an intelligent adolescent female.
Exactly. At least one that actually speaks their mind. As a teacher I've seen intelligence and confidence drop over the past five years.
I haven't read Stella Maris yet but I was reading Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia and she does a super interesting dive into sexuality in ancient history and literary history. Incest comes up regularly and when it is used in literature it often points to self infatuation and only being able to love yourself and a kind of mirror gazing narcissism or that the rest of the world is too contaminated to be an option. Not sure if it applies in this story but it's an interesting angle.
Thanks for this. Got the book and read some of the parts on incest. Will bring this up in a future video. Thanks!
@@WriteConscious awesome! it's seriously one of the most interesting books i've read. if you ever had any recommendations for literary criticism/analysis books it would make a great video topic
I feel that reviewers saying that Alicia doesn't speak or think like a female are just zeroing in on the Comments Cormac made about not ever writing from the female perspective. Maybe that is because they havent really been able to connect the dots of the narrative in the broader sense.
Exactly!
Just finished and my initial thought is:
if Holden Caulfield is the archetypal sad boi, Alicia Western is the archetypal sad gurl. Kind of like the manic pixie dreamgirl x a thousand. I don’t come to McCarthy for subtlety, but this effort seemed a bit heavy handed, even for him. But maybe that’s the point.
I’d argue that the problem with Alicia isn’t that she doesn’t sound like a woman, but that she doesn’t really sound like a person. I think that’s the issue with the psychoanalyst/patient format. Really no room for an actual dialogue. Much of the convo was just the analyst asking Alicia to monologue further.
Hey Alex! Hope things are going well with you.
Alicia is for sure the archetypal sad gurl lol. I agree it was a tad heavy-handed and not as elegant as "The Passenger." I wonder if "The Passenger" which he was working on for 60 years was the box we got. What did McCarthy break off for Stella Maris? Or did he write Stella Maris in the last ten years? I remember reading he had "The Passenger" done in 2012-2013 but only had a first or second draft of Stella Maris. His writing ability post 80 years old and his drastic focus on science probably made for such a extreme novel.
Yo what are your thoughts on the count of monte cristo
I like it! But, feel its a tad overrated.
I would like to comment but don’t want to be a spoiler - any thoughts on where to submit?
Say everything in the comments. People shouldn't watch this if they don't want spoilers. I am releasing a spoiler free video within the next hour or two.
Does the shirt in the back say "WRITE DEATH POEMS"? If so, where did it come from?
writeconscious.com/products/write-death-poems-streetwear?_pos=2&_sid=4162d3c90&_ss=r
also, it's 100% cotton, don't know why the description says 20% polyester lol
@@WriteConscious do they fit pretty true to normal size?
I would say so, but those are streetwear shirts so they fit more boxey and look better a little big!
Check out a recent interview in The Origin Project by Larry Krauss with Cormac McCarthy. It delves into the science. Larry does most of the talking! but still worth a watch.
Pretty good interview even with Krauss doing a terrible job lol.
So who was on the plane and what was the plane’s back story?
Why does it matter?
Will let you know when I am confident in a theory!
Any theory yet?
incest is way beyond our star trek experience
lol
I'm confused Alicia thinks Bobby is brain dead and no longer alive in Stella Maris. The Passenger she's killed herself and Bobby is alive. What Am I missing here?
Bobby Woke up from the coma, Alicia thought he would never and took her own life. The events of The Passenger take place around 10 years after SM
Did he wake up? If 2 people are are utterly convinced that the other person is dead, are either/neither/both of them dead? It’s not the exact equivalent, but it is a sort of literary Schrödinger’s cat problem.
Bobby was in the coma from the car crash in Stella. She kills herself (or fakes her suicide) before Bobby is awake or comes back.
Lol. You will full Schrodinger on us John.
@@WriteConscious it’s interesting in Stella Maris that she doesn’t tell Dr. Cohen that Bobby’s in a coma, but that he’s dead. And in The Passenger, Bobby talks to the Kid as well as John Sheddon’s ghost. Is Bobby alive, dead, or still in a coma?
Are more videos coming soon? Are you taking a break from TH-cam? Thanks
Yes! Lots coming soon. Was more sick than I have been in 10+ years and am now moving states. But, should be able to squeeze a few in while moving!
@@WriteConscious Thanks for the update - good luck with the move. Coincidentally I got super sick this holiday season as well for the first time in a long while.
@@WriteConscious Can’t wait for the upcoming videos
Finally sent you that email! Looking forward to further discussion there, please let me know you got it
I feel like "The Crossing" was about love
I agree!
I haven't read Outer Dark (yet) but is anyone comparing SM with OD? On the surface it seems like SM is about love without sex, and OD is about sex without love. Or put differently, spiritual love and knowldge (SM) vs carnal/material/worldly "love" (OD). And even more generally a very gnostic take that the material world is evil but good can (only) exist in immaterial, incorporeal (but very real) spaces. Just a though, again haven't read OD and this is very surface level.
Good job, while I enjoyed The Passenger more, Stella Maris probably the more definitive in it’s messaging.
Thanks Larry! Stella Maris really punched home some of the themes and ideas "The Passenger" danced around with.
Okay, I bailed at 3:00 so I could pick up a beautiful first edition hc at Pegasus in Berkeley for only 12 bucks. See you in a few days (I read slowly).
Silly rabbits, "Stella Maris" with "The Passenger" completes a circle; it is the massive object that bends "The Passenger" into an orbit.
😂
I wanna watch this but I need to read it first. Even a slight description could spoil it I feel like 😂
Releasing a spoiler free review in a couple hours!
I’m halfway through and I’ve stopped reading it Alicia’s voice and have started reading it in Cormac’s. Shouldn’t have watched the interview prior to reading it XD
Lol, so much from the interview is in the books!
Alicia always seemed quite female to me. I have some critisism of Alicia but her not being female enough isn't one of them.
Having reread I agree!
If you are talking about McCarthy and dialouge youshould read "The Sunset Limited".
I have! Don't think it's anywhere as strong as Stella Maris.
Make a video about the ARCHATRON at the end of Stella Maris, and the Gnostic themes in this work!!! DEMONIUM!!! Is this the lower creator deity in the Gnostic worldwiew?
Both of these books are horrible psychobabble. Lots of name-dropping, lots of pathetic quips meant to seem clever. I am a huge Cormac fan, and I will not let these last two novels tarnish his corpus, but damn…these two are drivel. Do. Not. Bother.
Naw, you're just a hater. I know because The Passenger's last two hundred pages are as good as anything McCarthy has written outside of Suttree and BM. Some scenes with the Kid and parts of Stella Maris are insufferable, but we are also dealing with a locked-up schizo who only can tell us what she is thinking. McCarthy has never done Proustian deep dive into characters. He didn't take the easy way out of depicting mental illness through aggressive first-person POV prose. He also didn't take the easy fill Alicia's hallucinations with meaningful symbolism for us to interpret. He showed us how repetitive and terrible her hallucinations were. There were multiple scenes where she tried ignoring it and it went on and on.
Thanks for the comment though! They are very-polarizing works and I was turned off during my first read. Re-read it a couple times and it is very well crafted.
Currently I’m disappointed, it really does get a lot wrong or uses it in false context/conclusions concerning mathematics, physics, music theory and philosophical theories… so unfortunate when the main character is let down by the limitations of its creator. Alice should be more intelligent! I like her.
I’ll finish nevertheless, it’s rare that novels even try to care… you’ve got to take what you get.
Im curious as to what you mean by this, false contexts and conclusions, are you well read in mathematics, physics, music theory, and philosophy, analytic or continental?
@@zachheisen5022 I would like to believe so. But I understand that her views also serve a dramatic purpose and her emotions are reflected in what she says about those mathematical and theoretical concepts. Also the year in which the story is set is 1972! Its safe that to asume, that what today is common knowledge wasn’t so widespread then and left more room for interpretation.
My criticism was definitely too harsh.
@@Phlizz Can you tell me what was incorrect? I dont really understand mathematices because ive always disliked the subject, but I find it odd that someone like cormac, who has spent many years hanging around quite well respected mathematicians and physicists would have been so utterly wrong about a central part of the book.
@@zachheisen5022 hm. So the general way music theorie is presented as well as math and quantum mechanics. Since Gödel the questions (or hopes) if mathematics were anything other than a human language have been pretty much ended. For music it has never been in question and western musical theory has no other origins than cultural and often practical and social demands. It is common sense that the axioms on which all mathematical theories are based on are genuinely human notions first, then further processed by rational parameters (again „ratio“ as in countable, assuming human perception of entropy as status quo) Still every other paradox or incomplete dead end is „solved“ by pure human agreements. I’d hoped so much for the book to emphasize on these facts (quantum entanglement was just proofed in 1972 unfortunately).
In those days the realization that your quest for a pure truth is still only build on the results of human narratives might have been still shocking, especially when the person had put so much emotional importance into the subject.
It is rich in mentioning names and keywords, but displays them in a almost mystical manner, always hinting at something supposedly „absolute“.
What are your thoughts a month later Phillip? Thanks for explaining all this. Wanted to make a video on the music stuff, and some of your thoughts are going to help!
No. They should NOT be made into movies.
Yes, they should!
These last two novels were horrible. Unlike the vast majority of his publications, these are conceited, arrogant, and wholly psychobabble. They want to be great, but they are not. Yes, just my opinion. But! I didn’t make a video showcasing my opinion, hehe.
I feel you! But, there is no way you're a McCarthy fan if you didn't like the second half of The Passenger. That is as good as anything in The Border Trilogy and on a plot and suspense level better than BM or Suttree.
@@WriteConscious Another opinion. How many of his novels/publications have you read, and for how long? Do you find The Road to be his best?
@@WriteConscious NCFOM, Child of God, and Outer Dark are far more intriguing narratives than these last two will ever be, in my opinion. I found The Sunset Limited far better then SM, and more compelling.
These books took Cormac 40 years to write he would not have made a mistake by talking about seroquel and respridal (p 172 stella maris) those drugs were not available for years our time line. Alicia is either not dead or she did not die until after the events of the passenger years later. Bobby may have been in coma for a years and years, everything we read in the passenger could be his coma head trip, the diving is the coma he cant dive to deep cuz that is death. The kid is real Bobby can see him because he is in an altered state, ALicia is in altered state of genius , autism and schizophrenia so she is tuned in to a hidden reality , the kId lets Bobby know he is never seeing Alicia again that's what triggers Bobby to leave for the Canaries ..he goes to heaven he dies..Only after that does the hunter find ALicia .
She tell us this is her plan to kill herself and find Bobby when he dies.
THe clue is the respridal and seroquel those drugs were introduced between 1988 and 1992 , this can not possibly be a mistake ...40 years of work and a mistake like that I don't think so.
The intake notes for her are weird 1972 ? That was from a previous visit , the one the doctor has notes from or she is jumping through timelines. Maybe the Archatron is chasing her through time trying to stop her form seeing some truth ?
It was being used in 1985.
Yeah, I'm starting to build theories more around what you're saying. Things aren't adding up.