Book Review: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

Ultimately to be viewed as a lesser work by one of America’s greatest authors The Passenger still stands light years ahead of most works of fiction.

The Passenger carries all of the usual quirks of a McCarthy novel—the lack of punctuation, lack of separation between speakers, a use of vocabulary that is stunning in its depth and breadth, deeply philosophical discussions regarding our place in the universe, and so on. Its all here for McCarthy fans who are unlikely to be disappointed in anything he produces.

Count me among McCarthy fans and The Passenger will be a work that stays with me for a long time as well as will be referring back to and rereading. It is not a complete work though. Having worked on The Passenger on and off since the 1970s I would have expected a more fully formed set of characters and coherent narrative. Instead the work is largely a channel through which McCarthy is able to discuss topics he is interested in since his residence at the Santa Fe Institute and his long term interest in the hard sciences of physics and advanced mathematics.

The primary character in Bobby Western may be a salvage diver, a former race car driver, and son of Manhattan Project scientist but he’s really a shell of McCarthy’s personal interests in the hard sciences while all activity that swirls around Western in the course of the novel does not serve in moving a narrative forward, it merely services as random encounters that allow for exposition on the physics topics McCarthy wants to discuss and what these topics mean for how we view our (and really how McCarthy views) existence.

All of which can be very interesting (and it is), can scramble your brain in terms of implications (it does), and create beautiful turns of phrase on par with any crafter of the written word ever. What it doesn’t do is create a true story like McCarthy’s other works. There is no question as to the “story” that lies at the heart of works like Blood Meridian or any of the Border Trilogy works. There are core characters that have a life you can touch and feel…you know their place in the world and how they interact with it. Here, Bobby Western is a passive creation upon which events occur rather than one who drives the action or events. Its a very different creation than the father in The Road, John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses, or Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. And overall it is less satisfying—just not less interesting, mind altering, or likely to drive a review of how you see the world. McCarthy’s best works do this within a narrative and characters that the reader finds value in and long term attachment to and this one doesn’t get there alongside his Tier 1 works.

Nissan Based Classic Dakar Entries...

Lets face it…Nissan has always been an “also ran” in the Dakar…coming close a few times but never taking the top spot in the world’s best endurance race. That said…with the opening of the Dakar Classic category the last few years it has brought out some cool vehicles from mothballs and I like to track them and see pictures of them. So here with the official release of the Dakar ‘23 entry lists we can see what we have for this edition. They’ll be up against the usual range of Mitsubishi Pajeros, Landcruisers, Fiat Pandas, Rothsport Porsches, etc. but are represented in surprisingly good numbers with many coming from the Italian firm of Tecnosport who is sending a whole range of Nissans over for the Dakar Classic as you can see in the car hauler picture at the bottom…So without further delay, here are your Nissan based Dakar Classic entries for 2023 and a few photos of the vehicles.

  • Team # 722 Nissan Pathfinder Valentina Casella

  • Team #729 Nissan Patrol GR Y61 Gian Paolo Tobia Cavagna

  • Team #748 Nissan Patrol K260 Luis Pedrals Marot

  • Team #749 Nissan Patrol GR Y60 Radek Vavra

  • Team #750 Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder) Urbano Alfonso Gherardo Clerici

  • Team #754 Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder) Francisco Javier Benavente

  • Team #757 Nissan Patrol Y60 Jean-Christophe Moine

  • Team #767 Nissan Terrano 2 (Pathfinder) Dutschler Gian Enrico

  • Team #773 Nissan Patrol 260 Asier Duarte Rodriguez

  • Team #790 Nissan Terrano 2 (Pathfinder) Garosci Riccardo

  • Team #792 Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder) Lorenzo Piolini

  • Team #796 Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder)

  • Team #806 Nissan Terrano (Pathfinder) Peter Schey