The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

I’m on a big (if brief) holiday, and so I’ve spent time reading Cormac McCarthy’s penultimate publication (not including any in-the-works posthumous stuff) in three different countries, none of which are my destination…

I cracked open the book as I strolled to the tube in grey North London, I read it throughout the journey to Gatwick, on the plane as I soared across Europe, under the bright streetlights as I walked into the city of Larnaca in Cyprus on a fruitless search for a delicious late night meal, I read some as I sat on the patio of a bar with “Karaoke” in its name that didn’t offer karaoke, and I read more when I woke up after my second flight (of four this leg of the trip) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and I read pages as I wandered around an intriguing UNESCO World Heritage Site, visited the disappointing National Museum and then I read the last few pages as I tootled back to the airport, having also abandoned my search here for a good meal (which I’m sure existed somewhere as it’s not the middle of the night, but with internet access limited by my mobile carrier to Wi-Fi only, searching was harder). Looks like chippies and maybe a sandwich are back on the menu for tonight. Or maybe I’m about to be bowled over by the food court of this airport – who knows?

I am – of course – travelling alone (if I wasn’t I would have used the first person plural pronoun above – I wouldn’t pretend to be alone when I’m not!), which means I have also (naturally!) packed a large amount of books (and very little else – I have one backpack for a week away) and though I bartered myself down from my initial 12 to 8, I’ve now read the longest (and won’t start the second longest until last) so expect these posts and travel reflections to appear thick and fast over TriumphOfTheNow.com over the next few days!

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The Passenger is a strange book, and one that very much speaks to the fact that it’s something the (now dead) Cormac McCarthy worked at, off and on, for several decades (I think, though maybe I’ve made this up?). In quite a few sections and passages, one gets the distinct impression that this is an old man’s novel written by a young man, just as at other moments it’s hard to see this as anything other than a youngster’s text that someone has weirdly let an old man go through with a pen and an eraser and a very late-age attitude to and presumed normalisation of fine wine…

This is a book that feels like a writer trying to scrape every last idea they could possibly have together, and I could even believe this was – like The Pale King, like October Ferry to Gabriola (in fact like all but two of Malcolm Lowry’s books) – a throwing together by an executor, rather than an intentional and signed off “final novel”. But what do I know!?

It opens with a Macguffin of sorts – Bobby Western is a salvage diver sent to look at a sunk plane that turns out to have a missing black box and a missing passenger, and implications that maybe the bodies floating in the chassis were dead before they hit the water… But although Western briefing swimming in this plane is the spur for the novel’s more actual plot (federal agents presuming the ignorant Bobby knows more about the plane than he was letting on and him having to go on the run), the book is far more an opportunity for a series of conversations, dialogues, that often barely connect with the rest of the text. As well as chats about wine, there are extended sections on particle physics, on theoretical mathematical theorems, on guns, on cars, on the Kennedy assassination, on sex and sexuality (with a real strain of Leonard Cohen-esque “elevated misogyny” from a recurring character called “Long John Stedden”), and also the Vietnam War, on skills, on trade, on music, on Formula 2 racing, on underwater welding, on literature, on New Orleans, on Chicago, and – reminding us this is Cormac McCarthy – on incest.

And that isn’t even mentioning the recurring characters who are hallucinated by Bobby Western’s dead sister (who dies in the first scene, so that isn’t a spoiler) who might actually be – in the world of the novel – real, or at least coherent across multiple character’s psychiatric breaks…

It’s about regret and guilt, about time and change and failing to change. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s about mental illness, but it’s also about the oeuvre of Cormac McCarthy. Full of ideas. Are they all flawless? No, god no, of course not… But are they interesting? Yes. And do they add up to a compelling and complex whole?

Yes, yes they do…

Maybe I’ll have different thoughts when I’ve read Stella Maris either later this week or maybe right fucking now hmmhmmhmmmmmmmm???

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scott manley hadley aka SOLID BALD live

Here’s a video of me recently performing at the prestigious (it has a Wikipedia page) comedy night, Quantum Leopard. Listen to how much fun the crowd is having. You could have that much fun, too!

Forthcoming gigs include the following – there may/will be others:

20th November: Jest Another Comedy, Watford

30th November 2025: Mirth Control, Covent Garden

3rd December: Cheshire Cheese Comedy Night – 30 min excerpt of BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER

18th February 2026, 7.30pm: Laughable, Wanstead Library

26th February 2026: Mirth Control, Bexhill-on-Sea

12th March 2025: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER 30 MIN WIP at Glasgow International Comedy Festival

26th March 2026, 7.30pm: Comedy @ Cosmic, Plymouth

May 2026: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER FULL LENGTH WIP at the BRIGHTON FRINGE