Good Scribes Only

#108🤿 The Passenger by CORMAC MCCARTHY (2022)

Episode Summary

About The Book: 980, PASS CHRISTIAN, It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul. Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.

Episode Notes

About The Book:

980, PASS CHRISTIAN, It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

 

Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.

 

About the Author:

Cormac McCarthy was a renowned American novelist and playwright, celebrated for his works in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He authored twelve novels, including The Road, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted into a 2007 film that won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. McCarthy's earlier work, Blood Meridian (1985), was listed among Time magazine's 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005. He was also recognized as a runner-up in a 2006 New York Times poll of the best American fiction from the past 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom regarded him as one of the four major American novelists of his era, alongside Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth, and he is often compared to William Faulkner by contemporary reviewers. In 2009, McCarthy was honored with the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for lifetime achievement from the PEN American Center.