re: What are you reading?

The Passenger - Cormack McCarthy

It's way better than expected so far. I'm a huge fan of Cormack McCarthy's writing. This book arrived at about the time of, or shortly after his death, and to mixed reviews. So I avoided it until now.

Given the low expectations, this book is a whole lot of fun. Apparently this was largely written in the early 1980's. It seems to contain a lot of McCarthy's ideas and characters that showed up in later books. And I guess I can see why it was shelved for a while. It's pretty odd with a very post modern feel. I'm about 1/3 in now and stopped caring about the plot. The dialogue and descriptions are McCarthy at his best. The plot is starting to form into something, maybe. It reminds me of reading Infinite Jest for the first time. The reaction is that it isn't the best thing I've ever read but there are lots of sections that I want to read again because the writing is that good.

Last one in the series.


I have enjoyed this series way more than I expected. It's so well written and thought out