STELLA MARIS (2022)
By Cormac McCarthy
Alfred A. Knopf, 198 pages
★
I’m doing something I have never done before: dictate a stream of consciousness review.* I'm not a fan of stream of consciousness. It’s often idiosyncratic rambling attempting to hide that fact via nice turns of phrases. For instance, if your idea of reading is a good yarn, James Joyce is practically unreadable. That’s also the case of Cormac McCarthy's last novel Stella Maris. (McCarthy died on June 13, 2023.) I hoped for a masterpiece. As the saying goes, it just ain't so.
Stella Maris is not a person, rather the name of a mental institution in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Its lack of action is set in 1972, but I don't believe that Black River Falls ever had a mental institution. I've been there and it's a blow away town with not much to recommend it other than being a small county seat. Stella Morris was designed to be a prequel to McCarthy's The Passenger, which was bloody enigmatic in its own right. I was hoping that the prequel would clear up some of its more arcane parts, but it doesn't.
If you ask me what Stella Maris is about, I'd have to say not much of anything. The Passenger follows the travails of Bobby Western who has enormous difficulty finding his way in the world. We find out that he was the son of a famous scientist who helped develop the atomic bomb. Bobby is also troubled by the absence of his younger sister, so much so that we wonder if the two were lovers. Incest, of course, is taboo, but that would have been more interesting than what’s not revealed in Stella Maris.
Stella Maris is about Alicia Western, Bobby’s sister. She is a patient in Stella Maris, and we easily conclude that she’s seriously mentally ill, although she’s genius- level intelligent. Other than Bobby, the only identifiable love of her life is mathematics. She might have been world famous if only she were not batshit crazy. The entire book is a dialogue between Alicia and Doctor Cohen, a psychiatrist. What do they talk about? Well, that's a pretty good question and not one easy to pin down. If you have ever seen movies like My Dinner with Andre or Diner, you might remember that the conversations went in every direction except straight. It's one thing to watch that on a movie screen where we can pick up subtle expressions on the characters’ faces or see them smirk, laugh, or act confused; it's quite another to read dialogue that’s sometimes linear but mostly isn’t.
That's not to say that the dialogue is stupid. It’s erudite but goes off onto so many tangents that we lose any implied threads. You would really have to love mathematics to enjoy this book and I’m not talking just numbers. You would need great familiarity with the history of mathematics and detailed knowledge of its theorists to immerse yourself in this work. I do not know what McCarthy intended in his discourse and it is way more of a discourse than a novel. It really reads as if McCarthy was grandstanding. I certainly believe mathematicians and scientists should have their day on the pages of fiction, but I can't help but wonder who the intended audience was for Stella Maris. It's as if McCarthy wanted to be remembered for his intellect, but he didn’t need to prove to me that he was intelligent. We read him mainly for his probes of the human psyche, including its dark side.
Alicia is certainly plagued by a dark psyche. She yearns for death and Cohen correctly infers she is suicidal. Do we really want to read nearly 200 pages of what is essentially a two-person play masquerading as popular fiction? What topics do the two discuss besides mathematics? If by discussion we mean a two-way street, almost none because Alicia toys with Cohen like a cat with a mouse. He is infinitely patient, and she is resolutely buttoned down. Every topic, from love and music to electromagnetic shock treatment and medication finds Alicia dismissive if not condescending. In the end, we or left with high falutin’ banter that weaves like a punch-drunk boxer. It is not the way I wanted Cormac McCarthy to exit the world of publishing.
Rob Weir
* Full disclosure: I corrected punctuation. If this seems too smooth for dictation it’s because I often compose in my head.
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