The Passenger

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I was planning to complete The Border Trilogy, but the library didn’t have the third book, so I started McCarthy’s other series instead: The Passenger. It was a wild ride. The plot doesn’t make much sense, functioning more as a backdrop to an extended commentary on the universe and human nature. I especially liked John Sheddan’s dialogue. I look forward to reading the sequel Stella Marris. Below are some quotes that stood out to me, with Alicia’s sections in italics as they are in the book:

Part I

Well, he said. Life. What can you say? It’s not for everybody. p. 6

Squire Western, called Long John. Up from the murky deeps is it? Come join us for a libation. The sun’s over the yardarm if I’m not cruelly mistaken. p. 24

Seals roused himself. A bird person he. In his bathroom brooding raptors hooded like hangmen shifted sullenly upon their perches. A saker, a lanneret. p. 26

I dreamt you were wandering in your weighted shoes over the ocean floor. Seeking God knows what in the darkness of those bathypelagic deeps. When you reached the edge of the Nazca Plate there were flames licking up from the abyss. The sea boiling. In my dream it seemed to me you’d stumbled upon the mouth of hell and I thought that you would lower a rope to those of your friends who’d gone before. You didnt. p. 28

Dont get too excited. You may have noticed a certain reticence in our man. It’s true that he does dangerous underwater work for high pay but it’s also true that he’s afraid of the depths. Well, you say. He has overcome his fears. Not a bit of it. He is sinking into a darkness he cannot even comprehend. pp. 28–29

What the Squire has never understood is that forgiveness has a time line. While it’s never too late for revenge. p. 29

His father’s trade was the design and fabrication of enormous bombs for the purpose of incinerating whole citiesful of innocent people as they slept in their beds. Cleverly conceived and handcrafted things. One-off, each of them. p. 30

Part II

A rattle of chains in the far corner of the room where a pair of leashed animals of uncertain taxon rose and circled and lay down again. A light rustling, a cough. As in a theatre when the houselights dim. She clutched the covers up under her chin. Who are you? she said. p. 50

I guess they think I’m a passenger. Of course you could make the case that if they’re passengers then I must be something else. But maybe not. I cant speak for them. p. 55

Let me put it to you this way. As the vicar said to the choirboy. To the seasoned traveler a destination is at best a rumor. p. 56

He sat in the sand and dug in his heels and crossed his arms over his knees and watched the sunset and the light on the water. The thin reach of land to the south would be the Chandeleur Archipelago. Beyond that the hydra mouth of the river. Beyond that Mexico. The low tide lapped and drew back. He could be the first person in creation. Or the last. p. 61

Part III

I dont know. What I do know is that anytime some squirrelly crap such as this comes up it seldom travels alone. p. 78

You cant get a decent cheeseburger in a clean restaurant. Once they start sweeping the floor and washing the dishes with soap it’s pretty much over. p. 80

You think that when there’s somethin that’s got you snakebit you can just walk off and forget it. The truth is it aint even following you. It’s waiting for you. It always will be. p. 83

His first dive in the river was two years ago. The weight of it moving over him. Endlessly, endlessly. In a sense of the relentless passing of time like nothing else. p. 95

Part IV

There were people who escaped from Hiroshima and rushed to Nagasaki to see that their loved ones were safe. Arriving just in time to be incinerated. p. 115

The living walked about but there was no place to go. They waded by the thousands into the river and died there. They were like insects in that no one direction was preferable to another. Burning people crawled among the corpses like some horror in a vast crematorium. They simply thought that the world had ended. It hardly even occurred to them that it had anything to do with the war. p. 116

In that mycoidal phantom blooming in the dawn like an evil lotus and in the melting of solids not heretofore known to do so stood a truth that would silence poetry a thousand years. p. 116

Part V

You will never know what the world is made of. The only thing that’s certain is it’s not made of the world. As you close upon some mathematical description of reality you cant help but lose what is being described. Every inquiry displaces what is addressed. p. 128

But the real question is are we few the last of a lineage? Will children yet to come harbor a longing for a thing they cannot even name? The legacy of the word is a fragile thing for all its power, but I know where you stand, Squire. I know that there are words spoken by men ages dead that will never leave your heart. p. 137

But the truth is I’ve few demands. Think about it. Stay slightly ahead of the curve. Try to keep the more common miseries at bay. Dont look luck in the eye. Cheers. p. 137

I’ve long had the thought that to cook everything down to a single plight might make it more palatable. p. 139

Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all. But regret is a prison. Some part of you which you deeply value lies forever impaled at a crossroads you can no longer find and never forget. p. 140

I’m thinking in a rather vague and unstructured way about the bizarre concatenation of events that must have conspired to bring about you. p. 141

In a just society I’d be warehoused somewhere. But of course what really threatens the scofflaw is not the just society but the decaying one. It is here that he finds himself becoming slowly indistinguishable from the citizenry. p. 142

Real trouble doesnt begin in a society until boredom has become its most general feature. Boredom will drive even quietminded people down paths they’d never imagined. p. 142

You have to believe that there is good in the world. I’m goin to say that you have to believe that the work of your hands will bring it into your life. You may be wrong, but if you dont believe that then you will not have a life. p. 174

The time would come when all memory of this place and these people would be stricken from the register of the world. p. 177

Part VI

No one can tell you how to deal with an enemy that is completely unknown to you. The best advice would probably be to make a run for it. A strategy fairly effective against all adversaries, domestic and foreign. p. 221

When was the last time you just sat by yourself. Watched it get dark. Watched it get light. Thought about your life. Where you’d been and where you were goin. Was there a reason for any of it. p. 228

Have you looked around lately, son? What do you think is coming? Christmas? You cant even hire mourners anymore. After a while they’ll figure out a way to just dissolve you. Your brain shuts down and the next thing you know there’s only a pair of shoes and some laundry piled up on the sidewalk. p. 235

Part VII

We dont move through the days, Squire. They move through us. Until the last cruel crank of the ratchet. p. 247

Friends are always telling you to watch out. To take care. But it could be that the more you do so the more exposed you become. Maybe you just have to turn yourself over to your angel. I may even start praying, Squire. I’m not sure who to. But it might lift a bit of weight from the shoulders, what do you think? pp. 248–249

For all his dedication there were times he thought the fine sweet edge of his grief was thinning. Each memory but a memory of the one before until … what? Host and sorrow to waste as one without distinction until the wretched coagulant is shoveled into the ground at last and the rain primes the stones for fresh tragedies. p. 257

When smart people do dumb things it’s usually due to one of two things. The two things are greed and fear. They want something they’re not supposed to have or they’ve done something they werent supposed to do. In either case they’ve usually fastened on to a set of beliefs that are supportive of their state of mind but at odds with reality. It has become more important to them to believe than to know. p. 269

She knew in the end you can’t really know. You cant get hold of the world. You can only draw a picture. Whether it’s a bull on the wall of a cave or a partial differential equation it’s all the same thing. p. 279

In the spring of the year. birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers. p. 283

In the coming night he thought that men would band together in the hills. Feeding their small fires with the deeds and the covenants and the poetry of their fathers. Documents they’d no gift to read in a cold to loot men of their souls. p. 289

Part VII

As the room dims and the sound of voices fades you understand that the world and all in it will soon cease to be. You believe that it will begin again. You point to other lives. But their world was never yours. p. 298

In the end you can escape everything but yourself. Which I’ve said to exhaustion. But what we share – aside from intelligence and a low grade generalized contempt for the world and all in it – is an airy and mindless egotism. pp. 304–305

People will go to strange lengths to avoid the suffering they have coming. The world is full of people who should have been more willing to weep. p. 309

Part IX

Babies early on come to believe that all the things that are happening to them are the work of others otherwise what are the others there for? Isnt that worth crying about? p. 354

Part X

Here is a story. The last of all men who stands alone in the universe while it darkens about him. Who sorrows all things with a single sorrow. Out of the pitiable and exhausted remnants of what was once his soul he’ll find nothing from which to craft the least godlike to guide him in these last of days. p. 367

He stood in the wind and studied the sweep of stars in the blackness. The lights of the distant village. Climbing the stairs, lamp in hand. Hello, he called. This cup. This bitter cup. p. 368

The clang of bronze or iron in those ancient nights. The moans of the dying. If you burrin away the key to the codex yet against what like tablet can this loss then be measured? p. 370

In their recollections dream and life acquire an oddly merging egality. And I’ve come to suspect that the ground we walk is less of our choosing than we imagine. And all the while a past we hardly even knew is rolled over into our lives like a dubious investment. The history of these times will be long in the sorting, Squire. But if there is a common keel to our understanding it is that we are flawed. At our core that is what we know. p. 377

To prepare for any struggle is largely a work of unburdening yourself. If you carry your past into battle you are riding to your death. Austerity lifts the heart and focuses the vision. Travel light. A few ideas are enough. Every remedy for loneliness only postpones it. And that day is coming in which there will be no remedy at all. I wish you calm waters, Squire. I always did. p. 379

Mercy is the province of the person alone. There is mass hatred and there is mass grief. Mass vengeance and even mass suicide. But there is no mass forgiveness. There is only you. p. 381