The Passenger

Cormac McCarthy

出版社

Knopf

出版时间

2022-10-25

ISBN

9780307268990

评分

★★★★★

书籍介绍

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God.

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wetsuit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His divelight 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 flightbag, 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.

用户评论

Perhaps I wont read a better literary work in my life time. Wont wait and love another book like this. A miraculous Coda (if not Culmination) to Cormac's career & long line of Modernist Novel (Kafka Joyce Faulkner Hemingway Burroughs Beckett Gaddis Pynchon Delillo) of the West. There is no plot.Only pure Poetry and Wisdom.

这可能是麦卡锡最缥缈的一本书了，这么多年之后，在如此高龄颠覆过往，写从没碰过的题材，用从未尝试过的手法。很难想象在麦卡锡的书中能看到幻想中的马戏团、变性人角色、粒子物理理论（当然如果关注他近年动态也很容易理解）、肯尼迪谋杀案，倒像是满足了读者“麦卡锡与XXX”结合体这类罪恶隐秘的愿望。主线情节是卡夫卡式的故事，主角Bobby和朋友们在餐桌上的长段对话是伸出的枝叶，是离题，是出走，也是逃避。行文一如既往地冷峻，对话依旧利落，天地依旧不仁，麦卡锡最擅长描绘的情景之一，就是一人独对广袤无际与悲凉的生，背着父辈的原罪，所爱消逝的创伤及负罪，连同他四处碰壁东躲西藏的孤独。但可能到了这个年纪人总会展露出一些诚挚的温情，在虚无和哀戚中总有long John，和不易显露的、深刻的缱绻柔情。

一串孤高自许的废话

In a world lit by the evil sun of nuclear invention, all history is nothing more than a rehearsal for its own extinction. As opposed to the usual gnostic pessimism in McCarthy’s early work, this is nihilism at its finest.

有些猜透这两本书的企图了，就是借着一个故事的壳去写一种压抑的人生，再写点性格只能说是比较有趣的边角人物。比较传统的小说观念是不推进情节的对话不必写，甚至必须删除，麦卡锡的水平当然是在这之上，而且这些对话也有塑造配角的作用，但这些餐馆的聊天只能算食之无味弃之可惜，拉扯出这样的长度在我看来是缺乏节制。第二本应该还是会读的吧，对写能写出什么来我还是有几分兴趣的，而且短。