After Cormac McCarthy’s death last week, we can see the contours of his novel, The Passenger, a bit more clearly. Upon first reading it, it felt like a last book, which it indeed turned out to be: a suitable swan song for one of the last authentic greats in American literature. It is a novel of “things in their farewell,” permeated by the sense of an ending. We feel the main character, Bobby, gradually taking leave of his world, retrospectively making sense of his life and his doom-eager century. Now, we know that it was also McCarthy’s farewell, a pitch-perfect finale bringing a lifetime’s work to its conclusion.
