Cormac McCarthy's Masterpiece

It’s telling of the low quality of major-media literary criticism that Cormac McCarthy’s new masterpiece has yet to be adequately recognized. The Passenger and Stella Maris, a conjoined new work by the 89-year-old author, comes 16 years after his last publication, the post-apocalyptic epic The Road. The new books are ambitious, impressively different from his previous work. They are structured with great elegance and originality, funny, at times surprisingly (and terrifyingly) light—and layered with enough puzzles and resonances to occupy a reader indefinitely.