On Cormac McCarthy's 'The Passenger'

The psychic ghosts aboard Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger—a sick crew of ghouls headed by a relentless Accuser called “the Kid”—come closer to the headless captains of a gothic sublime. Co-protagonist Alicia Western closes her eyes only to find “A blackness without name or measure” populated by “a pale horde of ancient familiars” who are “clad in graveclothes and naught but bone beneath the moldering rags.” But there is no comfort in the conclusion that this cast of demonic ticks “have their origin within us” and not in some Hell from which they have escaped; the prospect that our own mental chemicals could be the cause of such chaos is chilling, and McCarthy’s unflinching prose engages in a kind of staring contest with the reader, soliciting pity but denying catharsis.