Today we will be talking about the only statement that we know of that Cormac McCarthy has said in relation to "The Passenger" outside of a general synopsis of it he's made in a couple interviews. This was found in a box in relation to McCarthy's novel "The Road." However, this statement does not reveal the plot or direction of the novel, but rather a maybe "inspirational" quote about the process of writing "The Passenger." As we talked about in other videos McCarthy may have been working on The Passenger for 40-50 YEARS! So it's 100% understandable that he was worried about perfectionism.

We will be viewing some timelines today and analyzing how long Cormac McCarthy has actually been working on "The Passenger" and Stella Maris. It could be anywhere from 40-60 years depending on the source lol! The first source is McCarthy himself, the second source is what seems to be common knowledge from McCarthy scholars, and the third is from a famous bookstore owner in New Orleans.

In a recent Cormac McCarthy interview he made a couple comments on classical education and how that has been lost in the western world. The conversation took this turn while they were discussing geniuses in the realm of physics. The interviewer asks Cormac why thinkers like Oppenheimer and Einstein seem to be extinct now. After the clip, I dive into a discussion about the collapse of classical education, the state of education right now, and the path forward to restoring classical education. This was taken from Cormac McCarthy's 2022 interview with the Santa Fe Institute.

My favorite Cormac McCarthy novel is "The Crossing." So, today we are kicking off a new series that will be exploring all of Cormac McCarthy's influences. There are over 150 confirmed influences alone!!! However, today we will explore the two influences that Michael Lynn Crews documents in his book "Books Are Made Out of Books: A Guide to Cormac McCarthy's Literary Influences." Crews had access to over 100 boxes of Cormac McCarthy's early drafts, notes, and papers which had a ton of notes in the margins about what McCarthy was inspired by.. and who he stole from! I am super excited to dive into "The Crossing" some more in my Cormac McCarthy course which drops on December 5th when we start to explore "The Orchard Keeper" together. If you want to know more, make sure to sign up to my Cormac McCarthy newsletter!

Today we will be watching a clip and discussing Cormac McCarthy’s thoughts on Robert Oppenheimer. At some level, McCarthy and Oppenheimer are dyads and shadows of each other! Oppenheimer appears in Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Passenger" and in this video, we will also discuss Oppenheimer's schizophrenia in relation to Alicia's schizophrenia in "The Passenger." We will also be discussing Robert Oppenheimer's favorite books.

Figuring out a reading order for Cormac McCarthy can be hard. Some of McCarthy's works are inaccessible to beginner readers, and other books may not be exciting or dynamic enough for more fluff readers. So today I'll be outlining three different reader archetypes and providing a Cormac McCarthy reading order for them! Comment your thoughts down below to help create some data for a future video where I create a 1-12 reading order for these reader archetypes.

Cormac McCarthy rarely gives advice on writing novels, but in this video today we will be reading a lost interview (until 2022) with Cormac McCarthy where he is more candid about his writing process than ever before.