Some critics judge the works of Cormac McCarthy—who died on Tuesday, shortly before his ninetieth birthday—to be fundamentally nihilistic. But Alexander Riley argues that, despite its bleak depictions of human capacity for evil, McCarthy’s fiction is in fact pervaded with religious meaning. Riley focuses on the final two of the writer’s twelve novels, the companion works The Passenger and Stella Maris:

Many critics read McCarthy’s novels the way they do so many other art forms: devoid of the possibility of hope, transcendence, and a living God. But this often glosses over the genuinely conflicted character of the art. The Passenger and Stella Maris offer more than just an artistic representation of reality’s inescapable brutality. They forcefully struggle with the greatest questions of human existence. Like any good work of art, these books don’t allow any reader—religious, atheist, materialist, Christian—to walk away feeling perfectly comfortable in their understanding of the world.

McCarthy gives Alicia, [a main character of both The Passenger and Stella Maris], much more complexity than most of the critics have noted. She fiercely struggles with the fallen aspects of her character. A first-rate violinist, she lovingly describes music as sacred. She especially admires Bach, and she knows what (or Who) motivated the great German composer’s music. When she describes having spent her inheritance on a rare Amati violin, she recalls weeping when she played it for the first time. Tears come also when she recalls her pure bliss at the sound of Bach’s Chaconne emerging from her violin. The instrument must have originated in the mind of God, she insinuates, so perfect is its construction.

Amid this discourse on music, Alicia tells Cohen, her psychologist and interlocutor through the entirety of Stella Maris, what she believes to be “the one indispensable gift”: faith.

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.