Editor’s Introduction

This issue of the Cormac McCarthy Journal goes to press right on the cusp of our Fall 2024 conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, “The Legacy of Cormac McCarthy.” Since McCarthy’s passing in June 2023, conversations have turned in earnest to his place in American letters and the scope of world literature more broadly, and the depths of The Passenger and Stella Maris are still just beginning to be plumbed. So, we return to Knoxville—our first conference there in quite a few years—to see where the latest conversations take us.In this issue, several articles take on those two most recent novels. Bill Hardwig explores the regional displacement that was part of the development of the nuclear facility at Oak Ridge, a key setting for the Western family, and Ty Hawkins discusses the long shadow of atomic power on the Westerns as well as the West more broadly. Jon and Rick Elmore then look specifically at Stella Maris and its engagement with philosophical pessimism in the portrayal of Alicia’s view of life and the world. You’ll find that Hawkins’s and the Elmores’ articles speak to each other in intriguing ways, and both dovetail nicely with the reassessment of Vereen Bell that appears at the end of this issue.In addition, Leila Braun and Joseph Frankl address how McCarthy’s works engage the discipline of field archaeology, particularly in his representations of human history and the formation of knowledge, and Fredrik Svensson takes a new and different look at McCarthy’s use of allegory and symbolism.There’s been a wealth of McCarthy scholarship of late, and future issues will include reviews of new books by Bryan Giemza, Marcel DeCoste, and Markus Wierschem, among others. In this one, Bryan Vescio reviews Steve Frye’s recent monograph on McCarthy and naturalism, and J. Gavin Paul takes the recent reissue of Vereen Bell’s seminal book The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy, from 1988, as an opportunity to consider the lasting influence of that important study.Enjoy, and keep in touch,Stacey Peebleswww.cormacmccarthysociety.com