Editor’s Introduction

Plans are moving ahead for the next Cormac McCarthy Society conference, which will take place October 8–10, 2026, in Knoxville, Tennessee. It promises to be an exciting gathering, considering all of the new developments in the field. On October 27, 2025, a new cache of materials in the McCarthy Papers became available for study in the Wittliff Collections, more than doubling the size of McCarthy’s archive. Two biographies, by Tracy Daugherty and Laurence Gonzales, are currently in the process of publication. The University of Tennessee–Knoxville is working on accessioning the lion’s share of the books from McCarthy’s personal library, and conference attendees will hear more about their plans for that acquisition. Other books are making their way to the Wittliff and to the Santa Fe Institute, as the Cormac McCarthy Library Project organizes all that information and is also working toward publication. It should be plenty to talk about!In this issue, Timothy Ty Cobb contributes what I believe is the first extended consideration of higher-order mathematics in The Passenger and Stella Maris. He focuses on McCarthy’s use of topos theory in the two novels, arguing that it offers a new way of understanding the fundamental nature of reality and thus provides a structural and interpretive methodology for understanding these entangled narratives. Jonathan and Rick Elmore also address how systems relate to the nature of reality in their article on McCarthy’s two nonfiction essays, “The Kekulé Problem” and “Cormac McCarthy Returns to the Kekulé Problem,” explaining how McCarthy’s view of the human emerges from his account of language, and that it further suggests how one might think about the idea of the posthuman.Stephen Daly reads The Road in light of the Gothic and the uncanny in order to show how the novel brings forth what might otherwise be repressed. Ian Tan also addresses that novel through the lens of Heidegger’s late philosophy, arguing for what he calls McCarthy’s “post-theological poetics of divinity.” And David Salzillo puts Blood Meridian in conversation with Moby-Dick—the two novels are often compared, but Salzillo focuses here on their representations of the law, legality, and civilization.This issue includes two Notes, one from me on the story about Augusta Britt that broke in November 2024, and one from Wes Morgan on the surprising connections between one of McCarthy’s childhood friends, The Orchard Keeper, and taxidermy. We conclude with two reviews: David Deacon on Brian Schill’s edited collection Cormac McCarthy’s Neoliberalism: A Breakdown in Mercantile Ethics, and Joshua Cody Ward on Peter Josyph’s Cormac McCarthy’s Last Outlaws: The Counselor and The Passenger. Enjoy, and keep in touch,Stacey Peebleswww.cormacmccarthysociety.com