Meaninglessness, Indifference, Suicide, and Incest: The Philosophical Pessimism of Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris

RICK ELMORE is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Appalachian State University and senior managing editor of book reviews at Symposium. He researches and teaches in the areas of twentieth-century French philosophy, critical theory, animal philosophy, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is the coeditor of The Biopolitics of Punishment: Derrida and Foucault (Northwestern University Press) and The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy (LSU Press). His articles and essays have appeared in Politics & Policy, Symplokē, Symposium, Mississippi Quarterly, and the Cormac McCarthy Journal, among others.

JONATHAN ELMORE is Associate Professor of English at Louisiana Tech University and the Managing Editor of Watchung Review. He researches and teaches environmental humanities, composition, and Cormac McCarthy Studies. He is coauthor of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution; editor of Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction, and coeditor of The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy. His scholarship has been published widely in journals and collections. He serves on the Advisory Board of The EcoCritical Theory and Practice Series with Lexington Books and the Editorial Board of The Cormac McCarthy Journal.