Rick Wallach, one of the founding members of the Cormac McCarthy Society and, indeed, of McCarthy studies in general, passed away on January 27th at the age of 75. A former president of the Cormac McCarthy Society, Rick taught English at the University of Miami.  He instituted and was the senior editor of the Cormac McCarthy Society casebook series, and was the editor of the two-volume collection of essays Sacred Violence as well as Myth, Legend Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor with Lynnea Chapman King and the late James Welsh of From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men. He wrote on films, pop culture, music by bands like the Cowboy Junkies, and his final book was In Search of Godzilla: Myth, Stagecraft and Politics in Ishiro Honda’s Masterpiece, published by McFarland Press.  

 This episode is a tribute to Rick, with comments from friends and colleagues Stacey Peebles, Marty Priola, and Peter Josyph.  

Stacey Peebles is H. W. Stodghill, Jr. and Adele H. Stodghill Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is the author of The War Comes with You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy (2024), Cormac McCarthy and Performance: Page, Stage, Screen (2017), and Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier’s Experience in Iraq (2011). She is the editor of the collection Violence in Literature (2014) and, with Ben West, co-editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy (2021). She has been editor of the Cormac McCarthy Journal since 2010.

Marty Priola’s website for McCarthy appreciation became the first website and a foundational part of the formation of the Cormac McCarthy Society, and he still maintains the Cormac McCarthy webpages and forums.  He has written two entries on McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. His writing is also featured in exchanges with Peter Josyph in Cormac Mccarthy’s House: Reading Mccarthy Without Walls and The Wrong Reader’s Guide to Cormac Mccarthy: All The Pretty Horses, which he edited and published in its first (ebook) form.  

Peter Josyph works concurrently as a writer, painter, actor, and an award-winning filmmaker. He was a frequent keynoter for the Cormac McCarthy Society; he played White in a production of THE SUNSET LIMITED in Danville, Kentucky; his painted tributes to McCarthy have exhibited around the world; and he has published five books on McCarthy, the most recent being CORMAC McCARTHY’S LAST OUTLAWS: THE COUNSELOR AND THE PASSENGER, and GLANTON’S HORSE.

Thomas Frye composed, performed, and produced the music for READING MCCARTHY.  The views of the host and his guests do not necessarily reflect the views of their home institutions or the Cormac McCarthy Society. To contact the host, please reach out to [email protected]. 

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