November 12, 2012 In Memoriam T. S. Eliot’s Widow Dies at Eighty-Six By Sadie Stein My father is inordinately fond of pointing out our place in the course of history. “Just think about it!” he would say intensely almost every morning of my childhood, as he scanned the obit pages over breakfast. “This man was born during the Taft presidency! Twice his lifetime was the Pierce presidency! It’s amazing! It’s so recent!” I was reminded of this when I read the news that T. S. Eliot’s widow had died, this Friday, at eighty-six. Of course, it’s not as though Valerie Eliot were some sort of secret: Eliot’s executor, she guarded her husband’s legacy since his death, periodically editing and releasing his work, fiercely guarding his privacy, allowing for the making of Cats, and using the money from that success to start a charitable trust. And considering the difference in their ages—Eliot was thirty-eight years older than his second wife, whom he married in 1957—her relative youth is no shocker either. But hers was, for the most part, a quiet and unobtrusive stewardship (she avoided interviews), and those are themselves rare things these days. She said that their relationship was a quiet one, involving much Scrabble-playing and cheese-eating. As she said in a rare interview, “He obviously needed a happy marriage. He wouldn’t die until he’d had it.”
August 29, 2012 In Memoriam In Memory of Daryl Hine By Sadie Stein We were saddened to learn of the death of Daryl Hine last week at the age of seventy-six. Over the years, his work appeared with regularity in our pages, and his voice will be greatly missed. The following poem appeared in issue 155. A Rebours Time’s one-way traffic won’t reverseSummer’s sentimental courseOr force the headlong universePerversely backwards to its source. Reverting to the title pageCannot erase a book once read;What echo of a golden ageGilds an eternity of lead? All the spontaneous happeningsOf the erotic pantomime.Precipitate, straightforward loversIntimate that certain thingsAre irreversible as time. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
August 21, 2012 In Memoriam Prabuddha Dasgupta, 1956–2012 By Sadie Stein We were saddened to hear of the death of legendary Indian photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta last week at fifty-eight. As Geoff Dyer wrote in issue 200, with Dasgupta’s work, “we are in the realm of dreams and memories—exactly whose is never clear.” Pause Play Play Prev | Next [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
August 16, 2012 In Memoriam Mrs. Crist By Harry Stein In early July, 1971, just out of journalism school, I took off for Paris. My intention was to spend a year or so freelancing. To this end, I carried with me assignments from two very small magazines and a sealed envelope, which I’d been given by Judith Crist, lately my critical-writing professor at Columbia’s School of Journalism. “Give this to Murray Weiss at the International Trib,” she instructed. Weiss was the editor in chief of that august journal and, she said, formerly a colleague of hers at its long-defunct but still much-admired progenitor, the New York Herald Tribune. “What’s in it?” “Don’t worry, just give it to him.” A week or so later, in the Trib offices on the rue de Berri, I handed it over to Weiss’s no-nonsense assistant. “It’s from Judith Crist,” I said meaningfully—not the twenty-two-year-old nothing standing before her. She walked briskly to the office beyond, and, after a long beat, like in a too-obvious movie, there came a roar of laughter. “Send him in!” Weiss was behind his desk, holding the letter, still looking much amused. He half rose to shake my hand. “Listen,” he said, chuckling, “this is very nice of Judy. But, no, I’m not going to fire our film critic and hire you.” Read More
August 10, 2012 In Memoriam David Rakoff, 1964–2012 By Lorin Stein We are sad to learn of the death of David Rakoff, at forty-seven, after a long battle with cancer. Rakoff’s essays and contributions to This American Life include what must be the most melancholy humor writing of our time, or else the funniest melancholy writing. Even at his most arch, Rakoff wrote with an undertone of kindness that made his fans love him. Many of his readers will feel that they have lost a friend. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
August 8, 2012 In Memoriam The Southern Underbelly: Remembering Lewis Nordan By Clyde Edgerton The other night, in order to feel close to my friend Lewis “Buddy” Nordan, who recently died, I started rereading his novel Wolf Whistle, a story inspired by the murder of Emmett Till in 1954. (Buddy grew up in the Mississippi Delta near the place of the murder. He knew the murderers. He became friends with Emmett Till’s mother.) After reading the opening chapter, I took my dog outside under the moonlight. I felt wrapped in Buddy’s language. The night was cool. The half-moon was bright enough to throw shadows. When my dog disappeared in the shadow of a cedar tree, I started sketching in my mind a few paragraphs of fiction about a boy and his dog. Minutes later, back inside, I had five paragraphs on paper, a novel opening, something I’d been seeking for months. I read it over. There in my sentences, besides the dog and the bright half-moon and shadows, I found an improbable gathering of nouns: frogs, the Battle of Fort Fisher, a flood plane, Bela Fleck, the planet Venus, and a set of plans for a freelance funeral militia. I had opened up to something. Both my opening up and the something were gifts made possible in large part by Buddy’s odd vision—a vision that allowed him to juxtapose thunderbolts and whispers, a vision on display here in his opening to chapter nine of Wolf Whistle, occurring after the murder at the center of the book: From the eye that Solon’s bullet had knocked from its socket and that hung now upon the child’s moon-dark cheek in the insistent rain, the dead boy saw the world as if his seeing were accompanied by an eternal music, as living boys, still sleeping, in their safe beds, might hear singing from unexpected throats one morning when they wake up, the wind in a willow shade, bream bedding in the shallows of a lake … The chapter continues from the perspective of the murdered boy’s eye. Read More