The Elegant Variation

JOHN LEONARD DIES

As has been widely noted already, the always formidable John Leonard has died.

When Morrison traveled to Stockholm in 1993 to collect her Nobel Prize, she brought Leonard along, "one of the most incredible experiences of his life," Leonard's stepdaughter said. Studs Terkel, who died Oct. 31, once called him "a literary critic in the noblest sense of the word, where you didn't determine whether a book was `good or bad'; but wrote with a point of view of how you should read the book."

Ed, as ever, has covered the ground thoroughly.

JE BANACH ON DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Je Banach, whose fiction has appeared in Esquire and is engaged in a collaborative fiction project with Jonathan Lethem, sent us these words on David Foster Wallace's suicide, which we share with you today.

With Great Abandon: The Perils of a Profession
A Note to Writers upon the Passing of David Foster Wallace

From the time we are young, if we are so lucky to have coaches and supporters, we are encouraged to find the one thing that we were meant to do, that we were born to do, and we are encouraged to commit to it with great abandon. We are not told that this thing will find us. That once we begin we will be unable to stop. For those who have committed to writing, who are unable to stop as if they were a junkie, who simply can not and will not stop, ever, the recognition will come easily of the falsity of that pale dream of Author sitting wistfully beneath a willow tree, ruminating on beauty and joy. Writing is lonely. It is gruesome. Hours and hours spent inside one’s own head, following each question to every possible conclusion. A breeding ground for the discovery of things that are grim. That are incomprehensible. This is to say nothing of the process that follows when the pen is laid down. In 2007, when Vanity Fair asked Norman Mailer who he identified with most, he answered Hemingway because “his suicide suggested the unseen perils” of this profession. For those of us who belong to a different generation, if we were asked the same question, we might answer with this same response, but instead of Hemingway there is David Foster Wallace’s name being passed over our lips. The message is clear: There is danger here. But the exchange between writer and reader is a hopeful one. There is, in this place, possibility. To engage in this task with great abandon is not to abandon all else.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE DEAD AT 46

We logged on for our first email check in Amsterdam to discover a slew of emails regarding the suicide of David Foster Wallace.  Whatever our opinion of his work might have been, this is shocking, tragic news and we're genuinely saddened by the loss.  Terrible, terrible news.  (The Los Angeles Times obituary is here.)

His appearance on the Charlie Rose show:

GREGORY MCDONALD DIES

Sad news, indeed.  Ed reports that Gregory McDonald has died, and offers up a length appreciation.  It might surprise those who think we are so veddy veddy serious around here to learn that we love the Fletch series (Flynn, too), and still have a complete set, which has survived various moves.  Our favorite of the series is probably Confess, Fletch - witty and stylish enough to forever banish images of Chevy Chase - though Fletch, Fletch's Fortune and Fletch's Moxie are all also excellent.

A GIANT FALLS

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize-winning author and dissident, has died at 89.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn had been an obscure, middle-aged, unpublished high school science teacher in a provincial Russian town when he burst onto the literary stage in 1962 with “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The book, a mold-breaking novel about a prison camp inmate, was a sensation. Suddenly, he was being compared to giants of Russian literature like Tolstoy, Dostoyevski and Chekov.

Over the next four decades, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” and historical works like “The Gulag Archipelago.”

There will no doubt be numerous tributes in the days ahead but for now we direct to the online text of The Gulag Archipelago, to let the words speak for themselves.

ELAINE DUNDY MEMORIAL

A memorial service for writer Elaine Dundy, a novelist and memoirist who wrote about her stormy marriage to critic Kenneth Tynan and their life among the rich and famous, will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday at Pierce Bros. mortuary, 1218 Glendon Ave., Westwood.

R.I.P. ROBERT FAGLES

We're deeply saddened to learn that Robert Fagles has died.

Fagles, the Arthur Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at Princeton University, was widely acclaimed for his popular translations of Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," both of which became best-sellers. He also created English renditions of "The Oresteia" by Aeschylus and "The Three Theban Plays" by Sophocles as well as "The Aeneid" by the Roman poet Virgil.

Here is the transcript of a 1997 interview in which he discusses his translation of The Odyssey.

MINGHELLA DIES

Anthony Minghella, whose films included the superb adaptation of The English Patient, has died at a far too young 54.

SAD NEWS

A reader with firsthand knowledge writes in to advise us:

"An important person in mine and many other writers' lives, Raymond Smith, editor of Ontario Review Press and husband of Joyce Carol Oates, died yesterday at one AM in the hospital in Princeton. Ray helped many young writers by publishing them in the Review, which rumor has it will now fold after the spring issue. Ray had gone in with a lung infection but was ultimately taken by a secondary infection. Haven't seen any obits yet."

You can find the ORP here.

ROBBE-GRILLET DIES

The father of the nouveau roman has died at 81.

He was the most prominent of France's "new novelists," a group that emerged in the mid-1950s and whose experimental works tossed aside traditional literary conventions like plot and character development, narrative and chronology, chapters and punctuation. Others included Claude Simon, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute.

Robbe-Grillet was inducted into France's Legion of Honour, and was one of the 40 so-called "immortals" of the prestigious Academie Francaise, the anointed protector of the French language.

You can read more in this 2003 interview with Bookforum. You can also consult his Books and Writers page, as well as some resources from The Modern Word.