Jacques Barzun, Grandfather, Advisor, Editor, Scholar

May 15, 2013 3:13 AM

Two lengthy appreciations of Jacques Barzun's influence: Barzun's grandson remembers the letters of his well-known grandfather, and Helen Hazen reminisces about Barzun's unexpected effort to help her write her first book.
posted by cgc373 (2 comments total)

Goes to bookshelf and pulls out dog-eared edition of The Modern Researcher. "What a good friend you have been."
posted by CincyBlues at 4:23 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Nice finds! I have to confess that I bailed out of the second one after I got to "But I know that he wanted to see writing by a female that countered some of the weak and absurd arguments of feminism" (I'd been struggling through the wretched prose up to that point in hopes of some nice Barzun anecdotes), but the first is excellent throughout. Here's a nice bit:

In my late 20s, when most of my friends began pairing off, I wondered why I hadn't yet done so. I inquired as to your views on marriage and love. Marriage, you stressed, requires common hopes and expectations: "If your bookishness strikes your soulmate as wimpish and her passion for nightclubs and dancing seems to you juvenile, it's best not to become one in civil and canon law." A good marriage, you wrote, depends on equal degrees of punctuality, orderliness, and thriftiness: "Some couples are very happy living always in debt, always being late, and finding leftover pizza under a sofa cushion." You then dealt with a trickier problem:

"Remains the enigma of love. The first and perhaps only settled principle is that love and being in love are different emotions. The test of the difference is this: Love includes liking; being in love does not, though the pair in that condition are not aware of their dislike (or mutual indifference) till too late. Their quarrels might alert them, but usually don't."

(I'll always be grateful to the cranky old fart for inspiring a lifelong love of Berlioz.)
posted by languagehat at 7:45 AM on May 15, 2013 [2 favorites]