Anything good happen lately?

Anne: I’ll find an agent eventually, I just have to keep putting out feelers. I’m friends with Jacques and Marguerite Barzun (who moved from NYC to San Antonio, Marguerite’s home town, when he retired — he’s 97), so I’m asking there as well. Jacques Barzun’s machine (body) is giving out, but his mind and spirit are intact. Whitley and he like to talk about ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a bit about the Nazis (Whitley also being an expert in all 3 subjects). I once sighed to Marguerite, I can’t stand it — according to Whitley, NOTHING good happened after the 1960s. She said, Try being married to my husband. According to Jacques, nothing good happened after France in the 18th century!

— Anne Strieber, in Anne’s diary, Wednesday September 28th, 2005

Collateral reading: Marguerite Barzun, Lizzie Borden and the American Realists.

Jacques Barzun, in The House of Intellect [1959], has some shrewd things to say about the unjustified pride of the decade’s array of aspiring writers.
— Russell Kirk, The Moral Imagination