Barzun 100

Of Jacques Barzun on FriendFeed

2011-01-01T21:46:00.005-05:00

Michael Murray's biography of Barzun, Jacques Barzun: Portrait of a Mind was published by Frederic C. Beil on November 10, 2011.

Now that Mr. Barzun has reached 103, the blog title Barzun 100 looks passé. It seems time to start a new forum with a new title, so I have started the group Of Jacques Barzun on FriendFeed. A subscriber of FriendFeed may join the group and contribute to it.

NOTE 11/3/10: For a recent interview of Jacques Barzun, see the video A Conversation with Jacques Barzun (2010).

NOTE 11/10/11: Jacques Barzun interviewed on his life, April 4, 2009.

NOTE 1/25/12: gentle rereader . . . rediscovering Jacques Barzun, a blog by John Adams.

Honoring Jacques Barzun

2010-01-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

Jacques Barzun
was born in Créteil, France
on 30 November 1907

My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don’t need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let’s play him more.
— Jacques Barzun, in an interview with John C. Tibbetts

in the offices of Scribner’s in 1987 as the two discuss what became the radio series The World of Robert Schumann.

Note from Jacques Barzun

“I want the many well-wishers — friends and strangers who have greeted me on my recent birthday — to know that I have been greatly moved by these kind messages. I thank everyone for these expressions of good will, which I regret that I cannot acknowledge individually.”

-JB

L'Abbaye (1906 1908)

2010-01-01T15:43:00.003-05:00

Preview of the Abbay de Créteil segment of a French documentary on Unanimism.

Begin Here

2009-12-31T21:13:00.005-05:00

Photo courtesy of webrefdesk.

History Book Club Thread

2009-12-30T20:09:00.003-05:00

Works cited in Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence

— cited by ibergus

Forgotten Treasure: Practical Agitation

2009-12-23T18:34:00.002-05:00

Jacques Barzun: "Practical Agitation" by John Jay Chapman

— from Los Angeles Times, Forgotten treasures of the last century, from 25 writers, December 22, 2009

Thanks to David Lull.

8 Bells

2009-12-15T08:30:00.001-05:00

The Education of the Feelings, especially through music, has another champion, Mr. Brooks. The polymath who persuaded the faculties of Columbia University to add Music Humanities to the curriculum celebrates his 102nd birthday this Monday. Jacques Barzun's "Pleasures of Music" and ear-opening biography of Berlioz deliver emotional insights to the mind-and-heart. Barzun's fusion of intellect with emotion reunifies Mind and provides a theme to savor throughout his abundant works. Encore, Jacques!

8bells, Online comment to the New York Times, Juneau, November 27th, 2009, 6:23 pm

From the Yahoo Group on The Golden Age of Detective Fiction

2009-12-14T10:04:00.004-05:00

Probably someone already noted on this list that Barzun had his 102nd birthday on November 30. Doug G, Fri Dec 4, 2009 12:35 am

Friends, What a long, productive life! His “Catalogue of Crime”, though not perfect, introduced me to many writers and books who have given me even greater reading pleasures than any other work of the kind! I probablt could classify it among my ten essential volumes in all fields, together with the Bible and "101 Years Entertainment", to name a couple. And his book on the decline of Western civilization is yet another wonder! Best regards, Enrique F. Bird Picó, Fri Dec 4, 2009 1:25 am

And he likes Berlioz - an unmistakable sign of good taste! Nick Fuller, Fri Dec 4, 2009 4:14 am

Which means that he is exactly one year younger than John Dickson Carr. And his collaborator on A Catalogue of Crime, was born in Carr's home town of Uniontown. Unfortunately, Carr wasn't really to their taste. Nick Fuller, Fri Dec 4, 2009 4:16 am

Well, I hope that longevity is tied to writing about the genre for all of our sakes. Jeffrey Marks, Fri Dec 4, 2009 10:03 am

Has a "great" man or woman ever become the world's oldest person? Eight years or so more and he'll be in the running! I introduced Barzun as a player in this opening historiographical section of mine (of course he's mentioned in many other places) as a thirty-six year old history professor — and this was sixty-five years ago! He was right in the heart of it all when Boucher and Haycraft and Wilson and Chandler were belting it out. Curt, Fri Dec 4, 2009 10:46 am

Most definitely. He and Boucher argued more than agreed. Barzun was very gracious about letting me quote his letters in the Boucher biography. Jeff, Sat Dec 5, 2009 11:04 am

I copied the Barzun-Bouchers letters in the Boucher papers, sounds like you did too. Both Boucher and Haycraft seemed to get rather irritated with him at times. I think they felt his emphasis on the detective novel as "tale" limited the artistic potentialities of the form. I wrote Barzun both in September 2001 (a few days before 9/11) and more recently, over the summer. The first time I got a letter from a secretary telling me he was in too poor health to respond to my letter. Having mostly finished the book, I wrote him more recently but never got a response. I've generally been quite successful communicating with people, including children of authors, with some excellent results, but Professor Barzun sadly has been a
washout for me (I assume he is still living at the same address). Of course I know he's quite, quite old and is physically much weaker, but I understand he still reads (his advice to Pres. Obama was published earlier this year and I believe you said you communicated with him last year?). He's really quite amazing in that respect, perhaps Will Durant and Milton Friedman are the closest other examples of astounding mental longevity (and they died at 96 and 94, respectively). I must confess it's a great disappointment to me that I've never been able to correspond with him, as this book project of mine is — I think it's fair to say — the most Barzunian thing written on detective fiction not by Barzun himself (though I'm not quite as dogmatic). Barzun's Catalogue of Crime, along with Doug Greene's work and Bill Pronzini's and Marcia Muller's 1001 Midnights, did
more to inspire me to read these books and write this manuscript than anything else. I think Barzun would have found my work interesting at some point in his life. When I get round to indexing, he'll be one of the most mentioned names in there! Curt, Sat Dec 5, 2009 11:47 am

I corresponded with Barzun about 9 years ago — we talked about our mutual belief that Crippen may have been innocent (at least of the charges but not of other things); he complimented my Carr biography, telling me he liked JDC personally but not his books, though after my bio he would give them another try (I don't know whether he did); and he said nice things about my Dover anthologies. My view of Barzun's CATALOGUE OF CRIME is that it is fascinating but supremely quirky — he likes "straighforward" writers, often UK, but not those like Carr, Queen, Boucher, Rawson who wrote about bizarre, indeed fantastic, events. I still find that odd, given Barzun's stated belief that detective fiction is a "tale" -- which was exactly Carr's belief. I found him informed and gracious and perfectly willing to discuss his judgments, and I wish him many more birthdays.
Doug G, Sat Dec 5, 2009 12:47 pm

Edmund Opitz on The Art of Thinking (1988)

2009-12-14T08:28:00.006-05:00

Now that you have awakened a few billion brain cells and pumped some information into them, your mind will begin to churn out ideas and you’ll be thinking lots of new and exciting thoughts. What is it like to think? Let me quote a few lines from Jacques Barzun, a first-rate thinker: "Thinking is inwardly a haphazard, fitful, incoherent activity. If you could peer in and see thinking going on, it would not look like that trimmed and barbered result, A Thought. Thinking is messy, repetitious, silly, obtuse, subject to explosions that shatter the crucible and leave darkness behind. Then comes another flash, a new path is seen, trod, lost, broken off, and blazed anew. It leaves the thinker dizzy as well as doubtful; he does not know what he thinks until he has thought it, or better, until he has written and riddled it with a persistence akin to obsession."

Once you get hooked on thinking you’ll be irresistibly drawn into writing, and you'll quickly discover that almost no author who relies on the contents of his own mind alone ever wrote a readable essay, let alone a book. Every thinker and writer needs to know how to use reference books and conduct research, and the complete guide to this is the book, The Modern Researcher, by Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff. But you cannot stop there; you have to learn to write passable English prose, and there’s no easy way to do that. The most helpful book on writing, in my view, is Barzun's Simple and Direct. If you're interested in knowing how the ancient Greeks went about the chore of putting together a persuasive speech, look into Aristotle's Rhetoric.

— Edmund Opitz, The Liberating Arts, LibertarianChristians.com

Sidelight: "Typing for Professor Barzun" (1939)

2009-12-12T12:42:00.008-05:00

From: 20th Century Danny Boy, 1939 Letter from Grace Everett, Re: Bill Everett & Amazing Man.

This ebay page may or may not be available. According to it:

The letter is from Grace Everett the wife of Bill "William" Everett the creator of Amazing Man, Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner and Daredevil. This letter is dated and stamped by the City of New York March 1, 9:30PM, 1939 which was 6 months before the first Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner can out, which in a way is talked about in this letter.

The addressee is "Mrs. A. Carleton Potter, 1 Potter Park, Cambridge, Massachusetts."

From CC:

2009-12-03T06:49:00.001-05:00

. . . I visited with Jacques and Marguerite a couple of weeks ago and they were doing fine. When I walked in Jacques was reading a book on rhetoric. He looked good and stately with his wonderfully infectious smile. . . . CC, 30 Nov 2009

1907 to the Present

2009-11-30T00:01:00.010-05:00

Today Jacques Barzun is 30 November 1907 to the Present. Joyeux anniversaire!

See also Contemplating a Masterpiece.

John P. Richardson - The Ugley Vicar

2009-11-27T15:09:00.002-05:00

Recently I have been revisiting Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, and have been struck by the importance of his definition of decadence for what we now see happening in the Western world:

All that is meant by Decadence is "falling off." It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary , it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

It is this which we surely see in our own culture, and it is important not just for those of a ‘religious’ persuasion but for us all.

— John P. Richardson, The Ugley Vicar, What Next for the West?

Thomas E. Burman wins 2008 Barzun Prize

2009-11-19T07:01:00.005-05:00

The American Philosophical Society awarded the 2008 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History to Dr. Thomas E. Burman for his book, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560. The award was presented by Mary Patterson McPherson, Executive Officer of the Society. The award ceremony took place on Nov. 14, 2008.

Isaac Waisberg

2009-09-03T17:56:00.003-04:00

Dear Mr. Wong,

I was looking for articles by Jacques Barzun in an online database and came across this letter which appeared in the Spectator in March 6, 1964:

SIR,---You wondered how a 'PhD in Cornish' can have been awarded to a candidate at Columbia University. The language being 'virtually extinct... who, then, examined him?' It suffices to ask how the thing is done when a PhD is taken in Latin, Sanskrit, or Hittite---all more than virtually extinct. The degree that aroused your skepticism was actually in Linguistics; the dissertation bore upon a twelfth-century Cornish-Latin lexicon, and was titled 'The Old Cornish Vocabulary.' With it and some nationalistic fire, it should be possible to have a great literary revival, a sovereign State, a Parliament, and an atomic pile.

JACQUES BARZUN

I thought you might like it.

Regards,
Isaac W.
ibergus

Mr. Clarity

2009-08-17T17:47:00.005-04:00

To improve the clarity of your writing (almost effortlessly!), spend at least ten minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly, such as Jacques Barzun.

— Clear writing with Mr. Clarity, 17 Aug 2009

Mr. Barzun’s book Simple & Direct was the greatest inspiration in my writing career. During the last three decades, I have read it over and over and have recommended it to numerous young writers.

— Joe Roy, who is Mr. Clarity

Orchestral Fantasy for Jacques Barzun

2009-08-08T14:23:00.002-04:00

Gordon Rumson has made an orchestral version of his Fantasy for Jacques Barzun.

Once Upon a Tweet

2009-07-21T19:33:00.003-04:00

Once lived next door to Vincent D'Onofrio's sister AND helped set up Jacques Barzun's first PC. #lameclaimstofame

— shutupwierdo

Romans of the Decadence

2009-06-28T03:56:00.002-04:00

A photo taken at the Musée d'Orsay

Jonathan Alter

2009-06-07T10:05:00.002-04:00

"Education is the dullest of subjects," Jacques Barzun wrote in the very first sentence of his astonishingly fresh 1945 classic, Teacher in America. Barzun despised the idea of "professional educators" who focus on "methods" instead of subject matter. He loved teachers, but knew they "are born, not made," and that most teachers' colleges teach the wrong stuff.

Cut to 2009, when Barack Obama thinks education is the most exciting of subjects. Even so, Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, get Barzun. They understand that the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.

— Jonathan Alter, Peanut-Butter Politics: Education funding is a sticky issue, Newweek. web June 6, 2009, print June 15, 2009

This is not quite right. Barzun also says that born teachers are rarer than born poets. Since many more teachers are needed than are born, teachers who know and cannot teach should be taught how to teach.

From The Music in the Music of Berlioz

2009-06-04T17:13:00.009-04:00

The base for precise reference in music is solid enough — air waves are as material as steel, but they move fast and catching the portion that expresses takes practice. One might have thought that over the years the frequent performance of the standard operas, reviewed by the same newspaper writers, would have established some firm connections between musical effects and the words and situations they accompany. This has not happened. Operatic words tend to be inexpressive and are rarely heard beyond the first two or three by which famous arias are known. Another obstacle is that the relation of words to the sensations of life is far from clear-cut. We call anger quite a number of distinct feelings — there is hot or cold anger, vocal or suppressed, weary from sameness of the cause, touched with surprise or contempt or even with amusement (if the cause is a child's prank).²³

23. Need I add that this inadequacy of literal speech is one reason for the existence of the arts? By re-presenting our experience in a variety of ways they enlarge our understanding of life.

— Jacques Barzun, The Music in the Music of Berlioz, in Peter Bloom, ed., Berlioz: Scenes from the Life and Work, University of Rochester Press, 2008, p. 21.

From earlier in the essay:

The number of situations that music can, if not express in detail, still be plausibly associated with, is quite large [yet] the hearing of any piece impresses so many unique musical details on our mind that it seems to mean only one thing. The English critic Edmund Gurney solved the puzzle with finality when he condemned the prosaic fallacy that the essence of music is vague namable expressiveness, instead of definite unnamable expressiveness.

— Ibid, p. 15

Simon Schama learns something about Barzun

2009-05-29T22:59:00.002-04:00

Charlie Rose, A Conversation with Simon Schama, May 27, 2009.

Thanks to Brian Frank.

1983 Preface of Teacher in America

2009-05-24T23:34:00.003-04:00

Preface to the 1983 Edition Teacher in America by Jacques Barzun

Thanks to ibergus.

The Most Impossible Book

2009-05-23T09:40:00.004-04:00

Jacques Barzun once observed that of all the books it is impossible to write, the most impossible is a book trying to capture the spirit of America (I first read this truth when I was three-quarters of the way through my own attempt). Schama has assigned himself a mission impossible. No one should wish a Brilliant Book upon any other human. And at least we can say that while Simon Schama, the Man of Brilliance, comes away from this book bruised and limping, at least Simon Schama the outstanding historian still survives.

— David Brooks on Simon Schama, The American Future: A History, The New York Times Book Review, May 24, 2009.

Thanks to Dave Lull.

The House of Intellect, 50 years ago and today

2009-05-07T06:43:00.003-04:00

Rereading The House of Intellect has helped me understand our times more clearly. Certain images recur: abdication, desire for release, and exhausted impotence. The adult world of achieved self-discipline abdicates to an adolescent world of spontaneity and desire. Among those charged with responsibility for cultural standards, Barzun sees a strong desire for “a release from responsibility.” People “idealize youth” and “hope that youth will bring to the conduct of life an energy that manners have sapped in their elders.” The really smart and ambitious intellectuals read the signs of the times and strike poses accordingly: “Nowadays it is assumed that all attacks on culture are equal in virtue, and that attacking society, because it is society, is the one aim and test of genius.”

— R. R. Reno, End of an Era, First Things, March 11, 2009.

Theorizing the Culture Wars

2009-05-05T07:44:00.003-04:00

Jacques Barzun predicted the Culture Wars. Well, maybe not. He was both a historian and a product of his times, not a prophet. But there is little doubt that the Culture Wars of his early years, the 1940s and 1950s, bear at least some resemblance to today's battles over books, religion, the arts, and education. . .

— Tim Lacy, Theorizing the Culture Wars: Jacques Barzun, Politics, and Fostering Intellectual Life in a Democracy,

An Education Bubble?

2009-05-05T06:57:00.002-04:00

Curiously, the phrase "education bubble" has not appeared at all in the NYT, although it has appeared many times in the blogs that the newspaper hosts. Googling the phrase gets 39,000 hits. Rises and falls in tuition get plenty of coverage, but that doesn't show that the reporters are aware of the irrational bubble -- they just think it's unfair, that college should be cheaper so that more can attend. But just as no one was allowed to say that most low-income borrowers were undeserving of home loans since they were disproportionately black and Hispanic, so we aren't allowed to say that a lot of college students are nowhere near being "college material" -- that would violate the "demotic life and times," as Jacques Barzun has dubbed the zeitgeist from roughly the 1960s until today. We cripple our minds by imbibing political correctness.

— Gene Expression, An education bubble? Data from the explosion of AP tests

Thanks to razibkhan.

Lincoln, Law, Barzun

2009-05-01T17:09:00.001-04:00

Reflecting 50 years ago on the sesquicentennial of the president’s birth, cultural historian Jacques Barzun perceptively commented, “Something of Lincoln’s tone obviously comes from the practice of legal thought. It would be surprising if the effort of mind that Lincoln put into his profession had not come out again in his prose.”
— H. Thomas Wells Jr., president, American Bar Association, Celebrating Lincoln On Law Day

Mary Garden

2009-04-10T07:22:00.003-04:00

Mary Garden Dazzled the Eye & Pained the Ear, by Warren Boroson, obiterdicta, April 6, 2009.

In one of his courses, Barzun put Mary Garden's autobiography on the reading list.

Liberal Orthodoxy

2009-03-25T22:14:00.005-04:00

. . . a reporter from the New York Times was interviewing me once for a piece fleshing out my take on country music with some personal data. His started his questions by asking what films I liked, and my first thought was that I should not say anything very pretentious. (Even the word films seemed to lead the way to disaster.) So I replied that, actually, I liked Adam Sandler's work very much. The writer paused, pen midair, beheld me gently, and said: "I'm going to do you a favor and not use that." Okay, I thought. We'll go with that, and say nice things only. The New York Times plays to a kind of audience, and it wants what it wants -- don't argue. But I was interested to see, when the piece came out, that my answer to the question What book are you currently reading? was framed as He claims to be reading Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. Now, that book, like everything else Jacques Barzun has written, is for a general reader, not a way-out intellectual. The claims, in other words, is uncalled for. Plenty of country musicians are interested in Erasmus and 17th-century politics in Venice and so on, but aren't steeped in it enough to slog through a work of primary scholarship. That's nothing that should choke the average reader on his morning coffee.
— Robbie Fulkes, Potpourri, March 25, 2009

The House of Intellect After Fifty Years

2009-03-11T22:40:00.006-04:00

R. R. Reno, End of an Era, First Things:

Rereading The House of Intellect has helped me understand our times more clearly. Certain images recur: abdication, desire for release, and exhausted impotence. The adult world of achieved self-discipline abdicates to an adolescent world of spontaneity and desire. Among those charged with responsibility for cultural standards, Barzun sees a strong desire for “a release from responsibility.” People “idealize youth” and “hope that youth will bring to the conduct of life an energy that manners have sapped in their elders.” The really smart and ambitious intellectuals read the signs of the times and strike poses accordingly: “Nowadays it is assumed that all attacks on culture are equal in virtue, and that attacking society, because it is society, is the one aim and test of genius.”

Read also Frank Wilson, Get to Know Today . . ., in the blog BOOKS, INQ. — THE EPILOGUE, March 12, 2009.

Both tips thanks to David Lull.

Liberal Ben

2009-02-07T11:50:00.000-05:00

The Culture We Deserve

Frank Ordaz

2009-01-30T23:13:00.003-05:00

Frank Ordaz, The Use and Abuse of Art, by Jacques Barzun, in On Being Frank, January 29, 2009.

Ode to Abe

2009-01-30T22:57:00.004-05:00

From Jurek Martin, Ode to Abe, FT.com, January 31, 2009:

Even Mencken, never charitable, thought the Gettysburg address sublime: “Eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like perfection.” He could not, of course, resist adding that it was a one-off and based on a false premise. Ibsen and Whitman wrote odes to Lincoln. But none of them addressed the quality of his writing.

Jacques Barzun, a Columbia University professor, did so, however, in a marvellous 1959 essay. Even in his early political pamphlets and court cases, Lincoln showed control over words, says Barzun. A parallel emerged between the shortness of an Aesop fable “and the mania Lincoln had for condensing any matter into the fewest words”.

According to legend, Lincoln scribbled down the Gettysburg address on a train to the event. He did not write fast but he did write a lot. He stuffed his notes in his desk, his pockets and his stove-pipe hat, to be retrieved when needed. When called to speak, all had already been thought through.

Barzun praises Lincoln’s literary art: “[His] precision, vernacular ease, rhythmical virtuosity and elegance may at a century’s remove seem alien to our tastes,” he writes. But out of Lincoln came Mark Twain, and out of Twain came Sherwood Anderson, Mencken and Ernest Hemingway. His legacy endures.

See The Library of America, The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now, Edited by Harold Holzer

BrnFrnk

2009-01-22T16:53:00.001-05:00

A Bunch of Stuff I've Read

Jacques Barzun and the Use of History

What Obama Should Read

2009-01-22T16:35:00.004-05:00

Washington Monthly, January/February 2009:

JACQUES BARZUN

I recommend that the new president read William James's The Will to Believe and George Santayana's Character and Opinion in the United States. Both books serve a useful purpose to anyone trying to understand America in an overarching sense. They are products of two of our best minds and tell us something of our national character and preferences.

Advice to Obama

2009-01-22T12:51:00.003-05:00

from Hugh Fitzgerald:

Obama's First Presidential Visit

And this is what he, Obama, should and could do: he could get on a plane, while the household staff are still vacuuming in the White House and the Old Executive Office Building – not just on any plane, but that special plane, the airforceoney one -- and fly straight down to San Antonio, Texas. And there he should present the very first Presidential Medal of the Obama Administration to Jacques Barzun, aged 100. And then Barack Obama should fly back to Washington.

Read also by the same presidential adviser:

The Inaugural Poem That Should Have Been Read, But Wasn't

Obama had the chance to do things right, and set things straight, but he passed up that chance. He might have chosen, he should have chosen, a good writer, with a good poem. Anthony Hecht is dead, so there was no contest. That someone was 88-year-old Richard Wilbur, of Cummington, Massachusetts and Key West, Florida.

And I've found just the poem for Wilbur to have read. . .

Collini — and Hart — on Trilling

2008-12-06T22:07:00.009-05:00

I probably won't read Stefan Collini, Trilling's Sandbags: Lionel Trilling's Critical Essays, The Nation, Dec. 22, 2008.

Barzun says somewhere that Trilling was more like Keats than Arnold. Here's a hint to Trilling's critics: look on The Liberal Imagination as notes by a would-be novelist on how to write a novel.

I've read and recommend Jeffrey Hart, Lionel Trilling in the Classroom, The New Criterion, May 1998.

A Little Matter of Sense

2008-12-05T12:31:00.003-05:00

Jacques Barzun, A Little Matter of Sense, New York Times, June 21, 1987.

Noted in Books, Inq. — The Epilogue.

See also Patrick Kurp, 'Always Subordinate to the Arts'.

Thanks to David Lull.

Barzun 101

2008-11-30T08:39:00.002-05:00

Happy, Happy Birthday

See:

Jacques Barzun Approaches 101 Not Out

Jacques Barzun

Barzun, 101

Los 101 años de Jacques Barzun

A Song for Jacques Barzun

2008-10-29T06:11:00.005-04:00

by Ken Kleinfeld.

Go to song (Click on the button for "Waterman").

"Waterman"

Jacques Barzun
Has tied in some
Waterman gateways
To help mind make for someone.

Boy in France
Then World War I
Dammed that hamlet stream
Of fertile generation.

Soon New York
Took on Barzun,
The head gardener
To a broad way that plays on.

Boy in France
Then World War I...

Jacques Barzun
Has tied in tons,
Waterman gateways
To direct mind to the fun.

© 2008 Ken Kleinfeld

At the same site is another Barzun-inspired song, "Isn't Abbey Strange."

Ozick and Wieseltier on Trilling

2008-10-14T12:33:00.001-04:00

Cynthia Ozick, "Novel or Nothing".

Leon Wieseltier, "The Shrinker".

Both articles appeared in The New Republic.

Louis Menand on Lionel Trilling

2008-09-28T19:52:00.001-04:00

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents, by Louis Menand, New Yorker, Sept. 29, 2008.

Arthur Krystal Interview

2008-08-20T20:48:00.004-04:00

Mr. Krystal’s New Yorker essay on Jacques Barzun is often cited. In this Harper’s Magazine interview, Barzun is but one of the subjects discussed. Excerpt:

You studied with Barzun at Columbia, and acknowledge him as an influence. Which of his essays have you most often re-read? Which of his books do you most value (or recommend)?

To be strictly accurate, I did not study with Barzun at Columbia. I took only one course with him, a course on the writing of history, and I’m quite sure that my views on poets and novelists were formed before we met. If they hadn’t been, Barzun would never have bothered with me. He didn’t want acolytes; he wanted people with whom he could discuss books. That said, let me add that I have been matriculating at Barzun University for the last thirty-five years and that I’ll probably never know enough to graduate. He’s approaching his one-hundredth-and-first birthday and he just finished re-reading G. Lowes Dickinson’s A Modern Symposium (1905), a book I had never even heard of. Recommending essays and books by Barzun is easy. As long as your area of interest isn’t quantum mechanics or animal husbandry, there’s probably a Barzun work that’ll work for you. I happen to like the essays in The Culture We Deserve. Of course, I happen also to have chosen and edited them. If from Dawn to Decadence seems too daunting, try Clio and the Doctors. If you read poetry, then read his Essay on French Verse. And if you want to know why we shouldn’t be in Iraq, go online and find an address he delivered over twenty years ago, "Is Democratic Theory For Export?".

Thanks again to Dave Lull.

Jacques Barzun “InDepth”

2008-08-16T23:30:00.003-04:00

C-SPAN2 BookTV interview around the time of the publication of From Dawn to Decadence

Byron and the Byronic

2008-08-15T17:39:00.002-04:00

by Jacques Barzun, first published in The Atlantic Monthly, August 1953. Link thanks to Dave Lull.

Also from Mr. Lull:

Jacques Barzun reviews Malcom Lowry’s Under the Volcano.

Michael S. Bell

2008-05-27T17:07:00.001-04:00

It might be in the best interest of art and museums if curators and other staff members were simply to do their jobs without excessive concern about the motives of directors and trustees. Jacques Barzun, in his slim 1974 volume The Use and Abuse of Art, gave fair warning about the catastrophe he rightly perceived to be coming, and in which we have all been compicit. Curators have let art museums become Wal-Mart, super-sized. The entrepreneurial tail is now wagging the art-historical dog.

— Michael S. Bell, Letter to the Editor, Art in America, January 2008, p. 31.

Rules of Weight

2008-05-07T19:47:00.002-04:00

Paper by Charles L. Barzun, Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 5, 2008. Abstract and document download.

Barzun on Elitism

2008-04-24T22:46:00.006-04:00

As one who has been greatly influenced by the writings of conservative historian, Jacques Barzun — especially his warnings against “the menace of the untaught — the menace to themselves and to us” — it seems appropriate here to mention a few of his observations about America’s elites. . . .
—Walter C. Uhler, Allegations of “Elitism” Also Brought Down America’s Founding Fathers

Revd John P Richardson

2008-04-09T18:00:00.003-04:00

I have just finished reading Jacques Barzun’s monumental From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, and find myself with mixed feelings of triumph and despair.

— The Ugley Vicar, On Finishing Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence

Berlioz? Encore!

2008-04-09T17:40:00.001-04:00

By Peter Bloom in From Beyond the Stave: The Boydell & Brewer Music Blog

Favorite Barzun Quotations: Eric Morse

2008-04-06T08:25:00.000-04:00

Favorite Barzun Quotations

See also Eric Robert Morse.

Flying Bibliography You Tubed

2008-04-05T14:23:00.000-04:00

David Greenberg, Historian of Presidents and Politics, Receives Hiett Prize

2008-04-01T22:17:00.003-04:00

According to the article,

Judges for the 2008 Hiett Prize were Robert Hollander, professor emeritus of European literature at Princeton University; Clayborne Carson, professor of American history at Stanford University; and Jacques Barzun, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University.

David Greenberg’s Homepage

The Berlioz Society

2008-03-24T16:45:00.001-04:00

Articles about Jacques Barzun from the society’s bulletin.

John Gordon

2008-03-05T19:52:00.001-05:00

His choice in Favorite Barzun Quotations.

John Gordon on how he learned about Barzun:

My wife bought me a copy of The Culture we Deserve. I had never read anything so clarifying. I ordered The Use and Abuse of Art to see what he had to say about my field. I still have not recovered.
— Facebook Jacques Barzun Fan Club

Inscription

2008-02-19T21:58:00.002-05:00

BARZUN, Jacques
Race: A study in Superstition

Octavo, 263pp. Later printing of the revised edition. Fine, in fine dust jacket. Inscribed by Barzun to Cleve Gray on the front free endpaper: “Cleve, This is a terribly dull book, but the new preface may redeem it enough to have it fit to send you + Francine, with our warmest good wishes. Jacques. Christmas 1964.” New York: Harper and Row, 1965

* USD 350.00
* bookseller: Lame Duck Books (USA)

Rooney Redux

2008-02-17T10:10:00.002-05:00

Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff wrote one called The Modern Researcher and that’s a good reference book. Jacques Barzun may have written more books than I’ve read and he may be the smartest person who ever lived - certainly the smartest person I’ve ever known personally. Jacques just had his 100th birthday.

— Andy Rooney, For the love of our English language

Jack Sullivan

2008-01-27T07:15:00.001-05:00

Jacques Barzun: Mentor, Collaborator, Friend

blip.tv

2008-01-26T14:35:00.000-05:00

The Gemini Ink video.

Leonard Meyer Remembered

2008-01-22T17:32:00.000-05:00

Bob Gjerdingen, Leonard Meyer Remembered, American Society for Aesthetics

Also Peter Kivy, Leonard Meyer Remembered, Ibid.

Jonathan Goodman 1931 – 2008

2008-01-14T06:38:00.000-05:00

Telegraph obituary

See also Damn! Damn! Damn!

M. D. Aeschliman

2008-01-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

The Power of Barzun can now be read on-line.

Frida Leider Sings Abscheulicher!

2008-01-09T21:53:00.000-05:00

In 1949 this was one of Jacques Barzun’s Favorite Records.

Modernism

2008-01-08T06:56:00.000-05:00

. . . I find Jacques Barzun’s recent delineation of modernism in From Dawn to Decadence to be stronger than Gay’s [in Modernism: The Lure of Heresy]. Even the use of the word “heresy” in the title doesn’t quite ring true in my ears. Modernism wasn’t exactly heretical, a purification, as heresies have usually been. Though it seems wholly experimental, a seeking of complete freedom, I think Winters was onto something more important in seeing it as a foreseeable development of Romanticism. For his part, Barzun calls the overarching concept that formed modernism and many of the movements leading up to it “Emancipation,” one of Barzun’s main intellectual “themes” of the last 500 years in the cultural history of the West. Here is a snippet of what Barzun says about what he calls the decadence that seeking Emancipation has engendered:

All that is meant by Decadence is “falling off.” It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted; the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

I think Barzun’s Emancipation theme and his lengthy discussion of it more clearly reflect what the moderns were after than Gay’s term “heresy.” It would require a long essay to make my case, but I do not have the time or inclination to write about this issue at the moment. But comments on this and all other matters pertaining to modernism and Peter Gay’s study of it are welcome, as always.

— Ben Kilpela, Modernism as Endless Heresy, in Mr. Kilpela’s blog Yvor Winters: The American Literary Rhadamanthus.

Orientalism

2008-01-08T06:41:00.000-05:00

Much of Westerners’ travel writings are dismissed as “orientalist”. Where Said finds Kinglake's account of his travels in Islamic lands, Eothen, overrated, Jacques Barzun considers it a minor masterpiece.
— Ibn Warraq, interviewed in FrontPage Magazine about his book Defending the West

Erich Kleiber

2008-01-07T17:38:00.000-05:00

The Blue Danube:

During the 1930 season [with the New York Philharmonic] Kleiber had given a superb performance of the Fantastique. the first and last movements — the touchstones of conducting intelligence in that work — had been done with a control, animation, and sense of line that I have never heard equaled.
— Jacques Barzun, “Erich Kleiber” (1956), in Critical Questions, 1982, p. 39–40.

Search for “Erich Kleiber” on YouTube.

Search for “Carlos Kleiber” on YouTube.

See also Jacques Barzun, My Favorite Records

Harry Partch — BBC Documentary

2008-01-06T22:35:00.000-05:00

I happen to think that only in music have truly new directions been found, and that these are two and only two: electronic music and the 43-tone works and instruments of Harry Partch.
— Jacques Barzun, “Harry Partch and the Moderns” (1971), in Critical Questions, 1982, p. 59.

The BBC Documentary:

Part 1 of 6:

Part 2 of 6:

Part 3 of 6:

Part 4 of 6:

Part 5 of 6:

Part 6 of 6:

Search YouTube for “Harry Partch”.

See also Leo Wong, Barstow Inscriptions.

Varèse: Ionisation

2008-01-06T21:32:00.001-05:00

Search YouTube for “Edgard Varese”.

See also:

Jacques Barzun, My Favorite Records,

Leo Wong, Varèse.

The Berlioz Society

2008-01-05T16:45:00.000-05:00

Bulletin No. 175, December 2007, of the Berlioz Society is dedicated to Professor Barzun. Its contents include:

A message from Colin Davis

Frère Jacques, by Peter Bloom

Jacques Barzun, aet.100, by Richard Macnutt

A Source of Joy and Instruction, by Hugh Macdonald

Dining with Berlioz — or Not, by Katherine Kolb

Encounters with the Master, by Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay

Barzun and the Founding of the Berlioz Society, by Brian Chenley

"Miscellaney" by David Cairns

Andrew Stout

2008-01-04T06:48:00.000-05:00

Melatonin Up, Civilization Down: Reading Jacques Barzun This Winter, Flak Magazine

Gerald J. Russello

2007-12-31T21:47:00.000-05:00

Barzun at 100, First Things, December 31, 2007

The View from Alexandria

2007-12-25T20:58:00.000-05:00

I couldn’t help but think of the Jacques Barzun quote that heads this blog when I read of this line of toys.
— Philo, Jesus Action Figures

Bill Moyers

2007-12-21T07:50:00.000-05:00

A Frenchman by birth, now 100 years old and living in Texas, Barzun, like his illustrious ancestor Alexis de Toqueville, has been a canny interpreter of the American character.
— Bill Moyers, Society on Steroids, Bill Moyers Journal

Christopher Cox

2007-12-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

The great intellectual Jacques Barzun, whose name one automatically associates with Columbia, just 20 days ago celebrated his 100th birthday. He once said about gatherings such as this: “In any assembly, the simplest way to stop the transacting of business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.”

That was more than tongue-in-cheek cynicism, of course, because Barzun was eyewitness to a period in history in which ideologies had become brutally coercive. He'd seen how the a priori designs for human arrangements represented by Nazism, Fascism, and Communism had turned nations against each other in the bloodiest possible manner. Those systems, commanded by their own self-referential principles, did split the ranks of humankind. And they did stop the transacting of business.

— Christopher Cox, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Keynote Address to the Columbia Law and Business Schools Cross Border Securities Market Mergers Conference, December 19, 2007

Eric Robert Morse

2007-12-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

With Light from a New Dawn
2005, Oil on Canvas, 11" x 14"

Eric Robert Morse’s web site is named The Weather Report.

Mr. Morse’s brother JSB Morse has a blog named The State of the Art.

Both brothers have written amazon.com reviews of From Dawn to Decadence:

Eric Robert Morse

Joseph Stephen Breese Morse

Three from The American Scholar

2007-12-11T20:19:00.000-05:00

“FROM OUR ARCHIVES
in celebration
of Jacques Barzun’s
100th birthday”

To the Rescue of Romanticism
Spring 1940

Meditations on the Literature of Spying
Spring 1965

The Cradle of Modernism
Autumn 1990

Sound Art

2007-12-07T12:44:00.000-05:00

From Pierre Albert-Birot:

The polyphonic experiment in poetry had its origin in France: Mallarmé, Henri-Martin Barzun, Albert-Birot. It is necessary, at this point, to mention the work of Barzun, never yet studied, which we consider of great importance for its influence on the most important schools of avant-garde poetry; Italian futurism, German expressionism, Anglo-Saxon imagism, dadaism. Barzun was one of the founders of the Abbaye de Créteil. In 1907 he published La Terrestre Tragedie, a poem in 24 cantos, inspired by Victor Hugo’s Legende des Siècles. La Terrestre Tragédie is the human species, and the song that it expresses does not converge towards a unanimism à la Jules Romains, but towards a simultaneism which is a powerful orchestral chorus. He called this concept “Orphisme”. The Orphic school gave rise to a group of authors towards 1912: Fernand Divoire, Sébastien Voirol, Maurice Bataille, R. Aldington, Guillaume Apollinaire, Nicolas Beauduin, Robert de Souza, Georges Polti and others. Between 1912 and 1914 he published twelve collections of the anthology Poème et Drame , with critical essays, prose, dramas, poems in the form of “Voix, Rythmes et Chants Simultanés”. In 1913 he also published the epic Universel-Poème in the magazine La Vie.

Barzun made use of many voices simultaneously and also foresaw the use of a gramophone. He engaged in a controversy with Apollinaire and Ezra Pound, who held that the human ear could not apprehend several voices in unison. But, as Van Doesburg later foresaw, this difficulty could be overcome by an adequate training of the ear. Accustomed to listening to radio, television, and film sound-tracks, we are now better able to apprehend simultaneous messages. Towards 1923 Barzun moved to the U.S.A. where he founded a school which influenced, among others, Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and Paul Anderson. Today many authors have followed Barzun’s suggestion and produce polyphonic poetry: Bernard Heidsieck, Franz Mon, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino.

From About Bernard Heidsieck, Steve McCaffery, Sound Poetry: A Survey (1978):

In France today Bernard Heidsieck is the sound poet most directly influenced by the simultaneism (Orphism) of Henri-Martin Barzun. His “Poèmes-Partitions” is a poetry-action(= communication) which places it in direct contact with the reality of the world. The event is treated as in Godard’s cinema-vérité. Though a friend of Dufrêne and Chopin, he does not reject the common language, quite the opposite. His problem is one of assembly, that is, of rhythm: assembly of the magnetic tape, superimposition or alternation to voices and sounds. The construction of his texts is based on the counterpoint between a continuous diction and an interrupted diction, the noises, used as punctuation, are established by a score which does not admit of improvisation. Progression (appearance fragment by fragment of phrases which are gradually completed), a circular process (evident in the works presented “Vaduz, passepartout No. 22”), abrupt breaks, rigid structure, contrast with the linear automatism of his friends. The fragmentation of speech, the increasing rhythm of interjections, disorientations and at the same time dramatize the discourse. Heidsieck’s works can be described as radiophonic dramas.

From Jacques Barzun, “Some Notes on Créteil and French Poetry,” New Directions, v9, 1946:

If it is conceded that the changing sensibility of the poet does perpetually reshape the form and technique of poetry, and even the conception of what poetry is for, then the radical “proposition” embodied by [H. M.] Barzun in L’Orphéide appears both thoroughgoing and, by now, intelligible. We have got used to many things done upon the body of language since 1914; but at that time the principle of simultaneity in poetry necessarily seemed cataclysmic. For it brought into question again the basis of all poetic techniques since Lessing’s Laokoon. The western world had agreed that poetry was to be read the way it was written — one word after another. All discussions of “technique” dealt with “lines.” “This is a good line; that is a bad line.” A poet is known by his lines, in much the same way that a volume of poems is known by the irregular aspect of the right-hand margin. It is even believed by the innocent that Homer was a writer and that the Greek dramas originally sounded very much like the girls’ school commencements which they now adorn.

But if the scribe tradition is rejected and instead of lines and books the poet should begin with sounds and sensations, he would logically arrive at the view that his page was simply a convenient portion of space in which to organize the symbols for what he hears. Space relations would indicate time relations as well — would create a larger syntax for his use — and he might them give himself and others the feeling that he was composing a world in motion instead of merely “extending remarks” like a Congressman.

The Double Helix

2007-12-07T06:34:00.000-05:00

Ordered myself a copy of Dawn to Decadence on his birthday to celebrate. And it looks like Barzun may have indirectly inspired James Watson to write his classic, The Double Helix. On page 213 of Watson’s very enjoyable Avoid Boring (Other) People:

How to write up [The Double Helix] did not crystallize until a spring 1962 dinner in New York City. . . On the dais I was next to Columbia University’s literary polymath Jacques Barzun, known to me since my adolescence through his regular appearances on the CBS radio network. Stimulated by Barzun’s conversation, I used my after-dinner acceptance speech to tell the story of our discovery as a very human drama. . . .My unexpected candor elicited much laughter and was later praised for allowing the audience to feel like insiders in one of science’s big moments. . . . I saw in my future the writing of what Truman Capote would later call the “nonfiction novel.”

— Herrick, commenting in Gene Expression

Jonathan Goodman

2007-12-05T18:06:00.000-05:00

Damn! Damn! Damn!

acta

2007-12-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Jacques Barzun!, American Council of Trustees and Alumni

Jacques Barzun, The Columbia Core: A Look Back, Institute for Effective Governance, June 2006

Louis Torres & Michelle Marder Kamhi

2007-12-03T19:14:00.000-05:00

“Yours, Jacques”

Remarkably, we met Jacques Barzun on only one occasion, and then only for a minute or two. But that brief encounter unexpectedly led in time to a friendship in letters that has immeasurably enriched our personal and professional lives. . . .

George J. Leonard

2007-12-02T16:06:00.000-05:00

I took Dr. Barzun’s seminar for a year, 1968-69. Just five people. I’ve read so much about his reserve that I have to say, Dr. Barzun was only dignified – not cold or arrogant. He was always smiling. Didn’t make jokes, but laughed at ours. I sent him a mss and asked him to read it 20 years after our seminar and he said, “Sure.” He always let his students disagree with him. I felt so safe with him I actually criticized him for some slang idiom he used (can you imagine?) and he only said, mildly, “Well, I didn’t really speak English till I was 12.” I’m still embarrassed but he didn’t get mad at Angry Young Men. One revealing moment: I remember exclaiming about some idea of his, “I’ve read the critics, and you’re the only one who believes that!” He took that in, and exclaimed in return, as if I’d given him the final evidence he’d needed, “Then I’m sure I’m right!” Happy Birthday, Dr. Barzun.
— George J. Leonard, Commenting on Robert McHenry, Happy Birthday, Jacques Barzun

Robert Morris

2007-12-01T13:22:00.000-05:00

Background and Toast

My only direct association with Jacques Barzun occurred during the years I served with him on the governing board of the Council for Basic Education. . . .

Conrad Kiechel

2007-12-01T08:04:00.000-05:00

Jacques Barzun Turns 100, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2007

You may not have heard of Jacques Barzun for a long time, or perhaps not at all. Yet both the man and his influence in American intellectual life are very much alive as he begins his second century. . . .

More Ken Fallin

Jamie Katz

2007-12-01T07:15:00.000-05:00

The Barzun Touch

On the day we learned Lionel Trilling had died, in 1975, I was the very young editor of the alumni magazine Columbia College Today, and we were right on deadline. . . .

The Glorious Entertainment

2007-11-30T20:30:00.000-05:00

Programme

Favorite Barzun Quotations

2007-11-30T20:01:00.000-05:00

Submitted by various contributors.

Arma Virumque

2007-11-30T14:54:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Professor Barzun

Rebecca Bynum and Hugh Fitzgerald

2007-11-30T11:51:00.000-05:00

Jacques Barzun Is 100 Years Old Today, The Iconoclast, November 30, 2007

Orrin Judd

2007-11-30T11:21:00.000-05:00

WHO WOULD KNOW THE MIND OF AMERICA OUGHT KNOW BARZUN

Garrison Keillor doesn't know Jacques Barzun

2007-11-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

The Writer’s Almanac, November 30, 2007

But he does recognize today: David Mamet, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain.

HB, JB LW

Robert McHenry

2007-11-30T06:32:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Jacques Barzun

It was about 1988 or ’89, I think, when I attended my first meeting of the Britannica Board of Editors . . .

This excellent blog post tells the story behind Jacques Barzun’s essay Behind the Blue Pencil.

Let's All Toast JB Together!

2007-11-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

From: Mark Halpern
Date: Nov 29, 2007 5:52 PM
Subject: let’s all toast JB together!
To: Leo Wong

Dear Leo,

I think John’s idea (see below) of simultaneous toasts to Jacques by all his admirers tomorrow is an excellent one (I had proposed such a scheduled toast just for the two of us, without thinking it through); could I persuade you to publish the idea to the list? I would guess that John is right in thinking that the best time to do it would be when it’s 8pm in San Antonio, wouldn’t you?

Mark
===================
(excerpt from John's letter)

Your toast is an excellent idea. Alaska is one hour behind my old Bay Area stomping grounds, but how about going nationwide, even worldwide. If you write to the entire mailing list, proposing a toast that might coincide with the festivities in San Antonio (say, 8 or 9 p.m. Central), then Jacques’ admirers can raise their glasses together from coast-to-coast. You might even give the equivalent time in GMT so that folks around the world can join us. By rights, you should be the one to do so.

Historical note by Leo Wong: this is my first blog post from an ASUS Eee PC.

Music & Vision

2007-11-29T20:46:00.000-05:00

Jacques Barzun at 100: Music and beyond, investigated by Gordon Rusmon

Writing about Jacques Barzun is rather like dancing about Baryshnikov. It tends to show the follower in a poor light. But let us begin. . . .

A Few Shiny Pebbles

2007-11-29T16:48:00.001-05:00

A sequence by Minta Marie Morze:

Gemstone: Jacques Barzun—Part I

Gemstone: Jacques Barzun—Part II

Gemstone: Jacques Barzun—Part III

Wikiquote

2007-11-29T06:42:00.000-05:00

Jacques Barzun

My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don’t need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let’s play him more.
— Jacques Barzun, in an interview with John C. Tibbetts

John Adams

2007-11-28T14:39:00.000-05:00

Amateur Detection

I discovered Jacques Barzun in paperback. . . .

Entrevista

2007-11-27T16:44:00.000-05:00

Photos by Charles Ford. Used here with his permission.

Readers of Portuguese and others who don’t mind Babel Fishing will find nourishment in Apagão na cultura, a 2002 telephone interview of Jacques Barzun by Carlos Graieb that appeared in the Brazilian magazine Veja along with Um século de sabedoria. The photos were taken for a Texas Monthly (September 2000) article by Anne Dingus in which Professor Barzun is called “arguably the country’s leading intellectual and the smartest guy in Texas” and is quoted as saying, “The people [of Texas] are extremely friendly and extremely polite. Perhaps not on the road, but with both feet on the ground, they display a courtesy we don’t expect any more.“

Mr. Ford wrote to me in an e-mail: “The shots were done originally for Texas Monthly Magazine in 2000. I can’t remember any specific conversation I had with Jacques but I recall that we were talking about the changes in the world and the new millennium. We also talked a little about about the artists in Paris before WWI, particularly Duchamp who I have always been fascinated with. Other than that he was very patient and cooperative during the shoot. His wife was gracious, offering us snacks. He lived in an upscale home in a very nice suburban area of San Antonio. Other than that all I can say is that he was a very nice man.”

Thanks to A Origem das Espécies and Pastoral Portuguesa.

Tracy Lee Simmons

2007-11-26T07:46:00.000-05:00

A Tribute to Jacques Barzun on His Centennial, in The University Bookman, Fall 2007

The shank end of 2007 has brought Jacques Barzun, the distinguished historian and cultural critic, to his one-hundredth birthday. This would be a notable event in any life. But for all of us who cherish the quiet witness of civilized men living decent, profitable, and orderly lives in a chaotic age, this event ought to be marked by more than a passing nod. By dint of Barzun’s steadily fine, well wrought, and penetrating writings and observations on life as it is lived and has been lived over the span of the past several centuries, this celebration should be ours as well. . . .