John Leonard, a critic and writer whose work I loved, died on Wednesday. I don’t know if it was the joy and shock of a country voting overwhelmingly for Senator Obama that finally did him in. Most likely it was the cancer he had been fighting.
He wrote prolifically. But let him explain:
For a living, I chase the ambulances of popular culture. I review television every Monday for New York magazine; and books every Tuesday for National Public Radio; and politics and other cultures every Thursday for New York Newsday; and media of several sorts every Sunday morning on CBS; and I will be found otherwise, four or five times a year, in The Nation, where I am encouraged to rhapsodize about new novels at whatever length I think I need–with the understanding that I will be underpaid.
As you can see, he understood the power of the list, and used it as an expert, sending the prose into a controlled four wheel drift, like James Joyce or Ian McDonald. But the main thing was he was scarily well-read, across genres and media. He was Henry Jenkins, turned up to eleven, with fangs and claws.
Since Leonard was unafraid of genre and pop culture, he was happy willing to sing the praises of Pat Cadigan and Twin Peaks alongside paeans to Toni Morrison.
Along with Katha Pollit’s columns, he was the reason to pick up a copy of The Nation, every week.
Damn the Universe, you take away Mr. Leonard and my friends’ right to marry on the same day, when we could had used his words to take down those culture warriors down a few pegs.