Final Victory
“For Tony, ideas were a kind of emotion, something he felt and cared about in the way that most people do about feelings like sadness or love.”
Read the whole essay here
Note Tony Judt’s comments in this radio interview on “something after” his death in relation to those who knew him, family, close friends etc. Last week I talked to a recent widower and had a saddening conversation in which he could only talk of the finality, that he could no longer talk or touch or listen to his wife and I was reminded yet again we have no place to put death, to put grief and perhaps thinking and discussing this something after (the idea that someone continues to live on through our memory of them) could be a start.
Tony Judt
Tony Judt has died. RIP. Brave, brave thinking man. I really enjoyed his memoir essays in the NYRB over the recent months and many of his other essays. That image of libraries in the midwest will forever be with me. It’s an image I haven’t seen, an image he painted for me. Also his comments on the night and length of it and the difficulty therein. Despite his ALS he seemed so vital it didn’t register with me that he would die. Even tho’ I am sure at some point he probably inferred it. I think that’s is what comes of such a lively mind. His was a mind well used. Here’s to lively minds. Cheers.