Scholar and writer Jacques Barzun died last week at 104. His was
a life of the mind, distinguished by much more than just its
unusual length. His contributions to civilization were many. He
cannot be replaced.
Barzun was an academic, with a PhD from Columbia, but he
never spoke or wrote like one. He was a serious intellectual, but
always wrote for a general audience. Sometimes called a cultural
historian, his interests were vast. In his dozens of books he wrote
lucidly about history and music and poetry and culture and
detective fiction and baseball. He even wrote about writing, a
simple and direct primer entitled, Simple and Direct: A
Rhetoric for Writers.
I’m sorry to say that of Barzun’s work I’ve only read
Rhetoric, and Barzun’s magnum opus, From Dawn to
Decadence, 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural
Life, published when Barzun was 93. I can’t remember how many
hours it took me to read this nearly 1,000 page treatment of what’s
worth knowing about the West and the civilization it created. But
it was worth every one of them. I lift it up to TAS
readers.
Barzun wasn’t much interested in the daily grub of
politics. But it’s probably accurate to call him a cultural
conservative. He was particularly cogent on the shortcomings of the
modern university and had some pretty jaundiced things to say about
student and faculty misbehavior at Columbia in the Sixties. The
flaws in our current education system make it almost certain that
it will never produce another Jacques Barzun. And this is a great
loss to civilization’s friends.
