Via Matthew
JANUARY 26, 1949 - MARCH 29, 2013
Lawrence Auster died today at 3:56 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, at a
hospice in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His death came after more than a
week of rapidly worsening distress and physical collapse caused by the
pancreatic cancer he endured for almost three years.
On Monday evening, after arriving at the hospice in the late
afternoon, Mr. Auster read and responded to a few emails. He then closed
his battered and medicine-stained Lenovo laptop for the last time.
“That’s enough for now,” he said, holding his hands over the computer as
if sated by an unfinished meal.
He did not expect that to be the last.
But the blogging career that stands out on the Internet and in the
history of American letters as a tour de force of philosophical and
cultural insight is over. Mr. Auster entered a state of sedated and
sometimes pained sleep the next day, after a night of agony. He spoke
no more than a few words during the next two days and died peacefully
this morning after about ten hours of unusually quiet and mostly
undisturbed rest.
Only extreme incapacitation could have brought that career to a
close. For many of us, it was a marvel, a form of essential daily food.
No man gave more to his readers. No writer responded more energetically
to the people who took in his words and either approved or rejected
them. No thinker, except perhaps Plato, jousted more ably with his
students or left such an elegant and finished record of philosophical
conflict and resolution. He was philosopher, journalist, guru and
cultural psychoanalyst in one. And no writer on culture and politics had
sounder judgment about the world around us, or more brilliant
observations.
The relationship between Mr. Auster and the hundreds of
often-anonymous correspondents who wrote to him over the years was like
that between a boxing coach and his fighters. He trained his followers
in the art of intellectual combat — and the price was a staggering
workload as he edited the debates that have appeared here over the
years. He paid tireless tribute to the fight for truth. But, as he
insisted, he wasn’t a hero. He was just doing what came naturally. He
was doing what he had to do.
Sadly, as of today, View from the Right, except for an entry about
his funeral and possibly more on his death, will become inactive. He
wanted it that way. VFR could not continue beyond Mr. Auster’s death
because it is the creation of an utterly unique personality and mind.