Another Scribe Departs

I'm sorry that it took David Halberstam's death for me to take another look at him as a writer. I would watch him at times on ESPN when I still watched that network with some frequency, and it always occurred to me that he spoke, acted and wrote with grand flourishes that betrayed a sense of self-importance that put me off.

However, as you read this column he wrote about Barry Bonds when the San Francisco Giants played the Anaheim/California/They're Not In LA So Why Is That In Their Name Marketing I Guess Angels, I kind of got the feeling that Halberstam acted that way because he was a towering literary figure and he could afford to do that. The Bonds column has a lot to do with Bonds, but it also has a lot to do with Halberstam and his views about basic honor and respect that Halberstam felt Bonds generally ignores (and I definitely agree with Halberstam on that).

And by the way, the Angels won the Series that year.

Boy, great literary figures have been dropping like flies this year, and we’re not even halfway through (Art Buchwald, Arthur Schlesinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course Molly Ivins).

And in a related vein, here is an appreciation from mcjoan at The Daily Kos about another notable who has recently left us (even though it seemed like Clinton was flying over every few months to help sober him up, he was right on the issues that mattered).