Yes, he’d be utterly indifferent to them all. But I wouldn’t be, nor would you. I’d like to envelope my letters with a tutelary touch of Barzun in its franking, and would willingly kiss the lips of that unacquainted change, and find it fitting that American schoolchildren should listen in the serried ranks of their classroom desks to that presidential decree read out by the teacher, so that as they grow up some of them will find that name recallable, and will indeed recall it, and then in some cases be prompted to read the books by, and learn to appreciate, and to heed, that clear-headed and eloquent teacher and scholar, that phenomenon, Jacques Barzun.
Hugh Fitzgerald’s writings can be read in, among other places, New English Review, and especially at The Iconoclast. Special thanks to Rebecca Bynum, who writes in the same forums.