Six Months of Literary Deaths

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."

- Edward Munch

Death, it's said, is the great equalizer. No one can escape it; we all succumb to it at some point and some cherished writers have, unfortunately, succumbed to it in the last six months. Here's a (partial) list of some of the more notable deaths and my musings on how the writers and their works have affected me personally.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Hitchens was a world-renowned (and hated) Atheist. While I consider myself an Agnostic (I believe in something that I refuse to put a name or specific dogma to), watching the logic of Hitchens' mind on a wide variety of talk shows was always interesting. I didn't always agree with his positions because I think pure Atheism ignores the simple POSSIBILITY of some higher forms, but his thought process was a joy to watch. I never read any of his books, but I know a lot of people who were huge fans of his. Either way, it's always a shame to see a great mind go.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)

Wislawa was a Polish poet. The only book I read of hers was "View with a Grain of Sand," but I found it to be a phenomenal read. I had to teach one of her poems (one I've long forgotten) during my Intro to Poetry class. It was about the nature of a rock and a leaf and I found it to be incredibly elegant and lovely. Of all the poetry books I've collected over the years, hers is most likely my favorite.

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012)

Author of the fantastic "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen," Maurice Sendak was, I believe, fairly essential reading to most of us during our elementary school days. I remember his books, along with Roald Dahl's and Ul De Rico's "Rainbow Goblins," being the ones I checked out the most in my early days. Whether it was the school library or the city library, I was spellbound by the images and the rhythmic prose that appealed to the child in me while the burgeoning adult I was to become latched on to the inherent messages. While I wasn't a huge fan of the movie version of "Where the Wild Things Are," I hope he enjoyed a resurgence of interest in his work before his death by those of us that still remembered it fondly from our youth.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

The most recent of the literary deaths, Ray Bradbury was a monster of an influence on almost everyone who reads, even in the most subtle of ways. I remember seeing "Farenheit 451" before I ever read the book, but I watched the movie again just last year. Amazing to think the kind of imagination the man had in order to create a novel about a future civilization that so directly mirrors our own now. People gathering in living rooms to watch reality television and violence from the comforts of their home while "firemen" hunt down and burn collections of books because of the information inside, information that could possibly make people to think on their own, to navigate the wonders of their own mind and come to their own decisions on topics. Granted we don't have state-sanctioned book burnings to the degree found in the novel, but his prescience on the topic is eerie. His imagination foreshadowed reality much in the way some people attribute the camera-filled world of the now with Big Brother from Orwell's "1984." If you love where the genre of science fiction has gone, you have this man to thank. Writers and movie-makers everywhere tend to cite him as an early influence and rightly so.


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