obituary – Page 3 – Hank Kalet

Newman will be missed

I meant to post this earlier, but Paul Newman has died. You’ve probably read this already, but I had to mention it because Newman was one of the great actors of any generation, starring in a list of films that is shocking for its depth, breadth and quality.

Newman embodied a variety of personalities on screen, from “Bad Boy to Rebel to Used-Up Guy on the Hustle,” as The New York Times said in a headline appraising his career.

He also was a political activist.

A politically active liberal Democrat, Mr. Newman was a Eugene McCarthy delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention and appointed by President Jimmy Carter to a United Nations General Assembly session on disarmament. He expressed pride at being on President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list.

Here is a powerful piece he wrote on nuclear weapons.

RIP, Mr. Newman. You left the world a better place.

A literary loss: David Foster Wallace

I’m not really sure how to address this, but it is certainly a huge loss for literature. I’ve not read David Foster Wallace (pictured from the unofficial Web site), aside from some short pieces in Harper’s, but I’d always meant to. That’s one of those sad phrases, hackneyed, and now he is gone — a suicide at age 46, barely older than me — and what? Two good “appreciations” from The New York Times and Chris Hayes at The Nation and a third from Salon.

Ahmed Faraz, 1931-2008

Another important international poet has died.

The day the music died

Jerry Wexler, one of the most important music producers in the history of American popular music, died early this morning.

Paul Wexler told the AP his father’s death was “a tremendous loss.”

“The number of artists that he was involved with and helped significantly or just made great records with, the list is almost unbelievable,” Paul Wexler added. “And many of them are gone now.”

Wexler earned his reputation as a music industry giant while a partner at Atlantic Records with another legendary music figure, the late Ahmet Ertegun. Atlantic provided an outlet for the groundbreaking work of African-American performers in the 1950s and 1960s. Later, it was a home to rock icons like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. He later helped Dylan win his first Grammy by producing his 1979 “Slow Train Coming” album.

Wexler helped boost the careers of both the “King of Soul,” Charles, and the “Queen of Soul,” Franklin. Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and Percy Sledge were among the other R&B greats who benefited from Wexler’s deft recording touch. He also produced Dusty Springfield’s classic “Dusty in Memphis,” considered a masterpiece of “blue-eyed” soul.

Wexler’s influence on music can best be summed up, I think, by this quote from Solomon Burke:

“He loved black music, R&B music and rhythm and blues was his foundation. He had a feeling for it, he had the knack to keep it going in his heart and recognize the talent that he felt was real,” Burke told the AP after learning of his death. “Jerry Wexler didn’t change the sound of America, he put the sound to the public. He open the doors and windows to the radio stations … and made everybody listen.”

Mahmoud Darwish, rest in peace

Mahmoud Darwish is dead.

I first came across the work of Palestinian poet in a now out-of-print anthology, Modern Poetry of the Arab World, and was mesmerized by the music of his lines and caught up in his ethical concerns — along with those of the other poets included.

The mix of imagery, the religious sensibility and the politics — Darwish was a rare poet and will be missed.