How we live

The evening brought word of the death 

at 87 of Robert Silvers, a founding 

publisher of our most oft-cited maga-

zine, The New York Review of Books. 

Turning with reluctance, to the no-

tice in The Times, it was astonishing 

but apposite to read the most expansive 

and exuberant report of such a transi-

tion I had ever encountered, placing one 

in no mood whatever to go beyond a grate-

ful, “Yup, that’s right."

The Review and I go back, as must be true 

for most readers, to one’s college days, 

that period of such eruption of curiosity 

as to wed the social and institutional as-

pects of the one with the portable and 

printed ones of the other, without a hitch.

One seamless curriculum and recreation, too,

setting certain values and expectations to 

challenge the tide, as searchings concealed 

within undiminished delight from one decade 

to the next, in ways which no other outstand-

ing “liberal arts” periodical has done with-

out sharp vicissitudes and alienating embar-

rassments, or destruction by mismanagement.

But there is that ultimate distinction to

be raised on this occasion, and it is that

in other fine periodicals, one can be made

to feel one had missed out, by lacking the

requisite cultural bias or social identity,

to say nothing of academic advantage. This

magnificent journal opens every humanist

calling to its pursuit by any active mind.

Now, suddenly, we see it is not too soon to 

understand, unlike our cyclical academies, 

the Review never does gain an alumnus, until 

one achieves the rest now granted this guar-

dian of its ebullient play. The boat will go

out, the Review will go with it, and there

will be feasting on the beach as this is so.