Passages

[antnield]

Gilbert Adair. (No link as yet.)

[MichaelB]

Gilbert Adair. (No link as yet.)

Sad, but not surprising - a mutual friend told me a few months ago that he was practically blind and generally in a very bad way. I wondered why his writing seemed to have dried up (he was ubiquitous in the circles I moved in in the 1980s and 90s), but that was clearly the reason.

He was one of the few British critics that I went out of my way to read - secure in the knowledge that even if I passionately disagreed with him (which was often), the quality of the writing would be such a pleasure that I'd have forgiven him well before the end.

In fact, it's hard to think of another current critic writing in English who was such a fastidious stylist - something that came in particularly handy when he took on the seemingly insane but triumphantly achieved task of translating Georges Perec's lipogrammatic novel La Disparition into English, while retaining the same rule about not using the letter 'e'. (Naturally, Adair's version was called A Void).

UPDATE: The Guardian (for which he had a column in the 1990s) is first off the blocks, though I suspect The Independent, with whom he was more strongly associated, will follow in due course. And Sight & Sound will be reprinting some of his best pieces for them in an online tribute - I'm compiling them for this very purpose right now.

[MichaelB]

A lovely appreciation of Adair's work by Peter Bradshaw.

This, I think, is spot on:

In another age, he might have been a conventional academic with a range of interests, perhaps not dissimilar to Lewis Carroll, whose work he also lovingly pastiched, but in the 20th and 21st centuries he was able to apply his brilliance and scholarly flair not to Herodotus or Robert Browning but to the glorious new medium of cinema. I'm very grateful that he did.

[tarpilot]

I think the only novel of his I've read is Love and Death on Long Island, but I loved his criticism and The Territory is constantly doing battle with several others for my favourite Ruiz film.

[hearthesilence]

Is that the source for the film of the same name with John Hurt? FWIW, they're playing that next week at BAM.

[MichaelB]

Is that the source for the film of the same name with John Hurt? FWIW, they're playing that next week at BAM.

Yes - a rare instance of book and film being almost equally good. But it's probably more entertaining to watch the film after having read the book, as it's written in exactly the style that John Hurt's character would write in the first person: fussily pedantic and gloriously oblivious to any cultural developments since about 1930.

[MichaelB]

A MUBI tribute, with quotes.

I remember this one vividly:

I yield to no one in my ­admiration for Rohmer. Yet his ­characters are among the most ­foolish and ineffectual milquetoasts ever to have graced a cinema screen; 90% of their celebrated talk is ­unadulterated ­twaddle. This is ­absolutely not a flaw: it is, rather, a ­species of trompe l'oeil (or trompe l'oreille).

[colinr0380]

Very sad news - his commentary on Les enfants terribles (seemingly quite an inspirational film to him) was excellent as well.

[MichaelB]

his commentary on Les enfants terribles (seemingly quite an inspirational film to him)

Well, he did more or less rewrite it as The Holy Innocents (which in turn became The Dreamers, which I still haven't seen).

[antnield]

Australian actor Harold Hopkins.

[cinemartin]

Bert Schneider

Sorry for link Mods - not technically savvy.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Sad news. Can anyone fill in the gap as to what happen happened to Bert Schneider these last thirty years? I tried doing some research several months back and all I could find was this video of him talking about Michael Jackson and looking to be in very poor health.

[Perkins Cobb]

Am I remembering this right, that Peter Biskind (yeah, I know) claimed Schneider was very press-shy because his connections to the Black Panthers and other radical groups made him a subject of interest to law enforcement, or at least paranoid about that possibility? In any case he's sort of a structuring absence in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, since he's one of the few key players who wouldn't give Biskind an interview.

[Perkins Cobb]

Also (via Tim Lucas) Susan Gordon, child actress and daughter of Bert I. Gordon.

[Arthur House]

Film producer Bert Schneider has died

[Minkin]

Marilyn O'Connor Davis

[antnield]

Russell Hoban.

[mfunk9786]

Christopher Hitchens.

I might cry. Huge loss for humanity in general.

[knives]

That's unfortunate, but expected.

[mfunk9786]

Knives is also a great philosopher.

[Zinoviev]

Christopher Hitchens.

I might cry. Huge loss for humanity in general.

Agreed. Even though we knew this was coming, Hitchens' passing is a bitter pill and a tremendous loss. I think he went off the rails (politically, at least) after 2001, but even when the old contrarian was "wrong," he made for better reading than 99% of the dross. Meanwhile, his literary and social criticism remained as sharp as ever. RIP.

[jbeall]

Glad to see you back, david, even in this depressing thread.

Yes, Hitch could be a cantankerous git, and some of his positions in the past decade did him absolutely no credit whatsoever, but even inebriated his mind was sharp as an icepick and he could flat-out write. Plus, he stuck to his guns on Kissinger. I heard an interview this summer in which he stated that one of his regrets re: cancer was dying before Kissinger was pushing up the daisies, and boy is that ever the truth.

RIP Hitch.

[Mr Sausage]

Well, damn. Spending I don't know how many hours watching on youtube the many debates on religion he was involved in was one of my real pleasures about two years ago. The only thing he did more often than being right was being entertaining. A fabulous public speaker and a very good polemicist. Such a shame he'll no longer be around to expose bad reasoning and bad argument and to oppose tyranny in all its forms.

But now we have no one left to call out the hideous Pope and the hideous relics of the Roman Catholic Church like Mother fucking Teresa (and all religion generally) for the garbage they are.

While there is still Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, one thing's for sure: none of them do it as well as Christopher Hitchens. Hopefully that video will cheer your heart a bit.

[Polybius]

Even after his derailment, he still produced quality work like Why Orwell Matters.

There was a time, in the mid and late 80's, when he was a beacon in a sea of mediocrity and mendacity. I'd prefer to remember him for that and the influence he had on my thinking and let a lot of his latter day career fade from my mind.

[Kirkinson]

This is fucking awful news. I really feel like crying.