BONNE 104E ANNIVERSAIRE
JACQUES BARZUN! 30 Novembre 2011
Created in honor of cultural historian Jacques Barzun's centenary in November 2007, this page is dedicated to his life and work. Here readers will find both original material and links to select items about him published elsewhere.
November-December 2011
104th Birthday
* "Happy Birthday, Jacques Barzun!" R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Spectable Blog (American Spectator), November 30, 2011.
* "Jacques Barzun's Century," Rafe Champion, Quadrant Online, November 30, 2011. This essay was first published in the April 2007 issue of Quadrant.
* "A Special Birthday," Bill Katz, Power Line, November 29, 2011.
Biography
Jacques Barzun: Portrait of a Mind [Amazon.com], by Michael Murray, was published on November 10, 2011 by Frederic C. Beil. See select reviews below. Others will be added as we learn of them.
* "A Work in Progress," Gerald J. Russello, American Spectator, December 1, 2011. The subhead of this review, "The great Jacques Barzun turned 105 yesterday," is misleading. November 30 was, in fact, Barzun's 104th birthday.
* "Wisdom of the Ancient," Thomas Vinciguerra, Columbia, Fall 2011.
* Brendan Driscoll, Booklist, November 15, 2011.
Oral Interview
"Jacques Barzun," Old New York Stories, October 29, 2011. An essential wide-ranging interview of two and a half hours. The very brief transcript provided is of some interest, but of little use in following the recorded interview itself. (Barzun was 101 at the time, not 103 as indicated. Also, the date of the interview is April 23, not April 19 as
designated atop the transcript)
Jacques Barzun Fan Club
Members of this Facebook group (including Aristos co-editor Louis Torres) are not mere
"fans" of Barzun, but serious admirers of his work.
103rd Birthday
* Bonne 103e Anniversaire, Jacques Barzun! - 30 Novembre 2010.
Centenary
* The Jacques Barzun Centennial, website by Leo Wong. Tributes by friends and admirers, including the editors of Aristos (see "Yours, Jacques" above).
*
Barzun at 100, weblog by Leo Wong. A treasure trove of material. Its archive, from October 2005 to the present, is a delight to peruse, with surprises of both word and image at every turn.
Jacques Barzun Turns 100," Conrad Kiechel, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2007.
* "Age of Reason," Arthur Krystal, New Yorker, November 14, 2007.
* "Barzun Centenary" (Notes & Comments, Aristos, November 2007).
95th Birthday
Greetings from the editors of Aristos and other friends and admirers (The Website of Mary Murphy and Leo Wong).
"Yours, Jacques"
An account of the editors' brief meeting with Jacques Barzun in 1988, and of the epistolary friendship that ensued.
Articles About
* "At 103, Jacques Barzun Is a Wealth of Knowledge," Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News, November 29, 2010.
* "Writing Was 'Only Career' for Barzun," by Steve Bennett, San Antonio Express-News, September 12, 2010.
* "Honour and Humanity," by Harry Eyres, Financial Times, October 8, 2010.
* "Simple and Direct" [see photograph of Jacques Barzun from 1947], by William R. Keylor, in Columbia (The Magazine of Columbia University), Fall 2007.
* "Living Legacies: Jacques Barzun '27," by Thomas Vinciguerra (chapter from Living Legacies at Columbia, ed. by William Theodore de Bary), reprinted in Columbia College Today, January 2006.
* "Jacques Barzun," adapted from Timothy P. Cross, An Oasis of Order: The Core Curriculum at Columbia College (1995), in "Columbia 250: C250 Celebrates Columbians Ahead of Their Time" (2004).
* "The Man Who Knew Too Much," by Roger Gathman (Austin Chronicle,
October 13, 2000).
* "Despite His Move to San Antonio, Barzun Keeps Ties to Columbia," by Fred Knubel (Columbia University, The Record, April 25, 1997).
* Time Magazine Cover Article: "America and the Intellectual: The Reconciliation" (Time, June 11, 1956).
Books
* At Amazon.com.
* Noted on LibraryThing.
A comprehensive listing of Barzun's books, ranked by members of this online book club. Includes reviews and book descriptions.
* "From the Barzun File" (see link in sidebar) -- excerpts from books and essays selected by Leo Wong.
* Barzun on "The Book[s] That Changed My Life" (National Book Foundation, 2007).
* "In Depth with Jacques Barzun" (Book TV on C-2, May 6, 2001 -- see link below in "Book TV Remarks on What Art Is" section).
* Review of The Culture We Deserve: "America's Fin de Siecle: End of a Century or a Civilization?" Gleaves Whitney, University Bookman, Summer 1990.
* Preface to the 1983 Edition of Teacher in America (first published in 1945).
On Education
* Teacher in America [Preface], 1945, 1981.
* Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning, 1991.
* "What Is a School? An Institution in Limbo" and "Trim the College!: A Utopia," 2002. These
two essays, published together in booklet form by the Hudson Institute, "state in brief form what [Barzun] believes might be done to cure the ills of American education." A generous
portion of "What Is a School?" is available on the Institute's website.
Quoted In
* "Lawyers and the Uses of Language," Carl McGowan, American Bar Association Journal, September 1961.
Videos
* 2010 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Ceremony: Humanities medal awarded to Barzun, accepted by his wife Marguerite [18:51-19:36], March 2, 2011.
* "A Conversation with Jacques Barzun," hosted by Jack Jackson, Source of Light Center, University Presbyterian Church, San Antonio, Texas (September 12, 2010).
"* Jacques Barzun." Shown at the presentation to Jacques Barzun of the Society of Columbia Graduates' 59th Annual Great Teacher Award, October 18, 2007 (see Columbia News announcement).
* "Jacques Barzun." From his home in San Antonio, Texas, Barzun expresses his gratitude to Gemini Ink for having awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award. (September 7, 2006).
* "In-Depth" interview on C-SPAN, Book-TV [See "Book TV Remarks on What Art Is" below] (May 6, 2001).
* "A Conversation with Jacques Barzun," Charlie Rose Show, PBS (May 29, 2000).
Essays
* "Is Democratic Theory for Export?" Sixth Morgenthau Memorial Lecture on Ethics & Foreign Policy, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1986.
Letters From
Comments on Aristos and What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand [more] [more], as well as more generally on the arts and esthetics.
"I found the latest issue [of Aristos (January 1988)] well worth reading and applauded particularly your article on children's poetry ['The Child as Poet: An Insidious and Injurious Myth']. . . ." [For the full text of this letter, and a brief response by Louis Torres, see "Readers' Forum," Aristos, December 1988.] (June 30, 1988)
"Reading Aristos has given me much pleasure and instruction." (February 17, 1989; March 2, 1995)
"I find ['Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Art: A Critical Introduction,' Aristos, 1991-92] excellent in two points of view--one, it is so detailed that I feel confident of its fairness to the text; and two, I admire the analytic skill with which merits and demerits are laid out. The reader has a chance to weigh their application, instead of reading only conclusions and judgments." (October 11, 1991)
"[T]he latest issue of Aristos [August 1993] with its argumentative letters [on 'Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Art'] was, as usual, instructive. . . . I wonder if you have ever come across A Study in Aesthetics (London, 1931), by Louis Arnaud Reid (1895-1986), an English philosopher. He seems to me to have written the best account so far of art-as-expression. Unless you have read and dismissed it, the work might be a useful subject for one of your critical articles. I would propose doing it myself if I had not taken a vow not to interrupt my present writing project." (October 6, 1993)
"At last I have found enough uninterrupted time to read What Art Is from end to end, and I report my enthusiastic appreciation and enjoyment. You have done a splendid piece of work--research, reflection, and writing are worthy of all praise. . . . Your scholarly treatment of modern art, your Appendices, your Notes are full of facts, comparisons and judgments that come to grips suggestively with the elusive double topic, Art and the arts. . . . [A]s I see it, you and Rand and I all repudiate art that is not made but found, or simply assembled, or is a mere arrangement of lines and colors. When I look at a Rothko [more], I may admire the subtle gradation of colors and the shimmering, but I feel 'This isn't enough.'" (August 6, 2000)
"I have reread a large part of your What Art Is and . . . particularly admire your treatment of music, which I find parallels my own thought on a number of points. And the views in which we concur need to be disseminated, because the confusion that reigns is dense and desperately repetitive in itself and its offshoots. I enclose a short piece of mine ["Is Music Unspeakable?" The American Scholar, Spring 1996] which is perhaps my fifth or sixth effort to make a simple point since I began to put it into words fifty years ago in Berlioz and the Romantic Century." (November 29, 2000)
"Yours is the kind of work that makes its way slowly but lasts long, both because its subject is perennial and because of the breadth and depth of your treatment." (October 5, 2001)
"Your last message was very gratifying: you were busy with the happy consequences of your fine book, answering comments, amplifying your website, and the like. It is encouraging to see that from time to time works of intellectual weight travel instead of sinking." (March 6, 2002)
"I [am] glad to hear that Aristos continues in existence and that you and it remain pillars in the edifice of art education and appreciation in this country. I agree with you that much put forward as art these days is a product of either charlatanism or invincible ignorance." (September 10, 2006)
Book TV Remarks on What Art Is
Asked by a viewer (during the last half hour of his "In Depth" interview on Book TV [C-SPAN2]) what he thought of Ayn
Rand's work, Jacques Barzun replied: "I've not read her work, though I know a good deal about one aspect of it. Her theory of
art has been the subject of a large and very interesting and thorough book by Louis Torres [and Michelle Marder Kamhi].
. . . I was privileged to see some advance pages of that and finally read the whole book . . . and so I not only remedied
my ignorance of the work of Ayn Rand but I admire a great part (not all) of her theory of art." (May 6, 2001)
Barzun's comment can be heard at the C-SPAN Video Library. First, move the volume control under video screen to the right. Then, below "TRANSCRIPT," scroll down to 02:38:43 and click anywhere in that section to begin the video.
