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WITHIN THE FAMILY
Stories Behind the Names
By Alex Sachare
Interesting people die in The New York Times. Just about
any day you pick up the paper, when you turn to the obituary page
you'll find a write-up of someone of noteworthy achievement,
unusual interest or singular accomplishment. I suspect the same may
be true for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times
and many other major metro dailies, given the size of their
audiences, but I can't be certain; I can vouch that it works for
The New York Times. If you're skeptical, try it. Pick up the
Times at random, turn to the obits, and more often than not
you'll read about at least one person you might like to have
known.
It's
also true for Columbia College Today. Someone who is
relatively new to the magazine tells me she turns to the CCT
obituaries first because she is fascinated by the interesting
people who went to the College. That's one of the reasons we print
detailed obituaries for alumni whenever possible rather than
one-line death notices, which is what many other school magazines
do. These accounts of the interests and accomplishments of this
slice of our alumni body, taken together, paint a revealing picture
of the remarkable nature of Columbia alumni, and of the impact of
the College experience.
Lars-Erik Nelson '64, a columnist for the New York Daily
News, died on November 20, and a memorial service was held in
his honor on campus last month. I knew him only from his
distinctive byline and his elegantly clean style of writing, a
style I admired. "His writing always sparkled," wrote colleague
Pete Hamill in a tribute in the New York Review of Books, a
publication to which Nelson frequently contributed. "He liked
concrete nouns and active verbs, and each paragraph was as solid as
a brick. He avoided pyrotechnics, because the goal was lucidity.
The writing only appeared to be simple. It was about as simple as a
Matisse. Try doing it."
Hamill went on to observe that Nelson's "tone was always marked
by that form of restraint that we sometimes call grace. In this
case, the style was the man." And he noted that Nelson was an
independent thinker who could not easily be pigeonholed. "None of
his work was predictable, because Lars simply refused to take his
ideas off the rack. He hated the glib sneer, no matter who was
doing the sneering," wrote Hamill. For anyone familiar with
Columbia College, the influences are unmistakable.
One
of the things about being a writer is you leave behind a body of
work: good, bad or indifferent. Nelson left behind a sheaf of
newspaper columns, the last of which appeared in the Daily
News on November 21, the day after he died at his home in
Bethesda, Md. It was about the dispute over Florida's electoral
votes, which Nelson had tied into the Clinton impeachment process,
and it reflected both his style and his way of thinking.
"Exactly two years ago," it began, "lawyers were trying to take
a President away from us. Yesterday, they were trying to give us
one. And both times, we, the voters in this great democracy, could
only watch."
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