Submitted by Ouish, Mar 6, 2007 18:15

There's not much non-fiction that's in book form, Sir Joshua. Just Pilgrim's Progress, In the Context of No Context (which now shares a binding with "Collapsing Dominant," a sort of annex to Pilgrim's which is even more painful to read), and a recent reprint of a long article on a nature preserve I haven't read. The first edition of Context was filled out with the Ertegun profile -- the best thing of his I've read, actually; only got a hold of it through interlibrary loan and photocopied the whole thing, not my preferred procedure. The New Yorker put a few things up on their website when he died. He really needs a collection.For example, I vaguely remember a semi-sequel to Context, a long essay where he talked about television as "the third parent," but I can't find it or remember anything else about it. Pilgrim's Progress is probably the best starting point. Compulsively readable. It's written in this great mock-extemporaneous manner, where he'll announce he's going to write about something and then change his mind and so on, though there's lots of evidence of cafeful planning -- wait for the last sentence of his chapter on prep school in the '50s. I've read it three times, and certain parts dozens of times, though the more I read it the more I find myself arguing with it as I go along. Damn, I should have written him a fan letter. Now I feel guilty for contributing to his neglect while he was alive.

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