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M**Y
Genius
It's not a word I use lightly, but there's no better way to describe John Leonard than to say he's a genius. He certainly won't appeal to everyone's taste, but if you like essays written by a man whose mind ranges over the whole course of human history and knowledge, and who isn't afraid to bring all that knowledge together in a single sentence, then here's the guy for you. Not only is he a genius, but he's also terribly witty, and you don't get that from a lot of geniuses.But you won't like Leonard if all you want from an essay about a book is an answer to the question, "Should I read it?" or if you are a fan of such folks as Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, or Attila the Hun. (But don't think Leonard's leftism is knee-jerk; there's a wonderful essay in here about smoking, in which he confesses, "I stick burning leaves in my foodhole," and goes on to explore his life as a social pariah among all of his purer-than-thou lefty friends.)Every page herein is suffused with a stunning literacy, and Leonard drops titles the way most of us shed skin. I would love to spy on him for a day, because I don't know how he has crammed so much knowledge into himself. He writes brilliantly about the whole history of cyberpunk, then goes on to fine surveys of African literature, Israeli literature, and everything that ever hit a page in the USA. But Leonard knows more than books, for he seems to have seen at least one episode of every television show ever created and made it to all of the major movies of the past fifty years or so. He's got a good grasp of American political history, and he seems to have some sort of social life. He's even got time for AA meetings.I don't know how he does it, but thank whatever deity you can imagine for him. He's a wizard with words, an encyclopedia of everything, but more than that he's got vision, scruples, morality. And he wants to find the same in other people. He writes, "I like to be reminded that once there were writers for whom the convulsions of our time were a revelation, an insult or a wound, instead of a thesis topic cross-linked in a Nexis search to syndicate a rant."Sure, Leonard's references sometimes cross themselves into a feedback loop, and he's got a love of paragraph-long lists, and he has a tendency to recycle himself from previous books and articles (having read all of Leonard's collections of essays over the years, I've heard that satire means "never having to say you're sorry", as does arch-conservatism, while standard liberalism means "always having to say you're sorry", but the phrase is so great I don't mind Leonard's apparent determination to keep it in perpetual print). His indulgences and habits are a part of his charm, and I wouldn't want him to lose any of it. There is not and has never been a critic like John Leonard -- perhaps there has never even been any sort of writer like him. But I haven't read quite enough to speak authoritatively on every writer who ever lived; Leonard has, though, so I'll defer to him.
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