In Memoriam: Writers We Lost in 2008
I always appreciate the New Year’s Eve look back at the notable people who died during the year. Many of them contributed great things, works of art, science or public service that are worth remembering and even celebrating. Others stand as a reminder of human folly that shouldn’t be forgotten. What follows is a list of authors who died in 2008. It is, at best, an incomplete list, but I wanted to share it so we can all pause, on the cusp of the new year, and remember.
Clarke looks to the stars
William F. Buckley, Jr. held the intellectual pen of the modern conservative movement, best known for founding National Review and appearing on “Firing Line,” and for his encyclopedic vocabulary.
Arthur C. Clarke, most well known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and author of essays and many works of science fiction. Clarke’s third, and most famous, law of prediction: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Michael Crichton, the writer whose combination of scientific training and writerly imagination brought us everything from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park.
Tony Hillerman
Tony Hillerman’s best-selling detective novels won particular acclaim when they touched on the Navajo people and the American Southwest. He was also a prolific writer of nonfiction.
Nuala O’Faolain, Irish author of two acclaimed memoirs and the novel, My Dream of You. Her unvarnished accounts of her Irish upbringing, which followed an already successful career as a journalist, touched hearts and impressed critics.
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn’s courageous dedication to his truth and his craft exposed the Soviet system of gulags to the world. As a reward for his writing, he was sentenced to prison camp, exiled, deported from the Soviet Union and stripped of his citizenship, and awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Whitney at the typewriter
Phyllis A. Whitney wrote more than 40 mysteries, both for the adult and children’s markets. Her work garnered many awards, and Whitney received a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1988. Born in 1903, her career spanned eight decades, and she died at age 104.
David Foster Wallace’s suicide brought a brilliant literary career to an early end. Wallace’s fiction, particularly his novel Infinite Jest, is astonishing; his nonfiction, a serious delight. His work garnered awards and acclaim, including a 1997 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.”