More Author Goodbyes

Louis Auchincloss, who wrote more than 60 works of fiction, literary criticism, and biographies, died January 28 at age 92. He was best known as a chronicler of the New York old money elite. Gore Vidal once wrote of Auchincloss: "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices, and their club. Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives.” Auchincloss’s last book, published in 2008, wasThe Last of the Old Guard, and many believe the title aptly describes the author.
Ralph McInerny best known for his mystery novels (Father Dowling series), died on January 29 at the age of 80. A Renaissance man, he published more than 80 books, wrote numerous scholarly articles, edited 3 national magazines. He also wrote poetry, and he was a full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Of his writing, McInerny said "Finally, that is what any writer does, return again and again to the original aspiration that came to him when young. It is the writing, producing a well-made story, that counts. All the rest is gravy."
Howard Zinn, historian and civil rights activist, died on January 27
at the age of 87. He taught at Spelman College and Boston University and was a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. He is best known for his revisionist A People’s History of the United States which has sold nearly two million copies. “Our nation had gone through an awful lot —the Vietnam War, civil rights, Watergate — yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental nationalist glorification of country,” Mr. Zinn recalled in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I got the sense that people were hungry for a different, more honest take.” He served on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and marched for civil rights. He traveled with the Rev. Daniel Berrigan to Hanoi to receive prisoners released by the North Vietnamese and wrote the antiwar books Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal and Disobedience and Democracy . His memoir appropriately was titled You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.