Tuesday, 02 January 2007
Donald M. Murray Dies
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Claude of Blogging in Paris has honored me (or is it Ollie the cat?) today by promoting to her main page a New Year’s Eve cat story I left on her blog as a comment. It’s funny, if I do say so myself.]
[UPDATE: Amazingly, there is one more column from Donald Murray which he turned into the newspaper last Friday. A beautiful finale.]
Sad, sad news this past week. Boston Globe columnist Donald M. Murray died on 30 December at age 82.
His “Now and Then” weekly column was the best writing on aging anywhere in the mainstream media drawing on his life experience as a reporter, his love of writing itself and the ins and outs, ups and downs of getting older. The subtitle of my blog may be “what it’s really like to get older,” but compared to Donald Murray, I have not yet got anywhere near the heart of it. I looked to him every week for inspiration both on my own aging and exquisite writing.
I understood completely when Donald Murray wrote, in his final column published on 26 December:
"Each time I sit down to write I don't know if I can do it. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can."
Then he quoted from that other exquisite essayist, E.B. White:
"I'm glad to report that even now, at this late day, a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me - more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears."
And Donald Murray finished his last essay with a message that should we can all take to heart, it seems to me, for the new year and every year granted us hereafter:
"Friends wonder why I do not take it easy. Why I don't play golf or walk through cathedrals in Italy. Because I have an obsession. I write. I draw. I try to capture a fragment of life and reveal its wonder to you. I never get it quite right, but there is a joy in the trying that makes me young at 83."My New Year's wish for you, old and young, is that you find in the year ahead something you can't do."
There is more about Mr. Murray in the Globe obituary, with links to some of his most recent writing. If the newspaper or his heirs do not publish a new collection of his weekly essays, I will be as deeply disappointed as I am at his death. They are all of the sort than can be read again and again with deep, abiding pleasure.
Posted by Ronni Bennett at 05:24 AM | Permalink | Email this post
Comments
Sorry to hear about Donald Murray. Though his face looks familiar, don't recall ever having read his writing. What you quote tells me that I wish I had.
As for your writing, from my perspective you do a pretty good job of capturing "...a fragment of life..." and conveying the "excitement" about which he writes. When you get a little older your writing is likely to ripen a bit from your experiences between now and then, doncha think -- will likely only get better.
Posted by: joared on Jan 2, 2007 6:11:06 AM
I began reading him when I was probably in my 30s, and although I may not have been his intended audience, I always enjoyed his essays.
Posted by: Rhea on Jan 2, 2007 9:31:14 AM
Ronni
I too am saddened by news of Donald Murray's death. I remember reading some of his columns after I found him at the Boston Globe via one of your posts.
Posted by: Chancy on Jan 2, 2007 10:07:02 AM
I have been reading Donald Murray for years and when I read that he died I felt like I had lost a good friend.
And like Ronni said, I hope his family puts together his weekly essays in book form.
People who read "Time Go By" would love reading his columns.
I'll miss him.
Posted by: millie garfield on Jan 2, 2007 12:51:37 PM
Yes, I was sad to read that as, thanks to you, I read his column every week. I hope they start republishing them. He was a remarkable man.
Posted by: Claude on Jan 2, 2007 1:57:38 PM
I feel as if I have neglected a part of life - have not heard of this person until now - but will be paying attention from this point on. Thank you for the information, Ronni.
As for Ollie and his venture into up-scale dining - Bwahahahaha! Way to go, Ollie! As a long-term 'cat person' - I KNOW that they think we are silly - and look for ways to prove it - at least those that I live with do. Daily.
Posted by: Susan on Jan 2, 2007 8:57:15 PM
I really wish I could have talked to Donald. I think it's incredibly important to listen to people who have aged happily and honestly. I am going to take him up on his New Year's wish and do something this year that I can't do. I would really like to talk to anyone that has anything insightful to say about aging or life in general. You can learn about my new project at www.almostthirty.net
Posted by: Almost Thirty on Jan 2, 2007 9:29:44 PM
I just read Murray's finale -- indeed, it is beautiful.
Posted by: joared on Jan 3, 2007 4:32:51 AM
In 1973, two weeks out of the Air Force, I found myself in graduate school in English at the University of New Hampshire. Part of my program was to teach Freshman Composition, and I was enrolled in Don Murray's Seminar on Teaching Writing.
Don's ideas about writing were radical in those days, but they came to define the mainstream. Write every day, he said. Write about what you know, whatever that is, he said. Everyone needs a ruthless editor, he said.
He demanded 1,000 words a week from every student in the seminar. He shared his writing with us, and we shared ours with him in weekly one-on-one conferences in his office.
He didn't like my poetry, and I didn't like his. Thirty-some years of reflection assure me that we were both right.
He obviously wanted to be Ernest Hemingway, and I wanted to be John Barth. He came a lot closer to his goal than I did.
I never saw him again after I left UNH, but I have thought of him often through the years. I'm sorry he's gone.
Posted by: Pete Sampson on Jan 3, 2007 11:42:11 AM
