ABBOTT JOSEPH LIEBLING

I met the most fascinating man the other day after returning from a four mile run in a fresh snowfall near the Bahai temple.

The very very rotund and brilliant Renaissance man----A. J. Liebling.

I met owlish Joe Liebling outside a Greek coffee house in my neighborhood. He was sitting at two tables pushed together and strewn with newspapers. I was attracted to him by his mumbling and cursing to himself about bad writing and publishers and all sorts of sins of the Fourth Estate in America of all places.

Sidling up to him I hoped he would have time for some good rich talk. Talk as dark and rich and delicious as the first cup of fresh coffee in the morning. Fortunately, he was a warm, amiable man with an intellect as thirsty and insatiable as mine.

Over the next four hours I learned about Liebling's exciting career as a writer for The New Yorker. Writing for that fine publication from 1935 until his early death in 1963, this Francophile wrote masterful and ground-breaking press criticism, sports reporting about the boxing scene in New York, war reporting from Europe during WW II and French gourmet cooking reviews. An impressive breadth of knowledge.

Anyone interested in a career as a writer should study Joe's use of the English language. Writers can feast on his work and wisdom.

I have read some of Joe's press criticism in his essays in The Wayward Pressman and The Press. They are wonderful. My American correspondent Peter Katsaros tells me that these books are a must read for every American citizen. Peter added that reading Liebling's books on the press in his law school days was the high point of law school. Who am I to disagree ? Peter's reporting has been quite good to date.

Had Liebling lived in my day he would have been a frequent visitor to Cirey and Ferney. Joe wrote with a joyful and honest pen. Like me he would not have been welcome in France. America is lucky to have had him write for the ages.

And I am thrilled to have him as a new friend.


Voltaire

My Trade is to Say What I Think

I spent a wonderful long life writing satire in poems, plays and my distinct creation, the philosophical tales.

What great fun that writing was: 20,000 letters and 100 books. I still laugh for hours when I reread Candide. I am so deeply grateful to Leonard Bernstein for writing the music that brought my favorite creation back onto the world stage in the 20th century.

Yes, I admit I caught quite a bit of hell for my writing. Two trips to the Bastille before I turned thirty and a violent mugging by a gang hired by an aristocrat convinced me that France in the early 18th century was no place for freedom of thought or my unconventional pen.

England was a far better place. I loved the intellectual freedom of England in my three years there after my ouster from France. Wrote a book about my learning there, Letters on the English.

You know much of the rest of my story. Most of my books had to be smuggled into Paris and sold underground. Read my Philosophical Dictionary and you will see why. Both the hateful, fearful Catholic Church and the French Regent had the ear of the prosecutor, so I made my home in Ferney in Switzerland. I did my best to make that home the intellectual capital of Europe in the Enlightenment. Quite a few historians say I did a good job at it.

Ferney was a delightful place. Plenty of space, beautiful gardens, a great library, guest quarters for visiting thinkers from all over Europe who wanted to come and study and talk a while. I built a church on the grounds, hired a priest I could tolerate. Life was very very good.

And, do you know what ? I returned to Paris a hero on the eve of my death in 1778. The prayer that I had always lofted skyward ringing in my ears. "God, may you reveal all my enemies to be wholly ridiculous. You have answered me."

I led a life dedicated to truth, beauty, tolerance and justice. That carries risks but they are all worth it.


Voltaire