“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
Gordon Lightfoot died on Monday, May 1, a transcendent singer and songwriter and one of the most talented and iconic musicians in the second half of the 20th century. I have loved his music from the moment I first heard him 50 years ago. His songs, like “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Rainy Day People,” “Early Morning Rain,” “The Watchman’s Gone,” were all lyrical and deeply poetic, sung in that rich baritone voice, so easily imitable but impossible to replicate.
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was nothing less than an epic poem set to music and served as the unofficial soundtrack to that time of year “when the skies of November turn gloomy.” It rose to number 2 on the American Billboard charts, defying all norms of Top 40 standards with its length and arcane references to Lake Superior, Great Lakes shipping, and the legend that “lives on from the Chippewa on down.” I have listened to the song a thousand times, with its haunting guitar riffs and the mesmerizing story of the fateful ship that sank in the “face of a hurricane west wind” on November 10, 1975, on the “big lake they call Gitche Gumee.” Lightfoot, and many others, considered it his finest work.
He described himself as a songwriter in search of the “perfect poem” and to my mind, of all his compositions, “Song for a Winter’s Night” stands alone as a supreme achievement, a beautiful portrait of the aching loneliness of a dark night of longing:
The lamp is burnin’ low upon my tabletop
The snow is softly falling
The air is still in the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly calling
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter night with you.
(You should also check out this moving rendition by the Wichita State University School of Music.)
He was often hailed as a Canadian treasure—Geddy Lee, the lead singer of the Canadian rock band Rush, called him “our poet laureate,” while musician Tom Cochrane said that “if there was a Mount Rushmore in Canada, Gordon would be on it.”
But he really belonged to the world. As one critic noted, “It is impossible to explain the huge impact of Gordon Lightfoot on 20th century music. His songs were covered by everyone from Dylan to Elvis. His writing, imagery, and ability to create mood was without parallel.”
His songs were deceptively complex, layered with symbolism that belied the lyrics about mundane relationships, wandering spirits, or the beauty of the Canadian woodlands. “Don Quixote,” the heartbreaking “Bitter Green,” “The Watchman’s Gone,” and so many others, lent themselves to deeper meanings for anyone who cared to find them.
There’s a train down at the station
It’s come to carry my bones away
Two engines on
Twenty-one coaches long…
As I leave you in the sunset
Got one more nothin’ I’d like to say
‘You don’t know me
A son of the sea am I’
As I say to you, my brother
If you live to follow the golden sun
You better beware
Knowin’ the watchman’s always there.
If you find me feedin’ daisies
Please turn my face up to the sky
And leave me be
Watchin’ the moon roll by…
Drink Your Glasses Empty to this son of Orillia, Ontario, with the unmatched voice, who brought joy to so many with the gift of his song. Farewell and Godspeed, Gordon Lightfoot. We too have followed the golden sun.
The fire is dying
Now my lamp is growing dim
The shades of night are lifting
The morning light steals across my windowpane
Where webs of snow are drifting
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter night with you
And to be once again with you.
Item: Books, or A Case of Serendipity: I recently bought a copy of T.J. Stiles’s 2015 book, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History. As I was putting it on the appropriate shelf in my office, I noticed immediately beside it my copy of Evan Connell’s 1984 best-seller on Custer, Son of the Morning Star, which has been hailed as a masterpiece. I remember buying the book as an undergraduate at UGA just getting interested in history. Why had I never read it? And who was Evan Connell? I remember reading articles in the mainstream media (like Time magazine) about how this unusual book and author surprisingly took the literary world by storm that year. I did the usual Google searches on Connell and found myself fascinated by what I discovered. Suffice it to say, Connell is considered a writer’s writer, at home in nearly every genre, from fiction, essays, and short stories, to history, biography, and poetry. The contemporary of Jack Kerouac, Philip Roth, and John Updike labored in comparatively undeserved obscurity, but hiding in plain sight was part of his deliberate brand. Connell, who died in 2013 at age 88, was a lifelong unmarried loner, the opposite of a self-promoter, who hated publicity and never courted the spotlight. He granted few interviews (none on camera) and if there’s a picture out there anywhere of him smiling, I’ve never seen it. He never did public readings of his work, never spoke publicly about his writing, never taught classes about writing or literature. He lived in the Bay Area much of adult life, spent some time in local watering holes, and formed few permanent attachments. He 
died alone in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And yet his novels reveal a remarkably penetrating insight into human relationships that are astonishing for someone who seemed to spend most of his life shunning them. His 1959 novel Mrs. Bridge (a National Book Award finalist) was praised as a masterpiece of spare, lean, concise story-telling, with not a spare word in it, as was his 1969 follow-up, Mr. Bridge. I bought and devoured them both and wished for more. I finally also read Son of the Morning Star (published by then-little-known North Point Press in Berkeley, now owned by FSG) and found it beautifully written and moving as well. The New York Times called it “impressive in its massive presentation of information” and added that “its prose is elegant, its tone the voice of dry wit, its meandering narrative skillfully crafted.” The Washington Post said it “leaves the reader astonished,” and the Wall Street Journal called it “a scintillating book, thoroughly researched and brilliantly constructed.” I can confirm that all of this is true. Happily, for people like me who are fascinated by him, there’s a new literary biography of Connell out by Steve Paul, Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell, published in 2021 by the University of Missouri Press. And so, through the serendipity of shelving one book, Evan Connell is now on my list as a favored author whose writings I plan to work through patiently and in their entirety, one bite at a time. I’ll be spending considerable time with him in the coming years. If you love the power of words, I invite you also to get to know this talented, mysterious man in the only way we can—through his writing.
Item: Currently Reading: The Last Chronicle of Barset, by Anthony Trollope (originally published in 1867), the final volume (of 6) in the Barsetshire series that begins with The Warden (1855) then continues with Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), and The Small House at Allington (1864), chronicling the always interesting goings-on in the fictional county of Barsetshire and its cathedral town of Barchester during the height of the Victorian Era. The county is peopled with delightful almost-living characters like The Rev. Mr. Quiverful, Mrs. Proudie, Sir Omicron Pie, Dr. Fillgrave, Sir Abraham Haphazard, Sir Raffle Buffle, and many, many others. The series is beloved by Trollope fans, who are legion, ranging from actor Alex Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi), who never travelled without a Trollope novel, to economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to author Sue Grafton. It’s taken me 14 years to read the series, not because the books are hard to read—just the opposite; one critic said they’re like eating peanuts, hard to stop—but because I let too many years elapse between volumes. After this, it’s on to Trollope’s 6-volume Palliser series, which I hope to finish in half the time. Maybe I’ll read those straight through? At any rate, Trollope is also one of my favorite authors, not only for his wonderful books but because of how he wrote them. He famously kept to a disciplined schedule, putting in 3 hours at his writing desk every day before going to his real job at the Post Office, where he is credited with introducing the ubiquitous red pillar mailbox to the United Kingdom (seen here). His literary output was prodigious by any standards: 47 novels, 42 short stories, 5 travel books, 2 works of non-fiction, and an auto-biography. I intend to read them all.
Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020, 838 pp.).