Roderick MacLeish Passes Away

[filkertom]

For a number of years now, I've been trying to track down Roderick MacLeish.

You know -- Roderick MacLeish. The voice of the Philadelphia Orchestra. An NPR commentator and news analyst for many years, with a rich and wonderful voice and equally rich and wonderful words and sentiments -- truly, he is the reason I got hooked on NPR in the first place. An astonishing storyteller -- he wrote a fantasy novel called Prince Ombra which begins:

It is said -- and it is true -- that just before we are born, a cavern angel holds his finger to our mouths and whispers, "Hush! Don't tell what you know."

This is why we have a cleft on our upper lips and remember nothing of where we came from.

Toward the end of the last century -- in 1978, to be precise -- a smooth-lipped boy appeared in the world.

An amazing book.

Anyway. A number of years ago, the guy just dropped out of sight. And it frustrated me. I wanted to know what happened to him, what he thought of the way things were going. He was, at least to my hearing, a humanist and a populist, someone who cared deeply about the world and its people for all the right reasons.

And I couldn't find him. Google, NPR, nothing.

Turns out he retired. And, this past Saturday, he passed away. He was eighty.

I only wish I'd been able to find him, and thank him for what he brought to my life.

Sigh.

Comments

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Wow. I had never heard of him, but if the opending lines of a novel can cause that much gooseflesh, I'll need to read the rest of it. Thanks for the recommendation!

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

I agree! It's now on order from the library. Thanks Tom!

Sad news.

[hiddenriver.livejournal.com]

I read Prince Ombra many years ago, probably when it came out. All I really remember now is that wonderful beginning passage and that I enjoyed it a great deal. I knew nothing about the author, but if his voice was as enchanting as his writing I would have loved to have heard him on NPR.

[jenrose]

I have no idea how many times I've read that book, but my copy is one of the ones with a fancy iridescent cover and I've had it *that* long.... sad. Wish he'd written more, but man was that one tasty.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

Prince Ombra was a wonderful, wonderful book. I wish he had written more.