So it goes...

[shewhomust]

durham_rambler, deep in this morning's Guardian, remarked that no-one else has a chamce of an obituary today, while the papers are so full of the death of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. This seems a bit hard on Pauline Baynes. Then again, since her best known work is her illustrations for the books of C.S. Lewis (died 22nd November 1963), perhaps it is, in a way, appropriate.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I'd never noticed that CSL died the same day as JFK.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

And Aldous Huxley.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

And the first incarnation of Dr Who happened the very next day.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

At the time (because I was only 10) I was far more devastated by Lewis' death than Kennedy's and couldn't understand why it was just a footnote in the news (though at least it was there).

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I was twelve, but (as I said below) really don't remember hearing that...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I didn't find out about C.S. Lewis for a couple of weeks after JFK's death - mind you, I was in my early teens at the time. Interesting coincidence.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Likewise; Kennedy's assassination was unmissable, but the others I must have found out about long after, in retrospect.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

All sorts of people are complaining about the lack of Baynes' obituaries. I keep thinking that maybe it doesn't matter. It matters that she's dead - a giant loss - it doesn't matter that newspapers don't notice her death. Her pictures will always be with me, on my shelves, in my mind. I'm still hanging out for some of the books I'm still missing, gradually and gently adding them to my shelves when happenstance brings me to them. Solzhenitsen taught me a bunch and was an amazing writer, but Pauline Baynes' helped create my mind's eye.

[cinderberry.livejournal.com]

To add to the list of unfairnesses: Sergei Prokofiev died the same day that Stalin did...