Miss Gould
Feb. 15th, 2005 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tmcgEleanor Gould Packard died on Sunday.
The Associated Press obit does not do her justice, and I'm sure its phrasing would have rankled her. Betsy Wade's piece in today's New York Times business section does a little better. (Input the URL at bugmenot.com to bypass compulsory login.) Eulogies in The New Yorker will no doubt come closest of all. And I'd like to try, here, when I've had time to gather my thoughts, although there's much to say and I'm sorely inadequate to the task. Ironic as it is on several levels, conveying in words, at third hand, what Eleanor did is extremely difficult. The best and perhaps the only way to understand it is to look at a heavy Gould proof.
Wade's piece ends:
Goulded galleys of her obituaries would be fine--and enlightening, and amusing--things to see, and would tell more about the work she did than any prose description could. There have been no Gould proofs since her stroke, in 1999; we've already felt that loss. Now she's gone, and there is no one in the world who reads the way she did. I grieve.
The Associated Press obit does not do her justice, and I'm sure its phrasing would have rankled her. Betsy Wade's piece in today's New York Times business section does a little better. (Input the URL at bugmenot.com to bypass compulsory login.) Eulogies in The New Yorker will no doubt come closest of all. And I'd like to try, here, when I've had time to gather my thoughts, although there's much to say and I'm sorely inadequate to the task. Ironic as it is on several levels, conveying in words, at third hand, what Eleanor did is extremely difficult. The best and perhaps the only way to understand it is to look at a heavy Gould proof.
Wade's piece ends:
Interviewing Miss Gould for this obituary put the writer on the spot. Because she had been deaf since 1990, all questions had to be written; because of her status as a legendary editor, spelling counted. While asking about a Roger Angell statement, the interviewer at first wrote the name "Angel," then added the second l. Miss Gould observed, "I was going to say ..."
Always the arbiter, she added, with amusement, "I'll have to stage a faked death and come back to correct my obit."
Goulded galleys of her obituaries would be fine--and enlightening, and amusing--things to see, and would tell more about the work she did than any prose description could. There have been no Gould proofs since her stroke, in 1999; we've already felt that loss. Now she's gone, and there is no one in the world who reads the way she did. I grieve.
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Date: 2005-02-15 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 05:53 am (UTC)Deb