TRIBUTES TO WILLIAM PHILLIPS
197
ALLEN KURZWEIL
I have to wonder how many of us could prompt so many lovely tributes,
from such extraordinary and disparate worlds. As the previous recol–
lections make clear, William was a friend-no, an ally-of the painter
and the poet, the scholar and critic, the storyteller, editor, and educator.
They-all of you-were his family. They-all of you-are his heirs.
And yet William had another kind of family. Not a conventional fam–
ily-perish the thought-but one that an anthropologist might call his
residential kin group.
It
included my mother, to whom he was pro–
foundly devoted, and her children, Vivien, Ronald, and me.
Others have spoken of William's gifts as an editor and as a compan–
ion. I was fortunate enough
to
know him in both of those roles. I was
privy to his sense of wit and irony, his ability to challenge and cajole, his
intellectual honesty and the heated discussions that that honesty often
prompted. So let's be direct here-since William was nothing if not
direct. He loved
to
argue. In fact, I'm convinced that arguments are
what kept him going so long.
William may have amassed a medicine cabinet of truly Medician
scale-the pharmacist at Jaros Drugs may have offered condolences of
disproportionate fervor-however, I am convinced that it is the restora–
tive power of debate that kept William young and vital. At least I hope
so, since I dispensed a very large dose of that life-extending remedy
almost every time we sat down for a meal.
Although some of our "discussions" touched on major ideological
matters of the day, most of the dialectic at
our
dinner table focused on
issues rarely covered in the pages of
PRo
How long to cook Minute Rice? (William's answer: 25 minutes.)
What spices
to
exclude from a recipe for curried chicken? (William's
answer: All.)
And still, as I say, I'm convinced it's the skirmishes and disagreements
that kept William going.
He never boasted of his endorsements or his efforts. Evidence of his
support is recorded in the pieces he edited and published, in the corre–
spondence he maintained. It is documented in sixty-eight years of
PR,
filling four rows of shelves. It is visible in the intemperate pieces by a
young firebrand named "Wallace Phelps" and in the cogent remarks of
a ninety-year-old soothsayer despairing of ideological cant.
But it is also visible beyond the pages of
PR,
documented in nearly a
Allen Kurzweil's most recent book is A
Grand Complication.
