First, we have the incredible loss of Harry Kalas, fittingly enough in the broadcast booth. Anyone who is a Phillies fan is feeling the pain of losing someone who was a great fan and a great broadcaster. What hit me while I was watching coverage yesterday (as my tears welled up now and again) was what a commentator noted: that, in the space of almost forty years, he entered the homes of people for over three hours for almost half of the year. I won’t feign fan supremacy, but I’ve probably listened to Dave Niehaus at least 5000 hours during my lifetime. That’s a lot of time to spend with someone. Kalas is sad; Niehaus will be tragic.
And then comes news that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick passed away last night. Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet was a book (and I can’t believe I didn’t put that book in my Facebook 10 books) that changed my life. As I read (and re-read) it in college, its first great gift was to put words and theory to something I didn’t quite understand; its second great gift was to offer a theory that was open — Sedgwick offered a hypothesis and argued for it, but it never felt like arguing. I returned often to her ideas when I played around with how gay identity was being expressed on the nascent Web or when looking at the Orient and sexuality. The homosocial continuum, the narrative construction of the closet, minoritizing v. universalizing conceptions of homosexuality: these are ideas that are still important and still debated. I’m glad I got to see her speak once, and I’m glad I found her.
