Tony Judt

This morning and every morning since he passed Tony Judt is missed.

Just knowing a man like Tony Judt was in the world made the world a much better place.

Just to say his name--Tony Judt--was something special.

Tony Judt.

There's really no one writing like Tony Judt wrote today, in the same way there's no one writing like George Orwell wrote when he was writing.

Geoffrey Hartman comes pretty close to Tony Judt and to George Orwell.

Geoffrey Hartman writes in his book, "Scars of the Spirit, the Struggle against Inauthenticity" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), "while augmenting the pleasure of living among beautiful and distracting things, modernity increases almost beyond human discernment the critical burden of distinguishing a merely vicarious from a truly participant and productive form of life."

For the clearest picture of the world after 1945, and its probable future, there is no writer like Tony Judt.

Long live Tony Judt.