In his novels, he was a master of precision and the mot juste, descriptions of ordinary things so vivid that you seemed to see them for the first time. He understood how ordinary life could give way to moments of sudden violence and tragedy and his books often contained a climactic scene of horror that arose out of the quotidian with an inevitability you only understood in the aftermath. One of his latest novels, Terrorist, brought his understanding of American life and the human condition to bear on our current troubles and presented a rich vision of the complexities of both assimilation and redemption. For me personally, I’m sad to see one of the last of the Big Novelists go, a breed that for now at least seems to be dying out forever. He was the lonely WASP among that generation of brilliant post-war Jews and semi-Jews–Mailer, Bellow, and Roth. The passing of their generation leaves us with too many movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos and not enough really good books. When images take precedence over words, I can’t help feeling that both thought and feeling ultimately become more shallow.
–Andrew Klavan is author of Empire of Lies.