Yesterday, I was talking with Christopher Buckley, and we were saying how sick we were of death. And today comes news about Hilton Kramer, who has passed away at 84. To read a few words from Roger Kimball, go here. (There will be more words.)

Roger, as you know, is the editor of The New Criterion. With Samuel Lipman (1934-1994), Hilton founded The New Criterion. This was 30 years ago, in 1982. And what a joy he was to be around! For example, he was just about the best raconteur ever, maybe tied with Schuyler Chapin (another great New York figure, who died in 2009). I would shamelessly ask Hilton to repeat stories I had just heard the month before. I simply liked to hear them, from his mouth.

He had a crisp and perfect New England accent. And that reminds me how much I regret the loss of regional speech distinctions. They have been fading out in America for years . . .

Hilton could appear quintessentially WASP-y, but he was the son of a Jewish tailor in Gloucester, Mass. The elder Kramer had emigrated from Russia. I thought of Hilton, growing up by the sea, when some of us NR-niks stopped by Gloucester on an East Coast cruise.

Here is something I always marveled at, where Hilton was concerned: He was chief art critic of the New York Times, which many would consider a life pinnacle. But he threw it away — left it — in order to found a little monthly arts-and-letters journal (The New Criterion). How many others would have done that? No one?

But Hilton wanted to cry against the trend of criticism, and of the arts, and of life in general. Though a great modernist, he too, in his way, stood athwart History, yelling, “Stop!” He yelled against politicization of the arts, the corruption of art by politics. And he yelled, of course, in the most erudite way possible. He was an intellectual, but, Lord, was he fun. A lot of them are, you know. (WFB?)

When John Gross died last year, I said that I had hardly ever known a more civilized man. When Priscilla Buckley died a few days ago, I said that I had hardly ever known a more civilized woman. And Hilton — another adornment to civilization, and example of it. I’m so glad I knew him.

We were waiting for his memoirs. They won’t appear. But if you seek out Hilton Kramer — his various writings, which must dot the Internet — you will learn a lot. About a lot of things.

One quick story (nothing important): Some years ago, I returned from a trip to Egypt, and I was trying to describe a chair I had seen in the Egyptian Museum. I said to Hilton, “What would you call the part of the chair where you rest your back? You don’t call it the back of the chair, right? That’s what’s on the other side of the part I’m talking about. What do you call the part I’m talking about?”

He grinned and said, “I don’t know.” As far as I was concerned, if Hilton Kramer didn’t know it, it wasn’t known, or worth knowing.