Very sad news. I'd only just heard of his illness and sent and email that he will never read. Conversations with Marshall at the Folger were always informative, stimulating, and fun. He had a wonderfully mischievous wit, a Juvenalian perspective on the world that was balanced with, perhaps also the result of, a genuine zeal for reform. I remember being surprised, and also not, to learn of his writing for the Huffington Post. Marshall had a cynical veneer but a real passion underneath. I remember bumping into him outside the Folger one day, and he held me on the sidewalk for almost an hour, telling me with excitement about his latest thoughts on Milton and Arianism. He'll be missed by many.

 

Hannibal

 

 

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 3:50 PM, David Miller <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Friends,

Marshall Grossman died this afternoon after losing a  four-month battle with cancer.

If you knew him only by his work, and by the wit of his occasional contributions to this list, then you knew a lot.  He was a brilliant critic.  But those of us who knew him personally saw how the wit and brilliant mind were always in play.  Marshall could talk to you about anything--politics, history, jazz, the more abstruse reaches of theory.  He could make you laugh hard and think harder.  His table talk at the Folger lives in legend.

To know him well enough was to see an underlying sweetness to his disposition that expressed itself mostly by indirection.  He was an incredibly kind man beneath the sometimes sardonic, wise-guy persona.  He was as good a friend as I have known.

Marshall was beloved by many who read this list, and will be deeply missed.

Sadly,

David

--
David Lee Miller
Carolina Distinguished Professor of English
  and Comparative Literature
Director, Center for Digital Humanities
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC  29208
(803) 777-4256
FAX   777-9064
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http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/people/pages/miller.html

--
Hannibal Hamlin
Associate Professor of English
Editor, Reformation
Organizer, The King James Bible and its Cultural Afterlife
http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu/
The Ohio State University
164 West 17th Ave., 421 Denney Hall
Columbus, OH 43210-1340
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