The subject of death has shadowed me lately – not my own, but death more generally. Several acquaintances have recently died or are dying. As I get older, that seems to happen more frequently. It’s a universal human question – and therefore a quintessential liberal arts question: what does death mean? How should we face it?

If one cares about the life of the mind, it helps to have friends who listen, and to whom one listens in turn. I have many thoughtful acquaintances, but for ongoing dialogue, Heidi and Lewis are two such friends for me. And here I’m talking mainly about Lewis, because he isn’t my life partner.

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” So said the British writer D.H. Lawrence (who spent some time among us) a century ago, in his provocative and polemical book about our writers, “Studies in Classic American Literature.” Around the same time, the poet William Carlos Williams offered an equally quirky account of American history and literature titled “In the American Grain.” Both are worth considering as we try to figure out who exactly we are.