Peter Messent contributed an obituary in honor of Louis J. Budd which
appeared this
week in _The Guardian_ along with a photo of Dr. Budd.  The obituary is
available on-line at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/09/louis-j-budd-obituary


The Guardian's edited version omits several details from Peter's original
piece. The complete text follows:


Louis J. Budd (formerly Budrewicz), the American literary critic who died in
Patagonia, Arizona, on 20 December 2010, was the foremost Mark Twain scholar
of his time.

Born on 26 August 1921 in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of a Polish immigrant
father and Lithuanian mother, Budd completed his PhD under the GI Bill after
serving in the US Army Air Force during World War II. The majority of his
academic career was spent at Duke University, where he taught from 1952
through to his retirement. He is best known for his work on Twain, and
especially his two monographs, Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1962), a fine
account of Twain’s social and political views, and Our Mark Twain: The
Making of His Public Personality (1983), described as ‘the definitive study
of Twain as lecturer / performer, interview subject, and celebrity.’

But he had a wealth of other publications to his name, was an important
figure in the history and development of the journal American Literature
(serving as its Managing Editor from 1986-1991), and received numerous
awards for his scholarship, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright,
and the 1998 Jay B. Hubbell Medal.

In responding to this last award, Budd spoke presciently of the economic
downturn on the horizon and of the continued importance of the Humanities in
such a context: ‘some harder times are coming on for homo not so sapiens....
Harder times are ahead globally, if they're not already here despite
whatever record the Dow-Jones index may top in 1999…. American humaneness
and fortitude are going to be challenged. That humaneness will need all the
help that we can give. By "we" I especially mean those of us who profess,
who teach literature. As for what we can teach the body politic and
economic, some of our prescient colleagues are laying out the particulars –
easy to find if you start looking for, listening for them.’

Extracts from a 2010 e-mail give some sense of Lou’s wit, his style, his
interests: ‘I've been distracted by my birthday (89) and also by password
trouble from the Duke system, which I'm still using.  Without telling me, it
(they?) cancelled my password as too "old."  And therefore, I guess,
vulnerable to terrorists who know of my key role in world realpolitik…. Our
rainy season – technically a desert is allowed  up to, I think, twelve
inches of rain annually without dishonour — is about over.  But it continues
to germinate an astonishing range of weeds that have not only grown
enthusiastically but have already gone to seed.  The standard work on
Arizona weeds furnishes little guidance for me because it includes so
many….. My reading is keeping me squarely in England right now.  First, the
new biography of Friedrich Engels settles him in London, which he felt
comfortable in, just like Marx. Second, a history of anarchists between
roughly 1870 and 1915 makes much of London as the city which they preferred
over Paris and Berlin and of course Moscow, all with aggressive secret
police.’

Lou Budd was a deeply honest and humane man, with a sharp sense of dry
humour. He was the mentor to any number of younger Twain scholars, both
American and British (including myself), always patient with their failings,
always encouraging when it was most needed. He will be greatly missed.

Peter Messent

<end>

Posted by Kevin B.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~