'The Great Writers Must Have Great Vitality'

“You know I am by nature rather given to hero-worship, and I haven’t had a real hero for a long time until Winston came along.” 

“Worship” is overheated, and having a hero can easily be sentimentalized and turned into yet another form of virtue signaling, but I’ve always had heroes. In a fallen world, it’s important to remind ourselves that humans can be courageous and worthy of our admiration. I skipped the usual categories of heroes for kids in a pop-culture-saturated world – sports figures, actors, musicians – and went for Mark Twain (thanks to the books and Frederic March – I lied about pop culture), Sgt. Alvin York (thanks to Gary Cooper and a biography for kids) and a fictional character, Robinson Crusoe. All seemed plucky and resourceful, virtues I still admire.      

 

The passage at the top was written by Willa Cather in a letter to her brother Roscoe on February 19, 1942. She admired Winston Churchill as a statesman and writer. If I were English he would rank higher on my hero scale. She writes:

 

“I have been his devout admirer ever since I read his great life of Marlborough, in five huge volumes. It is certainly the finest biography or historical work that has appeared in my lifetime. I consider him simply the best living English writer. The great writers must have great vitality. They can have nearly every other gift, but lacking vitality they remain mediocre.”

 

Who are my heroes today? That’s easy: Dr. Johnson, Abraham Lincoln and Louis Armstrong. They have in common unlikely beginnings. None was born into privilege. Without perseverance and hard work, none would be up for consideration. All left their worlds better places. Of them I suppose I most admire Johnson -- his fight to remain sane, his sense of humor, his learning, his gift for friendship, his prose, his unrelenting sense of charity. Consider the definitions he gives for hero in his Dictionary:  

 

“A man eminent for bravery.”

 

“A man of the highest class in any respect.”