The first reaction one has upon reading Wolfgang Saxon’s obituary of the relatively unknown mathematician Henry Klaus is a simple one: What a shame that such a good mathematician and teacher never learned to swim. But the second reaction is quite different: What a shame that such a good mathematician and teacher never lived to see a half-decent obituary of him.

    The biggest problem is the way in which Saxon wholly ignores the importance of chronological continuity, jumping from Klaus's death to his childhood to his career to the funeral plans. Add to this his utter disregard for all but the highlights of Klaus's life, and one can’t help but conclude that either 1) Saxon didn’t do enough research, or 2) Saxon didn’t do enough typing.

    Consider an example: "[Klaus] came to the United States at age 6. He graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1941 and received a Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard in 1945." Did Klaus graduate from U.C.L.A. at the age of 10?? If not, just how much of a genius was he, really? Compare this to the level of detail in Vinay Lal’s biography of Mahatma Gandhi:

…[E]ngaged in a critical meeting with members of the Cabinet Mission on May 2nd, 1946, Gandhi withdrew to attend to his goat that had been hurt that morning. When he did not return for more than fifteen minutes, Stafford Cripps and his colleagues went looking for him, and were more than a trifle annoyed to find Gandhi applying mud over the sprained ankle of his goat.

    Even where Saxon’s content is not unsatisfactory (for example, in his list of Klaus's family members, which is both exhaustive and well-ordered), his predictable language and trite sentiments lend the piece an incredible tedium. Formulaic phrases like "the cause of" and "is survived by" sound like they’re straight out of a Microsoft Word obituary template, and a close count reveals no more than two moments of comic relief in the entire work.

    Yes, Mr. Saxon, the novel may be dead, but that doesn’t mean that Klaus or his obituary need be.

    The first reaction one has upon reading Noam Weinstein’s review of my relatively unknown obituary by Wolfgang Saxon is a simple one: What a shame that such a well-educated writer and gentleman chose to dishonor the memory of one of America’s greatest mathematicians. But the second reaction is quite different: What a shame that such a well-educated writer and gentleman chose to dishonor the memory of one of America’s greatest teachers.

    The biggest problem is the way in which Weinstein wholly ignores the importance of time and place, opportunistically using my still-fresh death as a catalyst for his own short-sighted project of exaggerating the imperfections in contemporary obituary writing. Add to this his utter disregard for all but the trivial elements of Saxon’s account, and one can’t help but conclude that either 1) Weinstein is a jerk, or 2) Weinstein is king of the jerks.

    Consider an example: "Consider an example: '[Klaus] came to the United States at age 6. He graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1941 and received a Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard in 1945.' Did Klaus graduate from U.C.L.A. at the age of 10?? If not, just how much of a genius was he, really?" Did Weinstein graduate from obituary review college at the age of 10? If so, just how rigorous of a program could it have been? Compare this to the level of detail in Henry J. Klaus’s critique of Noam Weinstein’s review of Wolfgang Saxon’s obituary of Henry J. Klaus:

…The biggest problem is the way in which Weinstein wholly ignores the importance of time and place, opportunistically using my still-fresh death as a catalyst for his own short-sighted project of exaggerating the imperfections in contemporary obituary writing. Add to this his utter disregard for all but the trivial elements of Saxon’s account, and one can’t help but conclude that either 1) Weinstein is a jerk, or 2) Weinstein is king of the jerks.

    Even where Weinstein’s content is not unsatisfactory (for example, in his list of Saxon’s not-unsatisfactory elements, which is both tasteful and interesting), his awkward syntax and amateurish vocabulary lend the piece an incredible crappiness. Formulaic phrases like "formulaic phrases like" and "and" sound like they’re straight out of a Microsoft Word obituary review template, and a close count reveals no more than two moments of comic relief in the entire work.

    Yes, Mr. Weinstein, I may be dead, but that doesn’t mean that I am unable to critique your review of Wolfgang Saxon’s New York Times obituary of me.