I see him still: long angular face, curved aristocratic nose, ascot tucked into his shirt. Uncle George enters our house and pauses to kiss my hand. He is nearing forty, I am in pigtails. At dinner he places a silver cigarette case and an enameled pillbox next to his water glass. These are his props. The stage is set. He is the star. And I watch him, spellbound. He presides over our family gathering with searing witticisms, outrageous proclamations, and vehement asides in Hungarian that only my father and grandmother understand. Now and then, he selects a pill from an assortment of varying shapes and colors. Tapping an unlit cigarette on the white linen tablecloth in a slow, steady rhythm before lighting it, he lectures. Between puffs through a black cigarette holder, his long slender El Greco hands play with the silver case and pillbox. Not fully comprehending the conversation, I follow the movements of those graceful hands as they checkmate the ideas expressed by my father. A gaunt, chain-smoking introvert who saved his extrovert antics for special occasions, my uncle was the perfect foil to his hulking older brother, the practical businessman who supported a family of four as well as my grandmother. Heir to my illustrious Hungarian grandfather's intellectual pursuits in his old home, George lived life on the edge in our new one as an unaffiliated scholar, editor, political commentator and provocateur. A lover of Nietzsche, he was beset by mysterious physical ailments and phobias and ultimately breakdowns; like his hero, he lived dangerously and died prematurely. When I visited his apartment on Chicago's North Side, I saw, besides the walls of books, pictures of his icons, an intellectual's Hall of Fame: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Buddha. Buddha? Is that your new hero? my father teased. You laugh, George said fiercely. But tell me honestly, isn't this portrait of Buddha healthier than your disgusting scene of Christ hanging from the cross? See the intelligence, the mocking smile that reveal his attitude toward life. And then, to pacify my father and ease my shock, he added, It's not so much Christ himself I object to, it's what Christians have done to him. The only Christian died on the cross. George had aphorisms for every occasion: The sceptic asks questions without answering any, the dogmatist answers questions without asking any; Happy are those who read little and believe much; Moral and respectable are those who conform to the vices and stupidities of their time, immoral are those who follow the virtues of the future. For a twelve-year-old churchgoer who had not yet heard of, let alone read, The Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil, or The Brothers Karamazov, this was powerful stimulation, black and bitter. Wakened from my safe, middle-class suburban slumber, I began reading extensively. My attendance at church waned. And I began to examine my beliefs, such as they were. In 1968 at the age of forty-nine, my uncle nose-dived out of life and crashed somewhere beyond my reach, evading forever questions I would later pose. I was twenty-two, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, following in his footsteps, when he died. Though I'd rarely seen him outside of family gatherings, he was my idol. He'd tantalized me with the provocative lure of ideas and every Christmas presented me with nourishing--and seductive--books. One year he'd given me his own articles on Kierkegaard, Voltaire, and Nietzsche, along with copies of letters from Thomas Mann, complimenting him on his insights into Nietzsche. He'd monitored my selection of courses and teachers at college where I wrote my honors thesis on Nietzsche's concept of nihilism in the works of Camus. After his death, I inherited his library, took up the mantle of my grandfather and uncle, and completed my graduate studies. My dissertation discussed, among other things, Nietzsche's theory of ressentiment in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. …
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Oct 1, 2022
Joshua Chambers-Letson 
Open Access