On my nightstand are 12 books, mostly small volumes in paperback of 200 or fewer pages; books by Karl Barth, Barbara Brown Taylor, Will Willimon, Reinhold Niebuhr, Robert Pinsky, Winston Churchill, John Noll, Malcolm Muggeridge, and I.F. Stone, one of America's greatest iconoclastic journalists.
But it is the Stone book, a portrait by Andrew Patner, which occasions this writing, as I.F. Stone was my friend.
"Izzy", as he was commonly known, became famous publishing I.F. Stone's Weekly, which had a small, but important readership; readers who knew in the weekly they would find information found nowhere else; because Izzy was an inveterate reader of Congressional and government documents; documents no one read past the first few pages, save Izzy, who read every page of every document he ever picked up.
He was a little man with bad eyesight, but blessed with tireless energy, and always, it seemed to me, in a hurry.
He was a great reporter and brilliant scholar, who became an authority on Greek Antiquity, speaking its language, writing its history.
He was a regular at the monthly luncheons I hosted in the Vanderberg Room of the U.S. Capitol; luncheons that included Richard Reeves of The New York Times, Dan Rather of CBS, Robin McNeil of PBS, Bob Novak, of Evans/Novak, Marty Schram of Newsday, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Senator John Tunney, Congressman Tom Rees, Nick Von Hoffman of the Washington Post and 60 Minutes, Dick O'Hagan of the Canadian Embassy, Charles Wheeler of the BBC, and, occasionally, Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post. (Were women ever present? Myra McPherson of the Washington Post, maybe; Sally Quin, also of the Post, possibly; Mary McGrory of the Washington Star was invited but I can't remember if she ever came. Two other journalist friends, Gloria Steinem and Lyn Sherr, were in NYC.)
On one occasion I invited Ken Dryden to join us. He was the great goalie of the Montreal Canadians, Stanley Cup winners, who spent the summer of '70 in Washington working as a Nader Raider.
On that Friday we gathered for lunch in East Front 100, a private room halfway between the House and Senate in the Capitol (Vanderberg was taken). In discussing, naturally, politics, national and world affairs, we also talked about sports - Ken Dryden was in the room, at the table.
The luncheons usually ran two to three hours. Why so long? One might ask.
Think about who was present, some of the most interesting people in the U.S. Would you have left? Of course not, and no one did. (When I think about it, those luncheons, held over a three year period, is where The City Club of San Diego, The Denver Forum, The Great Fenway Park and Great Washington Writers Series began.)
Sometime later that Friday afternoon, Izzy called. He said he was unhappy with the luncheon. What? Why? I asked, as no one had ever complained before about our gatherings; most thought they were great times, because they were.
He told me taking about sports was a waste of his time, that he had no time for sports, wasn't interested in sports, didn't care about sports, considered them beneath the dignity of serious people, And, he said, if it were to happen again, he wouldn't come back.
I.F. stone was a serious guy.
In the Patner book, which is a collection of Izzy vignettes, as Patner would follow Izzy around, wring down and recording what the great man said. As readings go, it's a terrific read, and captures Izzy - to his glorious core.
This is an excerpt from a chapter entitled, "Bible":
"Stone in his lectures points the 'democracy of the Bible.'
"Does he find that the view in support of social justice and equality expressed in the Prophets and the New Testament Gospels is also found in the basic text of the Hebrew Bible - in the five Books of Moses, the Torah?
".Yes, I think it is. Because the idea that man was made in the image of God was a very democratic and elevating idea. That's right in the opening chapters of Genesis. And the fact that everybody has a common father and mother, that's democratic. I don't see any antidemocratic teaching in Deuteronomy. And the Prophets, of course, go further in the search of social justice, away from the jealous, tribal God. And in the Gospels it's even stronger. The revolutionary proletarian thing is even stronger in the Gospels.
"'You shouldn't be misled to references to kingships in the Bible. They didn't move into that for quite a while. There was a long period between the conquests of the Holy Land and the establishment of the two kingdoms. Kingship in the Bible was not what we think of as kingship in the modern world. Even in Homer - Agamemnon was not an absolute monarch.
"He's primus inter pares. He's first among equals. And when the plaque comes, he has to give up the slave girl that he grabbed. So you mustn't think of kingship in the Bible the same way that you think of Louis XIV. And it wasn't a hierarchal society...'"
That was I.F. "Izzy" Stone.
Such a good and great man (his view of sports, notwithstanding). And what a privilege it was to have the pleasure of his company.