John Leonard, RIP

How sad. John Leonard, the TV critic for New York magazine, died last night. He was 69 years old. Leonard has always been one of my favorite writers -- about TV, about books, about music, about culture. He was incredibly smart, and his range of reference was vast; and yet his writing was never huffy or puffy. If he was reviewing a TV show, or a movie, or a book, he inevitably elevated the conversation and alluded to all kinds of related titles -- but he always did so in a friendly, witty, and passionate tone.

Leonard also had a way of writing around a subject, and defining it in the process, that struck me as miraculous. Sometimes his reviews -- which over the decades appeared in countless venues including The Nation, the New York Times, Esquire, the New York Review of Books, and Harper's -- could withstand more than one reading, and keep on giving. That's a rare quality.

I once phoned him when I was reporting a story about the end of "Seinfeld," and he essentially told me he had nothing of great worth to say about the sitcom. He was wry and modest, and maybe mystified about why I would call him. And then after he declined to talk on the record about how people feel when their favorite shows end, we talked for 10 minutes about how people feel when their favorite shows end. And he reminded me of why I called him in the first place. RIP.