A visit to Brudnoy

He answered the door of his Back Bay condominium yesterday looking like a shadow at high noon on a summer's day. David Brudnoy has melted away. Already thin, he has lost 50 pounds over the past few months. His face is little more than eyes and bones. His hair has fallen out.

But worse than any of that is his voice. His voice has filled the airwaves of Boston three hours a night, five nights a week, for nearly all of the last 27 years. His voice was heard in taxicabs rattling across the darkened streets of Dorchester and in BMWs gliding across the country roads of Dover. It played on countertop radios as frazzled homeowners shuffled through bills at their kitchen tables, and on the Bose stereos in the plush studies of the working rich.

It was methodical, this voice, probing, cajoling, always pushing for something more from the politicians, authors, intellectuals, and entertainers who appeared on his show. And now this voice has been reduced to little more than a whisper and, even then, it hurts him to try. It hurt him even when he joked yesterday. "It's not like I couldn't have had problems with my knees instead," he said.

Brudnoy, the city's most elegant and enduring talk radio host, has been gravely ill. Diagnosed with a rare form of skin cancer in the early autumn, he has undergone a devastating regimen of radiation and chemotherapy that has left him hospitalized in dire pain for 31 days in the last two months.

It got so bad four nights before Christmas that the famously optimistic and agnostic Brudnoy found himself alone in a room at Massachusetts General Hospital mouthing the words, "God, if You exist, take me now." It was then, as he whispered yesterday with tears in his eyes, that he questioned his very sense of self. If he couldn't speak, he wasn't who he was meant to be. And if he wasn't himself, did he want to go on?

The answer, it ends up, is yes, because with Brudnoy, life is always in the affirmative. Nearly a decade ago, he overcame a pair of near-death experiences after he was diagnosed with HIV.

Since then, his show has been as good as ever. He's a self-proclaimed libertarian, a thoughtful conservative, a dreamy pragmatist. In an age when right-wing hosts seethe and sports hosts act like twits and liberal hosts talk as if they have a mouth full of marbles, Brudnoy rises above it all.

"He's probably the best informed radio personality in America," says his friend, Peter Meade, himself a former talk show host.

(A disclosure: I've appeared on Brudnoy's show several times. He's always kind to me. Not for that, I think he's brilliant.)

In a low voice, Brudnoy made a vow yesterday that was crystal clear. "I'll absolutely be back," he said.

Indeed, with the chemo and radiation behind him, he is slowly gaining weight, strength, and volume. He plans to resume some teaching duties at Boston University next week. He's hoping to begin phasing in radio time by the end of January.

"He's been through an incredible ordeal," his doctor, Gregory Robbins, said yesterday. "But I have no doubt David will continue to work."

Whether the cancer has been vanquished, only time will tell. But even sick, Brudnoy's still Brudnoy, which is irreverent. This is the talk host who offers guests a full bar before they go on the air. He has discouraged visitors, "because I can't talk, so we end up gawking at each other." He appreciates cards, but would prefer that friends donate blood at MGH in his name.

Throughout our conversation, his duck-shaped phone repeatedly quacked, and when he answered it, the bill protruded from the side of his head. It didn't even seem odd. Books, photographs, art cover every possible space in his condominium. If there was a theme, it's not readily apparent, much like him.

If you're the praying type, say one for Brudnoy. If you're the thinking type, keep him in your thoughts. Boston's a much better place when his voice can be heard.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.