RIP Frederick Busch

Sadly, news surfaced on Sunday that Frederick Busch died of a heart attack on Feburary 23rd. Although he lived in a town called Sherburne, he was at a New York City hospital when he passed away. The Washington Post ran an obituatry that stated “He said he resolved to become a writer in fourth grade, after a teacher pinned a poem he had written on the classroom bulletin board. ‘I’d like to be remembered as a really honest, minor writer of the 20th century,’ he once said.”

The New York Times featured an overview of Busch’s work that stated “Critics said that part of what distinguished him from other modern stylists like Richard Ford, Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver, who addressed the dark side of domestic life, was his striving for a larger historical context. Before making Dickens a character in one of his novels, he walked the streets of London. Before putting Melville in another, he prowled Lower Manhattan. He did extensive historical research to depict Civil War and Vietnam veterans, and he extensively interviewed psychiatrists before creating a character who is a psychiatrist. But the emotions he conjured — most exquisitely in his short stories — transcended place and time.”