This essay was adapted from an elegy delivered at Lewis H. Lapham’s memorial service in September 2024.

When I first met Lewis, he was the age I am now. He liked little parallels like that. He wasn’t a magical thinker, but he appreciated symmetries. Especially historical.

He struck me as tall and pinstripe-y, with a great smile. I assumed he’d come from a photo shoot—I honestly did. But no—that was every day. He was flash. He came correct.

I was outside help, a “copy jock,” and he called me Bob Cratchit. I called him Marley. Said I could hear him rattling down the hallway. He’d ask if there was anything he could do to improve my lot—a new pencil stub, perhaps? Writers who knew English?

I think I knew I’d made a friend when I watched him—the editor in chief of a great magazine—think through the implications of having the writers hand in articles with no punctuation whatsoever, all because I’d joked that adding it might be easier than fixing it.

A few years later we were still having conversations like that, except now the hare brained schemes became articles in the magazine. Usually. We did discuss—at length a couple of times—how to rig the office football pool, and we tried numerous times to beat the New York State “sin” tax on cigarettes. (I don’t want to go into that, but it involved interstate trucking.) 

The best schemes—the funnest schemes—were things we cooked up for the magazine. As great a writer as Lewis was—and he was great—he had a genius for framing potentially tedious tasks as a series of challenges—even adventures. Corny, perhaps, but true. “Does the Algonquin still have a round table? Because if so…” No. Somebody checked. They do have an oval one. “Algonquin oval table? Even better! Book it!”

He once said to me, “That suit looks like it gets better at night. Tell me about the clubs.” I told him I had no idea. I was there all the time, working for him. I said the last time I went to a club we had a Matt Dillon rule, which was no matter what was going on, if Matt Dillon showed up it was time to leave. That’s how long ago it was. For a minute there I thought he was going to have me call Matt Dillon.

I think we all came to love his seemingly inane questions, because you never knew what could come of it. He appeared outside my door once and said, “Hey kid, you know where Varick Street is?” “Sure, chief, that’s one of our streets around here.” He handed me an address and said—I’ll never forget this—“Check it out.”

Turned out to be a small communist book publisher. They were in a jam, you see. An actual writer had agreed to publish an actual book with them, and they had no one who could edit the book. I said, “Well, since I’m here.” I spent the next few days getting the manuscript ready and talking with the writer, who was the lovely Christopher Hitchens. I asked him, out of curiosity, why he never wrote for Harper’s. He mumbled something about there “being bad blood,” and I said, “Well, not anymore there isn’t!”

When I got back to the magazine, Lewis looked up at me and all he said was “Did you fetch me what I wanted?”

He never barked orders. He made suggestions; he offered insights. He mused a lot. He’d let you try almost anything, but he’d let you know what he thought the odds were. That was the deal—freedom for honesty. In his view, less of one led to less of the other. In my own experience, very true.

He once stood laughing in my doorway and read aloud the following letter from a reader: 

Dear Lewis Lapham, 

That short story was way college. 

A person reads fiction differently after that.

Anyone could ask him anything, and usually you’d get a gem back. “Hey Lewis—eight thousand words by Carlos Fuentes on the Rio Grande—what do you say?” 

“I think I like the idea of Carlos Fuentes more than I like Carlos Fuentes.” 

“Lewis, will the Ravens cover the spread tonight?” 

“Maybe.” 

“Hey Lewis, what’s Joan Didion like?” 

Long pause. “Syncopated.”

Sometimes he had a baloney sandwich and Fritos for lunch. When he was feeling down, he might have a little cup of strawberry ice cream. Once when he wasn’t in the office, we tied a Winnie-the-Pooh balloon to the back of his chair. People later swore he had been there all day and that his column was going quite well!

Somewhere along the way I became Lewis’ editor. We’d yap and laugh and complain about the world, and at a certain point he’d start showing me notes, and then paragraphs. Perfectionists, stylists, are easy edits on the back end, so mostly it was a matter of getting the setup right. He thought in metaphors, so we often spoke in them.

Once—exactly once—I made use of his beloved golf. I told him he’d teed off well in the first section, but he’d hit a garbage approach shot and was going to have trouble getting to the green. He stared at me. I said, “Please tell me I haven’t ruined your essay.” 

He said, “No, that’s fine, but I think you may have blown my handicap.”

Aside from golf, he talked mostly about his children. I think we expect everyone to brag about their kids, but I have to say Lewis’s pride had real precision in it. After a half-hour conversation with Andrew, I told Lewis, “You’re right—he really should be the president of everything.” The word he used most to describe Delphina—other than beautiful—was formidable. Yep! Before I met Winston, Lewis said, “I gotta warn you, kid. This might be the single coolest person you ever get to meet in your life.” He meant cool in the jazz way. I think he might have meant most things the jazz way.

Only on one single occasion did I ever see Lewis not wearing a necktie. We met for further toil on a weekend, which we often did, and I thought I’d wear a nice tie to match his. He, though, had on a charcoal polo beneath a blue blazer. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “What is this? You’ve really let the side down, man,” and so forth. He just smiled. I went to get coffee at some point and encountered the victim of what seemed to be an assault. Several of us did our best to help until the ambulance arrived—we were told the victim would be fine—and I went back to the office, covered in blood and completely freaked out. Lewis saw me and said, “You probably shouldn’t have worn that tie.”

The only thing I’ll add—besides that I loved him and will always think of him—is the following little anecdote, because it happened, I swear, but also I can’t quite believe it happened. Commotion in the office. Lewis found me and said, “It’s happened, kid. I’ve been called up to the show!” 

He’d been asked to do the “cold open” of Saturday Night Live. We prepared him as best we could, then on Saturday a bunch of us met and climbed into the limo NBC had sent. He did his part—hated it, of course, but it went fine. Then when the show was over, we went to the afterparty. I remember looking over and seeing him hold court with the staff writers and castmates he now knew were readers. I think the only thing that ever made him happier was grandkids. I’ll say grandkids number one, SNL two.

Somewhere into the wee hours I hear Lewis yell my name from across the room. I look over, and he’s pointing toward the door. Matt Dillon has just walked in. Without a word to anyone, we got up and left.