Last summer, I came across Charles Black's moving eulogy for Alexander Bickel, 84 Yale L.J. 200 (1974). But I was puzzled by a passage in the eulogy, where Black suggests that Bickel told truth to power in answering some hard question and in return lost some golden opportunity:

There came a day when a question was asked him, and when a "yes" might, at the very least, have made possible further movement down the road toward what must have been a much-desired (I dare say the most-desired) goal. The question, mark you, was a close one; an honest and competent man might easily have concluded that the right answer was "yes." Alexander Bickel had come, on balance, to the opposite conclusion. He said "no," and a door closed; "no" was not the right answer, not the wanted answer. His name, by low men for low reasons, was doubtless crossed off a list. But it stayed, it stays, on another list-- the list of those to whom courage (and therefore honesty) is first. Bickel must have felt rather wry about this, but I don't think there can have been any conflict in his mind. By that time the habit of honesty ran through the man's whole grain.

The memoriam for Bickel in the Yale Law Journal was written by Black. It described an incident in which Bickel was asked by the then-current Administration in Washington to comment on the constitutionality of a particular antibusing proposal. After study, Bickel decided against the measure's constitutionality and so reported. It was said in many quarters at the time that this imprudent act cost Bickel the chance to be considered for an appointment to the Supreme Court, a post which he coveted.

Although I'm not an avid reader, I was surprised to have read one of the contestants for the best book in American fiction in the last twenty-five(-ish) years, New York Times reckoning. I also feel comfortable highly recommending it: that is, I liked Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. I'm not surprised to see Morrison ultimately won, but was intrigued to see some names, namely, a lot of Phil Roth, as well as (not that he doesn't deserve it--) Helprin.

Surprisingly, more popular authors of the hipster generation (okay, maybe that's not a fair judgment--feel free to take it up in the comments section) such as Wallace, Eggers or Foer didn't make the cut.

One wonders what the criteria were. One would do well to read this, I suppose.