What can I tell you about my cherished friend Stan Persky, who died on Oct. 15, in Berlin? Born to working-class Jewish parents in Chicago in 1941, he knew early on that he wanted to be a writer and as a teenager he reached out to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to invite mentoring. This was a typically nervy move by the young Persky, who had, even then, as family members commented, “such a mouth on him.”
Stan soon joined the U.S. navy and served in Italy and San Francisco. It was in that California city that he studied with the poet Jack Spicer and developed the impeccable writing style that distinguished all his work thereafter. He moved to Vancouver with his then partner, the poet Robin Blaser, in 1966, and studied at the University of British Columbia, where he was a prominent student activist. He had already published a book of poetry in the United States, and both his long residence in Canada and his final years in Berlin were marked by tireless writing and publishing, eventually producing over 20 books and innumerable columns, reviews and articles.
He wrote for The Tyee as well as the Georgia Straight; the Globe and Mail; the Vancouver Sun; the website Dooneyscafe, which he co-founded with his friend and lifelong writing partner Brian Fawcett; the Los Angeles Review of Books and many other publications.
He taught generations of students, with most of his academic work done at what is now Capilano University. His students, both in formal classrooms and in informal gatherings of writers, were challenged to think hard and write clearly. He encouraged many aspiring writers. Many took up the sometimes thankless task of public intellectual work because of his encouragement.
Stan was an early voice for gay liberation and an activist on a broad range of social justice issues. He was a long-serving member of the board of directors of the BC Civil Liberties Association and a fearless social critic, equally at home critiquing the sexism, misogyny and mean-spiritedness of the right and the sometimes tiresome virtue signalling of the left. He truly was Canadian writing’s man for all seasons.
Stan’s last years were spent in Berlin, where his friends Thomas Marquard and Nadya al-Wakeel informally adopted him as a beloved and honorary family member. He settled into a long-term and affectionate connection there with his partner Damian. In an email to me this year he wrote: “When, many years hence (I hope ‘many’ years), the obit writers come around to collect reflections, you can assure them that my period of semi-retirement, featuring a 20-year or so relationship, was a happy ending.”
So, Stan will be remembered for his public-facing work as an author and activist, as well he should be. But he should also be remembered for his remarkable capacity for faithful, nourishing friendship. On that point, when I was invited to contribute to a 2018 anthology celebrating Stan’s work, here is some of what I wrote:
“Stan is not only a writer of shapely sentences and engaging narratives, although he is certainly that. He has made friendship the centrepiece of his intimate life, and for those of us lucky enough to be his friends, he has again and again illustrated the large and generous definition he gives to the concept. Persky is a master practitioner of the art of friendship.
“One telling example occurred decades ago, when I appeared at his door in the wake of a horrific call from the Sacramento police. The abiding mystery that had surrounded my sister Candy’s disappearance there a few years before had been solved by the discovery of her remains outside the California capital, and dental records confirmed her identity. For two years my family had been searching for her and hoping against hope that she might be found alive. The call from the police extinguished those already very dim hopes.
“When I fell through Stan’s front door on that horrible day, my heart scoured with grief and rage, he first made me a cup of coffee and then immediately offered me all the money I would need to go south and deal with taking my sister home and burying her. We were at his bank within the half-hour, and I suspect Stan emptied out his account entirely to provide me with the money I needed. I personally know of several other such acts of financial generosity by Stan over the years, gifts, and no-interest loans to folks who, like me in those days, would never have been mistaken for a good credit risk.
“The day they found my sister’s body was the most dramatic instance of my turning to Stan for support, but certainly not the only one. Over and over again, when my personal life was beset with heartbreaks and tumult, I could always count on Stan for a ready, sympathetic ear and innumerable cups of his reliably vile instant coffee at the kitchen table in the old house on York Street.
“And quite apart from the emotional first aid and patient listening he provided whenever I appeared, Stan has brought his keen intelligence and sardonic wit to the decades-long chain of arguments, political disagreements and book talk that we have shared at Friday lunches that have gone on now for the better part of my (more or less!) adult life. Those talks, conducted over the lunch table, at the bar or walking along Kits Beach, have enriched my life with engaged intellectual challenge, fresh information, obscure reading recommendations and flashing wit.
“I know this has been true for others lucky enough to count Stan as a friend. A word about Stan’s relationship to other writers is in order as well. Persky is one of the only writers in the known galaxy who does not hold to Gore Vidal’s resolute motto, ‘It is not only necessary that I succeed. Others must fail.’ Canadian bookshelves are well stocked with books that would not have made it to press, or been half as good without Stan’s encouragement and insightful criticism. He takes genuine delight in supporting emerging writers and in encouraging those, both young and old, who are still interested in the dying art of the book.
“In both the private realm of friendship and out in the public square, Stan has been hard at work extending the possibilities for intelligent, humane, friendly connections among people. All his work as a public intellectual, ranging from poetry to political commentary to experimental non-fiction, reflects a vision of a better world, one in which we all treat each other with the exquisite respect and intelligence that Stan brings to his treatment of his friends. As noted, he has been a heroic source of micro-loans and outright gifts for those he loves, and he has always been equally generous in sharing his enthusiasms for newly discovered writers and books. One of the many books I first heard about from Stan and later learned to love is the American philosopher Richard Rorty’s luminous text Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
“I found myself thinking of Rorty’s wonderful meditations as I was preparing to write about Stan and his heroic practice of friendship. We are all subject to the blind, brute contingency of life in a world without final certainties. This circumstance is made more bearable by the intellectual virtue of irony and the intentional/emotional virtue of solidarity, virtues that Stan has embodied repeatedly in his life.
“Friendship may be the supreme democratic relationship, the even-handed, unselfish affection that is felt and exercised without the spur of erotic or romantic desire. Stan and I both came of age in a time of utopian hope for a transformed social order and have lived to see that hope nuanced and diminished by the rough workings of 20th-century history. And yet, even in the face of such disappointments, it is possible to hope for genuine friendship in the private sphere and a more amiable, respectful, even friendly tone in public life. Persky has done his part to promote both, and his city, his nation and his friends have all been enriched by his efforts.”
Today, remembering Stan with love, admiration and sorrow, one final thought occurs to me in the long rain shadow of grief his death demands. Obituaries often conclude with a list of things people are encouraged to do in memory of the loved one lost to death. This seems to me a useful practice, so here goes.
To honour Stan, read his books and share them with the young. Critically examine everything you believe and be willing to change your opinions when you learn new data. Challenge the cruel machinery of social power that does so much to crush our best possibilities, and every day find something to laugh at and an injustice to confront. Be kind to your friends.
This article was originally published in The Tyee.
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