The Chicago Sun-Times has a columnist on its payroll who has to be one of the 4 or 5 most famous men in Illinois.  He’s savvy in sports (he began his career writing about the fighting Illini) and has become one of the most astute and popular of American film critics.  Everybody knows the guy, or should.  It ought to be embarrassing not to have heard of him.

In Esquire magazine this month, there is a long write-up about him by Chris Jones called “The Essential Man.”  The piece is centered on the cancer that has removed Ebert’s chin, jaw and upper neck, making it impossible for him to eat, drink or talk.  This horrendous state has lasted now for four years.  the news, however, is elsewhere.

Ebert is constantly at pains (no play on words intended) to explain to people that they shouldn’t be distraught over his ailment and handicap, that he has in fact never been happier!  And he can prove it!  He has never been writing as well as now that he must find another voice.  Of course there is a wide array of technical voices he can choose from, and has, as well as a gamut of signs to use to “communicate.”  But the essential man is in his writerly voice.  It appears that, as important as film criticism has been for him and his family (a livelihood), it pales now in comparison with the urgent rush of things he must get down while there’s still time.  And he’s right.  Right to be slightly obsessed, and right to feel it’s urgent.  If he doesn’t do it, no one will. 

Several comments on this precious man.  First of all, he is a staunch atheist.  And when he finally goes out, I’d be surprised if any priest or minister be allowed to smooth things over on this score.  It’s wonderful to see, in writing, how adamant he is on this subject, and how curious he is to explore the holes in his own “system” while continuing to shoot holes through the system of belief, which, as we all know, is an easy target for rationallyinclined beings.  If I were in a position of power, I would make Roger Ebert on the subject of the valor and distinction of atheism obligatory in all high schools.  His example, and his thought, are definitive rebuttals of all the lank stuff going around, turning the USA into something like a religious backwoods. 

Secondly, and relatedly, one of the most interesting posts he’s put up over this four year period is one called “I feel good.  I knew that I would.”  Readers of this blog know how important that song was, done by two people in the 80s in one of last year’s best film documentaries.  But Ebert writes about something else: he wants to know what scientific basis he can find for the tingling he feels up his spine every time he sees a fine or great movie.  The feeling of elevation, the emotion that people describe as being uplifted.  He first of all gives examples of what he’s talking about (the journal entry is dated 14 January, 2009), from film and from the career of Michael Jordan.  He quotes extensively from an article by Emily Yoffe at the Slate site.  To quote her again:

 ”powerful moments of elevation sommetimes seem to push a mental reset button, wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.”  Ebert goes on to ground this “feeling” or “sense” in the innervation of the vagus nerve, the only nerve that starts in the brainstem and extends down below the head, to the neck, chest and abdomen, where it contributes to the stimulation of the viscera.” 

That why one’s spine tingles in the presence of beauty, or greatness, or fittingness.

Lastly, there is something incredible in the man’s legacy as a blogger.  He has always had huge numbers of comments to his posts, but huge is a relative term.  (His career in television makes this a little easier to stomach)  Since he has let loose in his new and more perfect voice, the number of comments has sky-rocketed.  From 800 to a thousand comments for a single post!  Of course this makes my spine tingle.  He has a way with words.  Unlike Claire in the novel “On Beauty,” who has “a way of saying things that couldn’t be answered,” Ebert finds his way into your heart: he seems to have found a direct track to the vagus nerve.  On the other side of the Claire people who talk so overwhelmingly that there is nothing left to say, there are all the people who remain silent out of fears, or, once again in the terms of Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty”:

“the silence that ensued was not silence because nobody had anything to say — quite the opposite.  You could feel it.  Howard could feel it, millions of things to say brewing in this classroom, so strong sometimes that they seem to shoot from the students telepthically and bounce off the furniture.  … But none of the students would speak.  They had an intense fear of their peers.  And, more than that, of Howard himself.  When he first began teaching he had tried, stupidly, to coax them out of this fear — now he positively relished it.” 

We all know situations like this.  The miracle and the saintliness of Ebert’s new bag is in the democratic vistas he is opening up as he wanes away.  The speed and power of the two-faced process is awesome, and humbling for the likes of me. 

There would be no better way to spend your time than to go to this man’s blog and read what he has to say, what all of a sudden must be said, and to which thousands of people in America find the time to respond, lovingly and with unusual honesty.  This is a million light years from the talk show, and the op-ed scene of major american newspapers.  this is something entirely unexpected, and people who go there know what that means, and what it’s worth.  Go there, please.