Jon Carroll

Jon Carroll, whose daily column in the San Francisco Chronicle often seems like a sane voice crying in the wilderness, has just won the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Jon Carroll is a singular writer, but I think he's probably a singular human being as well, one you would like to know in person. His political essays cut so close to the bone that you wish he were a presidential advisor. Other times, he waxes as poetic as Robert Burns with his wee mousies and wee lousies, except that with Jon it is more likely to be kitten follies or household ironies. I think Jon Carroll has a high regard for Truth, a slippery commodity, one which is harder than you'd think to pin down in words.

There are good writers you wouldn't want to know. One famous critic and novelist deals so much with suburban east-coast hanky-panky that I wonder if he has any other interests. Some writers show themselves to be such tornados that it would be difficult to be in the same room with them. Would you really want to meet Steve Martin or Woody Allen ? They both write for the New Yorker, in case you've only seen them on the screen. Other writers reveal themselves as just nasty or egocentric or reclusive or crazy. Sometimes you know that the best part of the person is his or her writing; there wouldn't be much left for social acquaintance.

But the person you sense behind Jon Carroll's writing is decent, funny, right-minded, a husband and grandfather, a person whose eyes are always open and whose intelligence is an open system.  Anybody would want to know someone like that. He also answers his e-mail.