R.I.P. Norman Friedman

Post date: Nov 09, 2014 6:2:14 AM

I’m saddened to report that Norman Friedman—E. E. Cummings scholar, cofounder of the E. E. Cummings Society, and gestalt psychologist—has passed away. He died 6 November 2014, at the age of about 90, in Flushing, New York, survived by his wife Zelda and other family members. Please read my memories of Norman, published in a special issue of the Cummings Society journal, Spring, in 2008 in tribute to Friedman when he retired from editing the journal and running the society. It was my pleasure to have known Norman and Zelda for twenty years, and to have benefited from his patience and encouragement in my own writing about E. E. Cummings. It was always a pleasure to see both Norman and Zelda at annual conventions of the American Literature Association, and to read new Cummings-related essays and news items from Norman’s surefooted pen. And now many of us in the E. E. Cummings Society will miss him. As David V. Forrest, cofounder of the Cummings Society (with Friedman and Richard S. Kennedy), has just said to society members, “Norman once told me he wanted ‘forgetting me, remember me’ to be thought of at his passing,” and that “So, I imagine, would most of us.” Go in peace, Norman Friedman.