Christopher Lasch Is Dead at 61; Wrote About America's Malaise (original) (raw)
Christopher Lasch Is Dead at 61; Wrote About America's Malaise
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
- Feb. 15, 1994
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
February 15, 1994
,
Section A, Page
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
Christopher Lasch, the author of "The Culture of Narcissism," "The Minimal Self" and other theoretical works on modern culture, died yesterday at his home in Pittsford, N.Y. He was 61.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Nell Commager.
In his wide-ranging books and essays, Mr. Lasch offered a leftist analysis of industrial capitalism and its effects on American politics, social arrangements, modes of thought and personal psychology. As a counterpoise to the alienation and despair he saw as pervasive in American life, he proposed a progressive program that, paradoxically, relied heavily on the values of community, family and self-discipline. Diagnosing a Malaise
"The Culture of Narcissism"(W. W. Norton) is his best-known work. In the 1979 book, which was on the New York Times best-seller list for seven weeks, he described postwar America as a society of dangerously self-absorbed individuals, fixated on personal goals, fearful of their impulses and easily controlled by power elites.
President Jimmy Carter asked Mr. Lasch to advise him on Mr. Carter's speech, delivered in July 1979, on the nation's "crisis of confidence." It became known as the "national malaise" speech.
Mr. Lasch was born in Omaha. His father, Robert Lasch, was a journalist and editorial writer for The Omaha World Herald. His mother, Zora, was a social worker and later a philosophy professor. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in history in 1954. After earning a master's degree in history from Columbia University in 1955 and a doctorate in 1961, he became an associate professor at the University of Iowa in 1964 and a full professor the next year.
He was a professor of history at Northwestern University from 1966 to 1970 and at the University of Rochester from 1970 until his death. In 1979 he was named the Don Alonzo Watson Professor of History, and in 1985 he was named chairman of the history department.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement