Zman And The Road To Paradise

A reader reflects on his recent passing

The Z Blog banner. He did actually resemble the Zeus-like main figure, although the surrounding crowd, while real enough, was online.

I got a lot of reaction to my recent announcement of the passing of the great podcaster ZMan (whose real name was John Christopher Zander). To my surprise, this reaction included a jump in subscriptions to PeterBrimelow.com, although it’s entirely free. In response to my thanks, I received this eloquent explanation from one of his readers, which I reproduce with permission:

My subscription is in memory of the Zman. I have had more of a sense of loss at his passing than I would have expected as a reader and subscriber. I never knew and never would have known the Zman in person, only reading his posts and watching videos. I understand, as Charles Haywood has pointed out, that clients (or customers) are the enemy. Parasocial customers must be even worse.

I have read his blog in the morning or at lunch for at least the last ten years and subscribed to his site on Substack soon after he started there. I also listened to his podcasts on Fridays and Sundays, and watched his videos. I checked comments on all postings off and on throughout my day.

My loss is private because no one I know was a reader of the Zman's and there is no one I can discuss this with. A part of my day is now empty.

This morning, while puttering around the house, half-listening to a preposterous David Baldacci audio book, one of his characters recited a couple of lines from Chesterton's "The Rolling English Road". I immediately looked up the poem and thought the last stanza, particularly the last two lines, was appropriate for the sense of hope we should have even in loss:

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

I appreciate the good fight made by him and you, the clearer eyes and ears, the good news yet to hear, and the fine things to be seen.

I wish for the Zman's family and friends a beautiful and heartfelt, memorial service.

Kensal Green, in northwest London, contains a famous cemetery. As of the 2011 census, the area was just 26% “White British.”

Zman’s road to paradise is by way of Berkeley Springs WV, where his funeral will be held Thursday July 10—details here.