Farewell to Steyn

By Nicholas Stix

On June 2, I sent the following letter to Mark Steyn, whom I’d heard is dying.

Like anyone else, I write to be read. (Anyone who says he just writes for himself is lying.) Somewhere at Mark Steyn’s Website, it said that the odds of one’s letter being read by him were slim to none. Well, that’s unacceptable. I don’t dash off notes. I write and re-write. If I were a paying reader, I would have posting privileges at Steyn’s Website, but since my longtime White nationalist/neo-Nazi/whatever editors have purged me, as has racial socialist paypal, and payoneer apparently stole payments a new editor sent me, I don’t have money to subscribe to anyone else’s Website.

And so, I am publishing my farewell letter to Steyn here, in hopes that someone reads it who has access to him, and sends it to him.

Nicholas Stix
add1dda@aol.com

Mark Steyn
mailbox@steynonline.com

Dear Mr. Steyn,

I must [mustest—a Germanism upchucking itself, in order to remind me to read some German] write you, while we are both still within the pale.

And yet, I must be brief, because the odds are that you’ll never see this.

We have met, but were not formally introduced. I was wearing a name plate, and you were the secret speaker of honor, though you had not yet gone on.

Our host extracted an oath of omerta. He addressed the audience of about 200, “There will be no tape recording or notes taken… Nicholas!” (He used to be very kind to me, pre-covid. Then he was forced to stop having those annual conferences/lunches/dinners, with the fabulous food all day.)

He was referring to me, which I found very flattering. Before you strode to the podium (you used to stride, in those days), I told you the number of your dinner table, to which our host immediately interjected, with a different number.

I asked you how you felt about no longer writing a column. You lied, saying you didn’t care.

The columns you wrote for that [Conrad] Black man, your old journalistic “rabbi” (imagine that—they put him away, too!—Six Degrees of the Notorious Gangster, Mark Steyn!) were the literary highlight of my week.

I’m not filling in with any background information about that night, because while you may never see this, others will. Your secretary [e-mail censor], and whoever at the fbi and/or splc reads my correspondence (and yours, too, one imagines, there and at the Canadian Human Rights tribunal).

I have told people behind your back, “Mark Steyn is God’s gift to the English language.”

So, there. Call me a “fan.” Do it!

An old friend who has gone on some (many?) of your cruises and bought your books, bought me your obituary book, along with a book on the George Floyd hoax/riots in minneapolis. He had to buy both books, in order to get free shipping from you-know-who.

Because I must review (for $0.00) the Floyd book They’re Lying, first, I’ve only read one chapter so far of yours.

It was “George’s Girl,” which ended with some notes he had written at the bottom of a photograph he’d given his lover, which comprised the most famous phrase his brother had written to their most famous song.

Surely, like millions of other American men—since no one else knew English—my late old man used to sing that line to my late mom, a couple of cracked nuts that should never have found themselves in the same bowl.

Anyway, “George’s Girl” provoked emotions in me that no other Steyn essay ever had. Especially that ending.

[“Bess, you is my woman, now.”]

The closest previous essay of yours was part of your amazing Sinatra marathon. It was the lengthy article on the child of Scandinavian (Finnish?) immigrants who wrote, “When Your Lover Has Gone.” About how he lived off “writing” (arranging) and died young, when his head imploded. And about how Sinatra, when he heard of the composer’s fate, directed his people to send all of his royalties for singing “When Your Lover Has Gone,” to the composer’s widow.

You put quite a bit of historical research into that one.

In any event, you’re my favorite essayist on The Voice.

I’m sure you’re getting endless letters of praise. And I hope you are enjoying time with your family.

I wish you as little physical pain as possible, in your final days. Of the other kind, well, it reminds us that we’re not gone yet. Raise a drink to yourself, and smash the glass in the fireplace!

Fare thee well, great Steyn,

Nicholas Stix