Masterfully penned, your obituary to Claude Lévi-Strauss brought me to tears (November 14, 2009). Paradoxically, two eerie sentences explain my rapture. “The existentialists,” goes the first, “and all who thought that man should be studied as an individual rather than en bloc, noisily attacked him.” Splendid. “In the bitter phrase of Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom he sparred for years,” goes the second, “he preferred to view men like ants.” Splendid, indeed. And so he became an anthropologist rather than a philosopher. Or perhaps a writer. At any rate, these two sentences helped me understand why I had cherished Lévi-Strauss practically since childhood. Like ants, humans turn out to be somewhat interesting. But not otherwise.