Why we will all miss Alan Abelson

Brooke Southall of RIABiz.com writes about why readers of Barron’s will really miss columnist Alan Abelson, who died earlier this week.

Southall writes, “Often things happen on Fridays and his columns that appeared Saturday mornings always seemed to assimilate late-breaking reality —without the sense of last-minute appending. I often coughed up the five bucks for Barron’s just to read his column, or detoured to the Mill Valley library where the keep them neatly stacked.

“They say all humor is based on the inside joke. It helps explain why we laugh so much with our best friends. But a sage like Abelson knows enough about what you think — things that even you didn’t know you were thinking — that he can play off of that.

“In other words, Abelson, from a writer’s perspective, knew people and how we all operate — with help from the insanity of the mass psychology of crowds — a theater of the absurd every day.

“That his writing oozed with plays on that absurdity did not make him frivolous. Quite the opposite. It connected the world of business, finance, investments and the people who are behind it all. If the finance world has a lack, it’s one of human connection.”

Read more here.