Alan Sullivan “sliding to the end”?

If I met Alan Sullivan, a.k.a. “Seablogger,” on the street — or at a Tea Party or a Sarah Palin rally, perhaps — I’d dismiss him as a right-wing nutjob. And perhaps I’d be right to do so: he does believe some things that I find profoundly wacky, indefensible even. As I wrote in a never-published draft from September 2009, when Alan was contemplating quasi-retirement from his blog: “He thinks Barack Obama is a subversive crypto-socialist whose policies will destroy America. He regards global warming as an enormous and obvious fraud. He thinks there is a vast nationwide Democratic conspiracy to steal elections.”

And yet, what shines through in Alan’s blogging, no matter how difficult I find it to square with all of the above, is that he is also an exceedingly thoughtful and intelligent person. Even when I think what he’s saying is absolutely bats**t crazy, the sharp intellect underlying his thought processes cannot be ignored or denied. Perhaps he has ideological blind spots — or, hell, perhaps I do! — and a hint of congenital zealotry. But he’s also a brilliant guy. In that sense, Alan challenges me in a way that few bloggers do. And I love reading his stuff.

It’s a complicated blog-reading relationship that I have with Alan, whom I discovered for the same reason that many people discovered me — hurricane-blogging — and who I’ve kept reading over the years not just because he’s a natural-disaster nut, a Tolkien fan, and a brilliant writer (although, that too), but because his take on the world is endlessly fascinating, even when I think it’s beyond wrong. Above all, Alan is a near-perfect blogger, with a remarkable knack for weaving in captivating discussions of his own life, alongside political flames, alongside miscellaneous thought-provoking posts about assorted and sundry topics, all without seeming narcissistic or navel-gazing in the slightest. In short, he accomplishes something I was once accused of: “Thousands of bloggers have failed to make themselves interesting enough to cause virtual strangers give a hoot about their lives, but you pull it off effortlessly.”

Alan is also, alas, dying. He’s been dying for quite a while — of leukemia — and has been very open about that fact. (His profound openness about his personal life is another of his great strengths as a blogger.) But, thankfully for all of us, he’s been taking his sweet time about it (dying, that is). At one point, Alan didn’t expect to see the 2008 hurricane season, still less the presidential election, through to its conclusion. But he did, and now here he is, still kickin’ as the 2010 season and the midterm elections approach. His unexpected longevity, a gift of modern medicine, has given his devoted community of “rare readers” a much longer-than-expected window to enjoy his continued musings on what he — and, for the most part, they — regard as a world in increasing turmoil and peril.

But, sadly, that window may finally be closing. In the wake of a new health crisis Friday, which sent him to the E.R. and eventually the I.C.U., Alan is now openly speculating that his time may be very short:

If discharged into hospice, which is quite likely, I will be sliding to the end, and bidding you adieu quite soon.

Let’s hope not. For all our disagreements about politics, I believe Alan is irreplaceable, and when he departs, it will be a great loss for the blogosphere. I wouldn’t say that about very many Palin-loving, Obama-hating, conspiracy-mongering right-wing zealots. But Alan Sullivan is sui generis. He is, for me, an enigma wrapped in a riddle: someone who, on paper, I should find intolerable due to his fringe politics, yet who, in reality, I find fascinating and compelling and captivating and wonderful. This post might sound a bit like a back-handed complement, but it’s really not. Alan is great, and I’ll truly miss him when he goes.

More importantly, perhaps, having converted abruptly from atheist to devout Christian in the course of his tribulations (and having has blogged movingly about the experience), Alan has been working on a comprehensive series of psalm translations, and needs “at least another month of work capability” to finish the project. It would be a damn shame if that work is cut short, as it clearly means a great deal to him, and to many of his readers. For my part, selfishly, I’d hate to lose his insights ahead of the 2010 hurricane season, which shows early signs of being an active one (unlike the last several duds).

In any case, this post is just a long-winded way of providing some sort of context in which to wish Alan the best, both in this world and — when it comes to it — the next. For now, I remain hopeful for a recovery.