Interesting question – and one that stumped me for a while. I’m coming close to the end of my dissertation, so I am working with all long dead people, and I had to pull my head out of the eighteenth century to even contemplate the question.

I think I would have cried when Benjamin Franklin died, if he wasn’t already dead, simply because his intellectual curiosity was something rare and special. I will cry when [my dissertation director], dies because he has an amazing mind (can quote Greek philosophers in Greek at will) coupled with a truly humane soul. That kind of humanity is rare in our world. I strive to be as good an academic, a teacher and mentor to my students as he does every day.

My husband cried when Joey Ramone died — and I mean really cried, which is highly unusual for him. The Ramones meant a great deal to him, from spurring his development as a musician to validating the inevitable feelings of alienation that come with growing up in a NJ suburb. But I have never cried at the death of an artist or writer, although I came close at the death of Bernard Rimland, the psychologist responsible for banishing the concept of the “refrigerator mother” as the origin of autism.

I don’t know why I didn’t cry for Douglas Adams, Jim Henson or Laurie Colwin, especially since I am prone to tears — I cry easily at movies and books. I think I come closest to crying for authors and thinkers who work to achieve some kind of grace in the world, probably because it is so rare. Maybe I will cry for Frank Oz, whose voice has influenced so much of my childhood.

When Tennesee Williams died I remember spending the weekend re-reading his short stories. He was one of my favorite writers and even though his best work was far behind him, I still felt a twing of loss for someone who had devoted his life to his craft.

Artitsts of today? Many come to mind but as you said, the circumstances of their death would have more to do with my reaction than their actual death.

That said, I’d be upset if Madonna left us before hitting 75.

Excepting artists i know personally or at least correspond with, no. For one thing, i hardly know of any artists other than writers. And even when i do admire writers, i don’t know their circumstances. if they had good lives, i don’t really feel moved to tears. i cried at the end of van Gogh’s biography by David Sweet because i was fully aware of how he had lived, i felt close to him, and i felt his despair when he shot himself with a pistol in that cornfield — but most of all his last letter to Theo was heartbreaking.

Another thing about a reported death . . . reading a newspaper account generally is not the sort of thing that makes me cry (and I rarely watch tv).

When my father died, i cried like a baby of course, without seeing the body. But by the time we went to the funeral home, i was dry-eyed — until i saw his name over a door. Then i broke down and cried uncontrollably again. For months afterward, something he owned could reduce me to tears — objects often make me bawl.

i cried the other might watching ‘Munich’ for the 4th time. (Now I am not talking crying a river, more like being on the verge of tears.) Although i didn’t know any of them, i felt their circumstances — especially when they are being herded in their underwear. Details like that — these guys in their underpants facing terrorists with machine guns — seem to crystallize an emotional response in me.

Watching Lord Jim the other night i knew Jim was going to die at the end — it is Conrad, after all — but also i had seen the movie once before. i was fine until Jim threw his hat on the body of a boy whom he had sort of adopted and who had loved to wear his captain’s hat — that did it for me . . . i reckon that’s a form of Eliot’s objective correlative.

I can sympathize; I cried at the end of The Iron Giant.

I do recall twice that [our mutual friend, who is black] mentioned he cried … on hearing of the death of Miles Davis and James Baldwin.

So I guess I should’ve expanded this question to “which artists’ deaths caused you to cry in recent years, and why,” but hey.