Richard Schain

Landesman's Legacy Richard Schain

LANDESMAN'S LEGACY: The Abandoned Writings (2018) is the sequel to LANDESMAN'S JOURNAL: Meditations of a Forest Philosopher (2016) Paragon House, St. Paul, Minn. Leon Landesman was an unsuccessful academic philosopher who had retreated to a solitary life at the edge of a national forest. He kept a personal notebook, mailing it shortly before his death to Schain, his only friend, who published it under the title LANDESMAN'S JOURNAL. The current work has a very different history. Sometime after Leon's demise, Schain was visiting his deceased friend's cabin and decided to investigate a decrepit shed in the back. There he came across a steamer style trunk, which required much effort to open. It was filled with many pages of writings that Landesman seemed to have set aside. Leafing through them, Schain recognized that these were no mere jotting down of random notes but were a significant deepening of this forest philosopher's concepts about life, extending from his own life to American life and to human life in general. The expression was far more forceful and encompassing than the relatively restrained style of the Journal. After spending many hours deciphering the barely legible handwriting, Schain came to realize that these were Landesman's true legacy, representing a gift to readers in search of developing themselves and interested in knowing an individual such as Leon Landesman, who had dedicated his life to developing his soul.