He displayed some 10,000 cat-themed artifacts at the American Museum of the House Cat in North Carolina, which welcomed several thousand people a year.
A theoretical physicist-turned-sociologist, he upended his field by focusing on social networks to explain how society works. His writing was compared to James Joyce’s.
Harry Crews, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown were part of a Southern writers’ movement that centered dissidents and outsiders. They’re still worth reading.