Fadiman, Clifton
FADIMAN, CLIFTON
FADIMAN, CLIFTON (1904–1999), U.S. literary critic. Fadiman was born in New York and graduated from Columbia University in 1925. He became editor in chief at Simon & Schuster and then book editor of the New Yorker (1933–43) and was widely known for his weekly radio program Information Please (1938–48). His collected essays were published in Party of One: Selected Writings (1955). He was a familiar figure offering suggestions to readers in the Book-of-the Month Club and guiding the selections of The Reader's Club. An editor and anthologist, he helped put together the multi-volume Great Books of the Western World (1990) and also edited The Treasury of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1992). He was awarded, in 1993, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He was remembered by Carolyn Heilbrun in When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling (2002).
bibliography:
R. Severo, "Clifton Fadiman," in: New York Times (June 21, 1999).
[Lewis Fried (2nd ed.)]