| Brendan Gill |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT BRENDAN GILL | |
| american journalists | |
| people from hartford, connecticut | |
| 1914 births | |
| 1997 deaths | |
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He graduated from Yale University in 1936, where he was a member of Skull & Bones . A champion of Architectural Preservation and other Visual arts, he chaired the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and authored 15 books, including ''Here at The New Yorker'' and the iconoclastic Frank Lloyd Wright biography ''Many Masks''. In September of 1989, Gill wrote the controversial article "The faces of Joseph Campbell " for the '' New York Review Of Books '' where he made a number of accusations against Campbell including anti-semitism. Gill, who identified himself as a friend of Campbell from the Century Club in New York City, notes in the article that he wrote it in reaction to the enormous popularity of '' The Power Of Myth '' series in 1988. In November of 1989, '' New York Review Of Books '' published a series of letters "Joseph Campbell: An Exchange" from former students and colleagues who defended Campbell. Gill responded to these letters by upholding his claims. In the April/May 2006 issue of Bookforum, an article entitled () Estate of Mind about Dorothy Parker's Legacy, features this assement: The most questionable consideration of Parker's life and work came from Viking, her publisher since 1930. Six years after her death, the firm decided to revise her collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker, in print since 1944, by expanding the contents (with Hellman's approval) and adding a new preface to accompany W. Somerset Maugham's original introduction. To write this new piece the publisher first invited Hellman, who declined. Brendan Gill, a New Yorker writer who'd been slightly acquainted with Parker, accepted the job. While Gill commended Parker's "perfect manners," he had a low opinion of her literary achievements: "The span of her work is narrow and what it embraces is often slight." Unlike Maugham, who praised her "enduring significance," Gill contended that she was an overrated writer who enjoyed an early vogue but whose moment had passed some forty years earlier. The rest was only "a protracted life-in-death." He administered another sideswipe in his comparison of her to a guest who has outstayed his welcome and "yet makes no attempt to pack his things and go." As a result, some people who assumed Parker had exited the scene long ago saw her true departure as a bit tardy, said Gill, adding that she "would have been the first to agree." Gill seemed preoccupied with those he deemed unworthy of acclaim or celebrity; Wright, Campbell, Parker. And he voiced strong opinions about all of them. One wonders how Gill would withstand a withering tome on his own life. He died, aged 83, in 1997 from natural causes. REFERENCES
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