Clifton Fadiman

Clifton Fadiman (born May 15, 1904 in Brooklyn , New York , † June 20, 1999 in Sanibel Island , Florida ) was an American all-rounder. He worked as a writer , critic , narrator, author , translator , journalist , bookworm, radio and television entertainer. He was a nephew of the famous eccentric genius William James Sidis .

Life

Fadiman was born in Brooklyn in 1904 to Russian immigrants. He was a gifted child who could read his first book when he was four and read Homer , Sophocles , Dante and Milton when he was ten . In 1925 he graduated from the university.

From his first marriage to Elizabeth Rush came his son Jonathan Rush. His second marriage was to Annalee Whitmore Jacoby , author and foreign correspondent for Time and Life in the Republic of China during World War II . She later went by the name Annalee Jacoby Fadiman. From this marriage there were two children, the son Kim and the daughter Anne Fadiman .

He taught English at Fieldston High School ( Bronx , New York) for two years before working for Simon & Schuster for ten years, when he was Chief Editor. Ten more years (1933-1943) he was responsible for the magazine The New Yorker for the area of ​​the book show and juror in the Book of the Month Club . Already famous citations in newspapers and magazines come from this time because of his numerous witty remarks and jokes.

Radio and television career

Clifton Fadiman was one of the first popular "witty, witty intellectual types" on radio and television in the USA in the 1950s. From 1930 to 1948, he hosted his most popular quiz show, Information Please , which he made in 1952 for CBS -TV when he was thirteen -Weekly summer replacement for the musical variety program The Fred Waring Show reactivated (June – September). With the advent of television in the United States, Fadiman's popularity grew, so that he appeared on many talk shows and hosted new quiz shows.

Its longest-running show from July 1949 to March 1954 was This Is Show Business . It was broadcast as one of the first regular "coast to coast" programs on CBS.

swell

• Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 195-196. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002

Books

• Party of One (1955).
• The American Treasury 1455-1955 (1955, ed. With Carl van Doren) ISBN 0-06-011205-0
• Voyages of Ulysses (1959) ISBN 0-584-63204-5
• Enter, Conversing (1962).
• Clifton Fadiman's Fireside Reader 1964, ISBN 0-671-13940-1
• Cricket's Choice (1974, with Marianne Carus) ISBN 0-87548-318-6
• Wine Buyers Guide 1977, ISBN 0-8109-1754-8
• The World Treasury of Children's Literature book 1, 2, 3 (1984, 1985 ed.) ISBN 0-316-27302-3
• World of the Short Story 1988, ISBN 0-330-30132-2
• A Toast to Wines and Spirits 1989, ISBN 0-8109-2404-8
• The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (1991) ISBN 0-316-27305-8
• The World of the short story: A 20th Century Collection (1990) ISBN 0-517-03400-X
• The New Joys of Wine 1990 ISBN 0-8109-3652-6
• The New Lifetime Reading Plan * 1997 ISBN 0-06-270208-4
• Fantasia Mathematica , 1997 (Reprint, Orig. 1958) ISBN 0-387-94931-3
• The Mathematical Magpie , 1998 ISBN 0-387-94950-X
• The New Lifetime Reading Plan : Revised and Expanded 1999 ISBN 0-06-272073-2
• Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes (2000, with Andre Bernhard) ISBN 0-316-08267-8

Web links

• Literature by and about Clifton Fadiman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Clifton Fadiman in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778748.html
• http://www.infoplease.com/spot/fadiman1.html
• http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/sep99/40a.html