Word: fadiman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. CLIFTON FADIMAN, 95, impassioned essayist and critic dedicated to making intellectual works accessible; on Sanibel Island, Fla. Fadiman judged Book-of-the-Month Club selections for 50 years; moderated the '30s and '40s radio show Information Please; and edited more than 20 anthologies, including his beloved The World Treasury of Children's Literature. (See Eulogy...
...feel lucky having spent 17 years in the company of CLIFTON ("Kip") FADIMAN at the Book-of-the-Month Club, learning from him how to read. Bearing witness to his reports--he wrote one on every book he read for the club--and his discussions at the monthly meeting of the judges was like taking the world's best creative writing course. He was a humane critic, seldom unkind, with few foibles. (I once did hear him say, "Faulkner makes me giggle.") The books he loved most were those that bore two Fadiman standards: lucidity and a mind at work...
...Jeopardy!, but most shows have daters or honeymooners lewdly embarrassing each other. The mud wrestling is only verbal, but it's still a tiny step from Jerry Springer--and a long way from the stellar font of quiz shows, radio's Information, Please (1938-48), hosted by Clifton Fadiman and featuring the mordant wits Fred Allen and Oscar Levant. Back then folks tuned in to meet people cleverer than they were, not more deranged; and intelligence was an attribute to flaunt, not hide like an appendix scar. Today's game shows might take their cue from another '40s radio favorite...
Others said that Muldoon and Fadiman represented the academic environment that Harvard provides its students...
Muldoon and Fadiman were also honorarily inducted...