Brendan Gill

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Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 – December 27, 1997) wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gill was graduated in 1936 from Yale University, where he was a member of Skull & Bones. He was a long-time resident of Bronxville, New York.

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 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 charging him with anti-Semitism. Gill, who identified himself as a friend of Campbell from the Century Club in New York City, probably was more of an acquaintance. People came out en masse to come to Campbell's defense shortly afterward; many of them colleagues from academia and other prominence. According to many, Campbell was opinionated but was neither anti-semitic, nor a radical.

Brendan Gill died of natural causes in 1997, at the age of 83 .

His son, Michael Gates Gill, recently published a book (How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else) about growing up in the shadows of his father, and finally opening his eyes late in life.