Herschel Brickell: The Making of a Latin Americanist

Abstract

In The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe Russell Jacoby laments the demise of an earlier generation of so-called public intellectuals who wrote for a general and educated audience J These influential figures lived their lives by way of books, reviews, and journalism; they never or rarely taught in universities. They were superb essayists and graceful writers (17). Journalist, book columnist, and literary editor Herschel Brickell (1889-1952), while not mentioned by name in Jacoby's book, fits this description perfectly. To be an intellectual in that bygone era necessitated moving to New York or Chicago and writing books and articles (17), and that is precisely what Brickell did. He and his wife, Norma, moved to New York around 1920, and over the next three decades he became a highly-regarded literary commentator appearing with regularity in the leading newspapers and magazines of the day such as the New York Evening Post, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Times Book Review, and the Saturday Review of