Robert Warshow
1917—1955
Robert Warshow, who had been an editor of COMMENTARY since shortly after its inception, died on March 18, at the age of thirty-seven. The loss to his friends on the magazine—we were all his friends, and most of us his close ones—is as great as to COMMENTARY itself.
Nine years of daily association with him leave no doubt in our minds as to what an altogether kind, upright, and loyal, as well as gifted, young man he was. What he had, completely, was character. What he was, completely, and in the most literal sense, was a gentleman. We were, and are, proud of him, as a human being and as a Jew.
_____________
The loss is all the bitterer because he died in the ripeness of his promise. His brilliant film, literary, and general cultural criticism, which appeared in other magazines as well as COMMENTARY over the last few years, had been received with increasing admiration, both here and abroad. When he fell ill he was at work on a book of essays on the moving pictures. He was, in the opinion of many, one of the best writers of prose on the scene—a natural writer through and through—and had only begun to reveal the full measure of himself at the time of his death.
He was, too, an extraordinary editor. His intelligence, sympathy, patience, and, above all, his selflessness, helped many a young author find himself as a writer. They will remain permanently indebted to him.
_____________
COMMENTARY will not be the same without him. His presence, no less than his abilities, contributed immensely to whatever the magazine has achieved so far. No one can possibly fill his place, either in the office or in our hearts.
_____________