William Alfred Henry III (1950–1994) was an American cultural

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or gover ...

and Pulitzer Prize-winning

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

Career

Henry lived in North Plainfield, New Jersey as a young man. He graduated from Yale in 1971 and began his career in journalism in Boston, writing for the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Gl ...

''. His coverage of school desegregation in Boston won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He also wrote on the arts for the ''Globe'', winning a second Pulitzer for his television criticism in 1980. In the 1980s he worked as an arts critic for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' magazine, while pursuing his interests in cultural criticism and in American politics. Among his articles for ''Time'' was a story critical of the Hollywood trade newspapers in their cozy relationship in an industry town. In 1984, he wrote ''Visions of America'', an account of the American presidential campaign of that year. His 1990 video documentary of

Bob Fosse Robert Louis Fosse (; June 23, 1927 – September 23, 1987) was an American actor, choreographer, dancer, and film and stage director. He directed and choreographed musical works on stage and screen, including the stage musicals ''The Pajam ...

, ''Steam Heat'', won an Emmy. He also wrote a 1992 biography of

Jackie Gleason John Herbert Gleason (February 26, 1916June 24, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, writer, composer, and conductor known affectionately as "The Great One." Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was know ...

, ''The Great One''. His final book was ''In Defense of Elitism'', a work of social and cultural criticism that argued that societies and cultures might be ranked on a spectrum ranging from 'egalitarianism' to 'elitism', and that the contemporary United States had moved too far away from the latter; a view he defended with reference to college education, multiculturalism, and other topics. He died of a heart attack on June 28, 1994 while the book was coming to press.Short obituary
of Henry at ''Time'' magazine

of Henry at ''TIME Magazine''

Publications

* * *

References

External links

* George Scialabba'
review
of ''In Defense of Elitism'' * Roger Kimball's article in
The New Criterion
', April 2001 references ''In Defense of Elitism'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Henry, William A. Iii 1950 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American non-fiction writers American television critics Pulitzer Prize for Criticism winners Time (magazine) people