Robert Warshow
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Robert Warshow (1917-1955) was an American author and critic who wrote about popular culture in Commentary and The Partisan Review in the mid-20th century. He was born and resided in New York City and attended the University of Michigan.
Among the articles published in Warshow's short lifetime were analyses of the western and gangster film genres from a cultural standpoint. He also penned essays praising playwright Clifford Odets as well as George Herriman's newspaper comic strip Krazy Kat. He also wrote several essays arguing that Arthur Miller was not a competent dramatist. Warshow was also perhaps the first serious critic to write about Mad Magazine, one of his son Paul's favorites, which he admitted to having read "with a kind of irritated pleasure," though he also said that he didn't like it very much.
Warshow died of a heart attack at the age of 37. Most of his published work was collected in the book The Immediate Experience in 1962.
