Background

Charles I. Glicksberg, writer and professor, was born in Warsaw, Poland, December 13, 1900, to Isidore and Lillian (Lifschitz) Glicksberg, and died on February 14, 1998, in New York.  After moving to the United States, he became a naturalized citizen.  He married Dorothy, and had two children, Stephanie and Paul.

Education

Glicksberg attended the College of the City of New York (B.S. 1923), Columbia University (M.A. 1924), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. 1932).  He was a Fulbright scholar at Bar-Ilan University in Israel (1958-59).  From early childhood, Charles had a fondness for books, but he “felt destined to become a doctor” and enrolled in pre-med courses.

In his senior year, a prize was offered for the best essay on literary criticism.  “I was declared the winner, received an honorarium with the princely sum of $25.00.  This changed the whole course of my life.  I gave up the study of medicine and instead enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University’s English Department.”  Glicksberg graduated from Columbia in 1924 having majored in English, and a year later received his M.A.  He continued his post-graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  His dissertation, Walt Whitman and the Civil War, was an “important contribution to Whitman scholarship”.  It contained newly-discovered articles that Charles Glicksberg had found which were signed by Velsor Brush, Walt Whitman’s grandfather.

Employment

Charles Glicksberg’s was Acting Chairman at the Southside High School in Newark, New Jersey, between 1936-46.  He taught English at South Philadelphia High School.  Between 1946-50 he was Assistant Professor of English at Brooklyn College, then Associate Professor (1950-58), Professor (1958-71), and Professor Emeritus (1971) at Brooklyn College.  He was also Professor of Literature at the New School for Social Research (1947-64), and Professor of Comparative Literature at the City University of New York (1962-71).

Glicksberg found teaching a wonderful experience.  He said:  “I shall never forget the intense excitement that filled me meeting with my first writing class.  I walked in, saw a conglomeration of faces - young, middle-aged, and even some elderly.  As my lecture proceeded, the students raised questions about literature.  I felt the room charged with electricity.  The students were highly sensitive, articulate and responded most intelligently to my lecture.  Would their manuscripts be as perceptive as their remarks in class?  I discovered a number of talented writers.  I held conferences with my students.  We discussed the contents of their work ... giving suggestions as to how they could improve their writing skills.  I made many friends among my students.”

Publications

Professor Glicksberg contributed articles to leading journals in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia.  He wrote on various topics –existentialism, perspectivism, communism, semantics, religion, education, American literature, God and the sexual revolution, philosophy, the relationship between the individual and state, the politics of drug consumption, psychoanalysis, modern drama, nihilism, and educational subjects such as the teaching of English composition, comparative literature, poetry, and linguistics.

Glicksberg contributed over 500 articles in periodicals such as the American Literature, New England Quarterly, English Journal, College English, Arizona Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly, Southwest Review, Antioch Review, Queens’ Quarterly (Canada Polemic), Western Humanities Review, Nineteenth-Century, and After England (Twentieth-Century England).  The titles of some of the articles in these journals are Melville and the Negro Problem: Benito Cereno; Kenneth Burke: The Critic’s Critic; The Symbolism of Vision; and Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Novelist.  He published at least 16 books, like the The Tragic Vision; Twentieth Century Literature; The Self in Modern Literature; Literature and the Death of God; The Ironic Vision in Modern Literature; Perspectivism in Modern Literature; Literature and Society; The Sexual Revolution in Modern American Literature; Literature of Nihilism; and Literature of Commitment. To help his students, Glicksberg published Writing the Short Story (1953) and Creative Writing (1960).  In addition, he published New Voices (1958 and 1960) that featured the writings of his students at the New School.

Affiliations

Professor Glicksberg was involved with the Vermont Fiction Writer’s Conference (1954-56). He was on the Special Committee for the Saturday Review of Literature to nominate best poetry books each year (1958). Professor Glicksberg was Lecturer for the American Jewish Congress, and Lecturer at Hillel (at Brooklyn College, 1946-57).  He had membership affiliations with Modern Language Association, American Association of University Professors, National Council of Teachers of English, American Humanist Association, and American Jewish Congress.

Honors

Charles Glicksberg received many awards during his lifetime.  He received an award for the best essay from the Arizona Quarterly in 1955, and was named “the best writer of articles that ever appeared in Arizona Quarterly”.  In 1958, Glicksberg received a Fulbright Scholarship to Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he was Lecturer from 1958-59.  He also received honors as Professor at Brooklyn College and The New School.

Final Years

In 1964, Glicksberg resigned from the New School for Social Research in order to spend more time writing.  He continued to write more extensively, and covered an even greater array of topics than he had before.  To quote Charles Glicksberg, “my accomplishments far outweigh the small hopes I had for myself when I was first interested many years ago in joining the ranks of the brotherhood of writers”.

Towards the end of his life, Charles Glicksberg was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, which made some of his handwritten notes more difficult to read.  After a long and prolific career, he died on February 14, 1998.