Brendan Gill (October 4, 1914 — December 27, 1997) wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.
"I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.""If it were better, it wouldn't be as good.""It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.""Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gill was graduated in 1936 from Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He was a long-time resident of Bronxville, New York and Norfolk, Connecticut.
A champion of architectural preservation and other visual arts, he chaired the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and authored 15 books, including Here at The New Yorker and the iconoclastic Frank Lloyd Wright biography Many Masks.
In September 1989, Gill wrote the controversial article "The Faces of Joseph Campbell" for the New York Review of Books where he made a number of accusations against Campbell (later disputed by others), including charging him with anti-Semitism. Gill was marginally acquainted with Campbell through the Century Club. After his article, many people and from various walks of life who knew Campbell personally, vigorously denied the accusations levied by Gill.
Brendan Gill died of natural causes in 1997, at the age of 83 .
Gill's son, Michael Gates Gill, is the author of A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. His youngest son, Charles Gill, is the author of the novel The Boozer Challenge, a sexy romp of the struggling upper class with tongue-in-cheek humor and wit.