Paul Zweig | |
---|---|
Born |
Brooklyn, New York | July 14, 1935
Died | August 29, 1984 Paris, France | (aged 49)
Education |
Columbia University (
BA,
MA) University of Paris ( PhD) |
Occupation(s) | Critic, poet, professor |
Employer | Queens College, City University of New York |
Paul Zweig (July 14, 1935 – August 29, 1984) was an American poet, memoirist, and critic known for his study on Walt Whitman. [1] [2]
Zweig was born in Brooklyn on July 14, 1935, and was raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Brighton Beach. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, [3] entered Columbia University to study engineering but switched to literature after taking classes taught by Mark Van Doren. [4] He received his B.A. from Columbia in 1956 and M.A. in 1958. [5] He lived in France and studied at the University of Paris, earning his PhD in comparative literature before returning to the United States in 1966. [3]
Zweig taught at Columbia and Queens College and served as chair of its department of comparative literature in alternate years. [1] He also reviewed works of poetry, criticism, and fiction for The New York Review of Books. [1]
Zweig received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976 and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 1984 for his study on Walt Whitman. [6] [7] He was posthumously named a Finalist of Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990. [8]
In 1984, Zweig died of lymphatic cancer at age 49 in the American Hospital of Paris. [2]