Background
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Fadiman was a grandson of the famed 1887-emigree Russian psychologist Boris Sidis and a nephew of the child prodigy William James Sidis.
Fadiman grew up in Brooklyn. His mother's maiden name was Grace Mendelbaum. She worked as a nurse; his father, Isadore, immigrated from Russia in 1892 and worked as a druggist.
He attended Columbia College at Columbia University. One of his teachers was lifelong friend Mark Van Doren; his undergraduate contemporaries included Jacques Barzun, Mortimer Adler, and Whittaker Chambers. Though he entered with the Class of 1924, his graduation was delayed until 1925 because of financial constraints. (Chambers clearly includes Fadiman in a group of ernste Menshen, whose ability to attend Columbia he attributes to "a struggle with a warping poverty impossible for those who have not glimpsed it to imagine it." He graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Read more about this topic: Clifton Fadiman
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)