Born in Topeka, Kansas, and raised across Michigan, Chicago, New York and Virginia, he earned a Yale degree in 1955 after studying literature with Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. Early professional life placed him at Macmillan, Time, The New Yorker and Story, where his reviews helped launch writers such as John Irving and Cormac McCarthy; short stories like “Chico” and “A Mussel Named Eccle…
