William A. Henry III

William Alfred Henry III (January 24, 1950 – June 28, 1994) was an American cultural critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.^[1][2]

Henry lived in North Plainfield, New Jersey as a young man. He graduated from Yale in 1971 and began his career in journalism in Boston, writing for the Boston Globe. His coverage of school desegregation in Boston won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He also wrote on the arts for the Globe, winning a second Pulitzer for his television criticism in 1980.^[3]

In the 1980s he worked as an arts critic for Time magazine, while pursuing his interests in cultural criticism and in American politics. Among his articles for Time was a story critical of the Hollywood trade newspapers in their cozy relationship in an industry town.^[4] In 1984, he wrote Visions of America, an account of the American presidential campaign of that year. His 1990 video documentary of Bob Fosse, Steam Heat, won an Emmy.^{[citation needed]} He also wrote a 1992 biography of Jackie Gleason, The Great One.^[5][6]

His final book was In Defense of Elitism, a work of social and cultural criticism that argued that societies and cultures might be ranked on a spectrum ranging from 'egalitarianism' to 'elitism', and that the contemporary United States had moved too far away from the latter; a view he defended with reference to college education, multiculturalism, and other topics. He died of a heart attack on June 28, 1994, while the book was coming to press.^[7]

• Henry, William A. (1985). Visions of America : how we saw the 1984 election. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 9780871130129. OCLC 564291516.
• Henry, William A. (1992). The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-41533-0. OCLC 651898009 – via Internet Archive.
• Henry, William A. (1994). In Defense of Elitism. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-47943-1. OCLC 30155600.

Wikiquote has quotations related to William A. Henry III.

• George Scialabba's review of In Defense of Elitism
• Roger Kimball's article in The New Criterion, April 2001 references In Defense of Elitism