David Grossvogel, 1925–2020

David Grossvogel, Goldwin Smith Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature emeritus at Cornell, founded Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism in 1971 and served as editor until 1976. He conceived of Diacritics as a new journal that would stand out both visually and intellectually from other academic journals of the time. Volume 1, number 1 began with the word “henceforth” in large type, followed by a sort of manifesto, including the assertion that Diacritics “considers the literary text without losing sight of the fundamental human concerns of our time.” During his years as editor, he arranged interviews with Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernst Gombrich, Camilio Jose Cela, Jacques Derrida, Eugène Ionesco, A. R. Ammons, Fernando Arrabal, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Félix Guattari, and Julio Cortazar. He solicited work from Michel Foucault and Tzvetan Todorov (both published in the first issue), George Steiner, Ihab Hassan, and Edward W. Saïd, Harold Bloom, René Girard, and Paul de Man.

David Grossvogel was a prolific writer. His books include The Self-Conscious Stage in Modern French Drama (1958), Four Playwrights and a Postscript: Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet (1962), Limits of the Novel: Evolutions of a Form from Chaucer to Robbe-Grillet (1968), Mystery and Its Fictions: From Oedipus to Agatha Christie (1979), Vishnu in Hollywood: The Changing Image of the American Male (2000), Scenes in the City: Film Visions of Manhattan Before 9/11 (2003), and Marianne and the Puritan: Transformations of the Couple in French and American Films. He published novels in France; and he wrote a play about Colette and one about Paul Robeson. His final work was a memoir written in French—Être Américain.

Grossvogel died in Chicago. Survivors include his wife, Jill Elyse Grossvogel, who was the first art editor of Diacritics.