Robert R. Kirsch (October 18, 1922 – August 16, 1980) was an American literary critic and author. He was the literary editor of ''

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'' for more than two decades.

Early life

Robert R. Kirsch was born on October 18, 1922 on

Coney Island Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

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. He moved out of Coney Island at the age of 17. He had two sons, Paul Kirsch, and

Jonathan Kirsch Jonathan Kirsch is an American attorney, writer, and a columnist for the ''Los Angeles Times''. He is a bestselling author of books on religion, the Bible, and Judaism. Biography Life Kirsch earned a B.A. degree in Russian and Jewish history fr ...

, who is a renowned lawyer. He also later had a daughter named Maria Kirsch in his second marriage.

Career

Kirsch joined ''The Los Angeles Times'', where he was the literary editor for 23 years. Over the course of his career, he wrote "thousands of columns, book reviews, and essays." He was one of the first critics to praise the works of

Joseph Wambaugh Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. (born January 22, 1937), is a best-selling American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Several of his early novels were set in Los Angeles and its surroun ...

and Tom Sanchez. Kirsch authored several books about California and Las Vegas. He used the pennames of Robert Dundee and Robert Bancroft.

Death and legacy

Kirsch died of cancer on August 16, 1980, in Santa Barbara, California. A public funeral was held in the chapel of the

American Jewish University American Jewish University (AJU), formerly the separate institutions University of Judaism and Brandeis-Bardin Institute, is a Jewish institution in Los Angeles, California. Its largest component is its Whizin Center for Continuing Education in w ...

in Bel Air. He is the namesake of the

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller ( ...

's Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Selected works

*''In the Wrong Rain'' (1959) *''Madeleine Austrian'' (1960) *''The Wars of Pardon'' (1965) *''West of the West: Witnesses to the California Experience, 1542-1906; The Story of California from the Conquistadores to the Great Earthquake'' (1967) *''Lives, Works, & Transformations: A Quarter Century of Book Reviews and Essays'' (1978) *''Casino: A Novel of Las Vegas'' (1979)

References

External links

Kirsch, Robert R., 1922-1980
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SNAC Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) is an online project for discovering, locating, and using distributed historical records in regard to individual people, families, and organizations. The project SNAC is a digital research project t ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirsch, Robert 1922 births 1980 deaths People from Coney Island People from Santa Barbara, California Writers from California Los Angeles Times people Deaths from cancer in California