In 1960, a new book promised to point Americans toward enough literature to last them for decades. In The Lifetime Reading Plan, author Clifton Fadiman surveyed roughly 100 celebrated literary works from antiquity to the modern age, providing brief essays on everything from Homer to Herman Melville to Aldous Huxley in hopes that readers would engage with them on their own.
Nearly six decades after its debut—and almost two decades after Fadiman’s death—his Reading Plan remains in print, now in its fourth edition. It’s the most visible legacy of a man who, in his heyday, used print, radio, and television to explain literature to the vast middle of moderately educated Americans, becoming a national celebrity along the way.
Fadiman’s resumé defies easy summary. He helped establish the Book-of-the-Month Club and served on its board for more than a half century. He was also a force in shaping Encyclopedia Britannica, served as book editor of the New Yorker, and moderated a game show, carried on radio and later TV, called Information, Please, in which an erudite panel of commentators fielded questions from audience members, who would win a set of the Britannica if they stumped the experts. Additionally, Fadiman worked in book publishing, as a magazine columnist, anthologist, and familiar essayist, his musings gathered in charming collections such as Party of One, Any Number Can Play, and Enter, Conversing. With typical self-deprecation, Fadiman called himself an “odd job man” in describing his Olympian output.