Great American Weirdo Dead At 63

George W.S. Trow, one of the world's oddest writers and author of Within the Context of No Context (excerpts here), died last week in Italy. A New Yorker obituary explains:

From adolescence on, George William Swift Trow was a cult figure of sorts, whose fame, though for a time considerable, was a lagging indicator of his influence, which made itself felt through his personal and literary impact on other writers and on certain institutions, notably but not exclusively this magazine. He was an essayist, aphorist, journalist, satirist, and analyst (and annalist) of what he once labelled, with characteristically arch capitalization, Mainstream American Cultural Artifacts. As one of the fathers of the school of furiously iconoclastic humor that continues to dominate American comedy, and as a screenwriter and playwright, he was also a creator of such Artifacts.