George Stade
George Stade (November 25, 1933 - February 26, 2019) was an American literary scholar, critic, novelist and professor at Columbia University. According to Stade's obituary in The Washington Post, he was "probably best known for helping to spearhead the study of popular fiction in the classroom, and for his frequent — and frequently acerbic — reviews and essays on contemporary literature." Early life and education Stade was born to George Comins and Eva Aaronsen Comins on November 25, 1933.Comins abandoned the family before Stade’s second birthday. Stade spent the next several years with his mother in her native Sweden. Kurt Stade, a hairdresser from Germany accompanied them until the World War II drove them back to the United States in 1939. Kurt and Eva opened a successful beauty parlor on West 96th Street, and married in 1941. George assumed the last name "Stade" in 1945. Stade spent most of the rest of his life on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In his teenage years he worked construction, formed a street gang, and attended Haaren High School, a “dismal all boys school” according to his unpublished memoir. He then went to the City College of New York for a year,