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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I do not pretend that my judgments are anything other than mysterious emotional responses
May 12, 2008
By H. Schneider
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This first volume of an LoA edition of E.Wilson collects reviews and literary essays on and from the 20s and 30s.
I think they should be required reading for all Amazonian amateur reviewers. Not that I always agree with everything that he had to say. He was a snob, no doubt, and proud of it, it seems. (Look at the delightful text called Muses out of Work from the 20s, where he pontificates on poets and poetry; then he adds an afterthought when the collection of reviews was published in book form in the 50s: he includes Hart Crane's letter attacking him for being a sort of social parasite, and another letter that attacks his general poetic theory, but admits that his judgments are still good, because he manages to ignore his own theories. That's where my headline is taken from.) As time progresses, his essays become more mature and his subjects more relevant. Must be a function of age, I guess.
The collection is full of interesting thoughts on subjects like Poe, Henry James, Upton Sinclair, Dos Passos, Wilder, D.H.Lawrence, Americans and Russians in exile, American and English English, etc... The man was rather vain, as expected. He took pleasure in bashing the early Scott Fitzgerald, he was exceedingly proud in taking a small part in launching Hemingway...
Why do I read him? 2 main reasons: 1st because of LoA, 2nd because Wilson was a great help to Nabokov when he came to the US as a refugee during WW2. Good deeds must be rewarded. Never mind that they fell out later over Lolita and Nab's Pushkin translations.
Apart from his snobbery, the man had sound principles: one of the first rules for a civilization should be freedom of artist and scientist.
And he was a good polemicist: the influence of T.S.Eliot is making young men prematurely senile...
This volume 1 of the LoA edition contains mainly two essay collections: The Shores of Light, which takes about 3/4 of the space and doesn't seem to be available in print separately any more, and Axel's Castle, a collection of essays published in 1931, which I will review separately.
I think they should be required reading for all Amazonian amateur reviewers. Not that I always agree with everything that he had to say. He was a snob, no doubt, and proud of it, it seems. (Look at the delightful text called Muses out of Work from the 20s, where he pontificates on poets and poetry; then he adds an afterthought when the collection of reviews was published in book form in the 50s: he includes Hart Crane's letter attacking him for being a sort of social parasite, and another letter that attacks his general poetic theory, but admits that his judgments are still good, because he manages to ignore his own theories. That's where my headline is taken from.) As time progresses, his essays become more mature and his subjects more relevant. Must be a function of age, I guess.
The collection is full of interesting thoughts on subjects like Poe, Henry James, Upton Sinclair, Dos Passos, Wilder, D.H.Lawrence, Americans and Russians in exile, American and English English, etc... The man was rather vain, as expected. He took pleasure in bashing the early Scott Fitzgerald, he was exceedingly proud in taking a small part in launching Hemingway...
Why do I read him? 2 main reasons: 1st because of LoA, 2nd because Wilson was a great help to Nabokov when he came to the US as a refugee during WW2. Good deeds must be rewarded. Never mind that they fell out later over Lolita and Nab's Pushkin translations.
Apart from his snobbery, the man had sound principles: one of the first rules for a civilization should be freedom of artist and scientist.
And he was a good polemicist: the influence of T.S.Eliot is making young men prematurely senile...
This volume 1 of the LoA edition contains mainly two essay collections: The Shores of Light, which takes about 3/4 of the space and doesn't seem to be available in print separately any more, and Axel's Castle, a collection of essays published in 1931, which I will review separately.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating window into these decades and the artistic life of that time.
January 24, 2009
Format:Hardcover
I am not sure why Edmund Wilson isn't discussed as much nowadays as he was previous during his lifetime. I find his writing about the artists and art of his day to be insightful, interesting, and always informative. His writing is interesting and alive. Of course, it is the rare critic who is read beyond his immediate generation, but I think Wilson deserves to be read and thought about. Of course, the modern (or post-modern) deconstructionist and sex fixated fashion is not a part of Wilson's world and that may well be why I like it much better than nearly all present-day critical writing. Certainly, it is wonderfully valuable in getting into the culture of the times when the artists he writes about were working and their now standard works were new and unknown. Reading about Joyce, Eliot, Hemingway, and many others when they were young and still creating new works was fascinating. Even now, we can see that Wilson had a keen eye and new what he was talking about (as long as he wasn't writing as a shill for socialism).
Another factor that has probably put him out in the cold is his now unfashionable politics. He was an apologist for the USSR and Stalin. Of course, Putin has recently made signals indicating a possible rehabilitation of Stalin and maybe Wilson's political writing might be useful to him and those who would support such a hideous effort. I have no use for Wilson's advocacy for socialism and find it to be much weaker than his stuff on literature, theater, and culture (which, in former times, was not always seen as politics).
This wonderful collection provides us with his essays and reviews that were collected in "The Shores of Light" and the book that put him in the big leagues of artistic criticism, "Axel's Castle". This volume also supplies some reviews that were not collected in book form. You not only get a look at the writers and artists of his time, but how Wilson sees them in the context of the artists of earlier times. For example, Axel's Castle examines literature from 1870-1930 through the works of six writers: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, and Paul Valéry. He sees them as the culmination of a movement that began much earlier and discusses its origins and how these writers represent a fulfillment of the issues raise by Romanticism and so forth. This book is, I think, a very helpful introduction to not only those writers, but in providing a context for understanding them within their culture, their artistic goals, and how things were viewed at the time rather than being satisfied with our little paragraph passing judgment and dismissing those decades in retrospect.
This book also has a chronology of Wilson's rather troubled life, notes on the text, other notes that explain certain issues within the text that a modern reader might need help with, and an index.
A wonderful volume and very much worth exploring.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
Another factor that has probably put him out in the cold is his now unfashionable politics. He was an apologist for the USSR and Stalin. Of course, Putin has recently made signals indicating a possible rehabilitation of Stalin and maybe Wilson's political writing might be useful to him and those who would support such a hideous effort. I have no use for Wilson's advocacy for socialism and find it to be much weaker than his stuff on literature, theater, and culture (which, in former times, was not always seen as politics).
This wonderful collection provides us with his essays and reviews that were collected in "The Shores of Light" and the book that put him in the big leagues of artistic criticism, "Axel's Castle". This volume also supplies some reviews that were not collected in book form. You not only get a look at the writers and artists of his time, but how Wilson sees them in the context of the artists of earlier times. For example, Axel's Castle examines literature from 1870-1930 through the works of six writers: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, and Paul Valéry. He sees them as the culmination of a movement that began much earlier and discusses its origins and how these writers represent a fulfillment of the issues raise by Romanticism and so forth. This book is, I think, a very helpful introduction to not only those writers, but in providing a context for understanding them within their culture, their artistic goals, and how things were viewed at the time rather than being satisfied with our little paragraph passing judgment and dismissing those decades in retrospect.
This book also has a chronology of Wilson's rather troubled life, notes on the text, other notes that explain certain issues within the text that a modern reader might need help with, and an index.
A wonderful volume and very much worth exploring.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is the first of two (to date) LoA compilations of the works of Edmund Wilson, comprised primarily of two volumes published in Wilson's lifetime--"The Shores of Light," itself a compilation of Wilson's articles and reviews published in the '20s and 30s and revised by Wilson in 1952, and "Axel's Castle," a study published in 1931 of major literary figures who wrote from approximately 1870 to 1930, all of whom were formative of or influenced by the rather broad school of "symbolism." If there is any question, Wilson is more than deserving of at least these two volumes. Princeton educated, he seems to have set himself an almost superhuman course of reading and study that lasted a lifetime, he knew most every contemporary of cultural significance, he seems interested in almost everything--culture, politics, literature, history, and he was a brilliant writer and absolute master of the essay or critique. The Shores of Light is a wonderful collection of relatively early essays and reviews. It has fine commentaries on the early Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Thornton Wilder, and (later) Edna St. Vincent Millay. However, these pieces are very much products of their time. If you are looking for a fine critical perspective at work in the 20's and '30s, this is a marvellous volume. If, however, you are more inclined to the balanced retrospective literary overview, tempered by time and experience, you will be much better served by the second LoA volume that includes Wilson's The Triple Thinkers and Classics and Commercials. That being said, this volume does have certain advantages if you do not necessarily prefer Wilson's literary writing to his socio/political pieces. A great number of the writings here, literary or otherwise, are extremely socially conscious and directed at, what seemed at the time, the very real possibility of the failure of the capitalist system, the possible promise of communism and the Soviet Union, and even Marxist/socialist literary and artistic values and criticism. The best and really fine pieces in those veins are The Literary Consequences of the Crash (with a withering summary of the American pre-crash mentality), An Appeal to Prgressives, and Marxism at the End of the Thirties. The point is not that we agree or disagree with Wilson, but these essays express a conveniently forgotten fact that, in the '30s especially, intelligent, idealistic people (not just dupes or wide-eyed intellectuals) saw very real problems with American capitalism, its values, and its apparent economic collapse with the Great Depression, and looked, possibly wrong-headedly and no doubt ultimately disappointedly, to Marx, Engels, Lenin, the Soviet Union, and an apparently viable communist system for some feasible alternative. If The Shores of Light has something really valuable to offer, I think it is this point of view (however fleeting the beliefs). (And should anyone simply dismiss Wilson as a dupe or an apologist, I would certainly acknowledge that his opinions changed over time, but would also invite them to read his last introduction to To the Finland Station, which is a scathing indictment of Stalinist Russia, an acknowledgement of the flaws in the communist system, and his own naive assumptions.)
As to "Axel's Castle," it contains what is still one of the more cogent explications of "symbolism." It also contains first rate discussions of Yeats, Eliot, Proust, Joyce and others. In certain cases, the critiques are a bit premature as a "final word" on the authors, but there is not a simgle instance in which Wilson's insights are not at the very least an excellent starting place. The essays on Eliot, Proust and Joyce are especially insightful and valuable. Wilson had a great grasp of what Eliot had accomplished, both as a poet and critic, and I've always thought that Wilson had a particular affinity for French literature and the French literary and critical tradition, and a real appreciation for Proust. On the other hand, his discussion of Gertrude Stein, although adequate, is not the be-all and end-all of Stein commentary. I don't disagree with Wilson about Stein, but he was neither the most insightful nor sympathetic critic. By point of comparison, I would cite Thornton Wilder's "Gertrude Stein's Four in America." Wilder of course had the advantage of some 15 years perspective and he was much more sympathetic to Stein, but reading Wilder and Wilson together does suggest the limitations imposed by Wilson's tastes and preferences (as if such preferences do not always play some part in critical commentary).
All in all, this is a terrific volume. My sole reservation is that, for the reader not especially obsessed with the '20s or '30s or symbolism, and just looking to browse and be entertained by Wilson's wit, intelligence and charm, I would look instead to the second LoA volume.
As to "Axel's Castle," it contains what is still one of the more cogent explications of "symbolism." It also contains first rate discussions of Yeats, Eliot, Proust, Joyce and others. In certain cases, the critiques are a bit premature as a "final word" on the authors, but there is not a simgle instance in which Wilson's insights are not at the very least an excellent starting place. The essays on Eliot, Proust and Joyce are especially insightful and valuable. Wilson had a great grasp of what Eliot had accomplished, both as a poet and critic, and I've always thought that Wilson had a particular affinity for French literature and the French literary and critical tradition, and a real appreciation for Proust. On the other hand, his discussion of Gertrude Stein, although adequate, is not the be-all and end-all of Stein commentary. I don't disagree with Wilson about Stein, but he was neither the most insightful nor sympathetic critic. By point of comparison, I would cite Thornton Wilder's "Gertrude Stein's Four in America." Wilder of course had the advantage of some 15 years perspective and he was much more sympathetic to Stein, but reading Wilder and Wilson together does suggest the limitations imposed by Wilson's tastes and preferences (as if such preferences do not always play some part in critical commentary).
All in all, this is a terrific volume. My sole reservation is that, for the reader not especially obsessed with the '20s or '30s or symbolism, and just looking to browse and be entertained by Wilson's wit, intelligence and charm, I would look instead to the second LoA volume.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Typo-riddled
I don't know about other LOA publications, but this is the most typo-riddled book I've read in a long, long time. Read more
Published on August 29, 2009 by Ala Abukhait
5.0 out of 5 stars
Edmund Wilson Canonized by Library of America
It's great to see Wilson get this recognition for his brilliant insights and fine writing. For many of us the writers and characters of the Twenties and Thirties hold a special... Read more
Published on November 2, 2007 by Z. Edelson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must read for anyone interested in 20th century literature.
Re-reading these essays and reviews has simply increased my respect for Wilson. I can only say that reading Wilson has helped give me a framework for evrything I read.
Published on October 24, 2007 by Howard F. Mandel
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