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Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature

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Edmund Wilson was for forty years , from the thirties to his death in 1972 the most important literary critic in America. A passionate champion of modernism in Literature he in his pioneering volume 'Axel's Castle' introduced to the American public Joyce and Proust. A college classmate, rival and critical conscience for F. Scott Fitzgerald he also contributed to the promotion and understanding of Fitzgerald's work. As a cultural critic in his monumental work on the Russian Revolution 'To the Finland Station' he showed his great skill in biographical writing, and his capacity for flawed historical judgment. A person with a tremendous appetite for work, a great creative energy (Despite his addiction to alcohol) he late in life studied, learning Hebrew to do so, the Dead Sea Scrolls and wrote an important volume about them. He too late in life published his opionated and forceful journal ' Upstate' In an early novel ' Hecate County' he revealed a sexual frankness unusual for its time. Most importantly though he was a passionate lover of Literature( American Literature especially) and the kind of critic whose writing was not meant for a jargoned academia but for the broad public. His work on Civil War Literature ' Patriotic Gore' is another of his outstanding critical efforts.
This tremendous record of literary and cultural achievement is as Dabney so methodically and painstakingly evidences compromised by a personal life and character less than admirable. Wilson was an uncertain friend,and a poor husband to his four wives. His most famous marriage to the writer Mary McCarthy did have the redeeming element of producing his only son, Reuel, but was a 'nightmare'. Wilson was quick to anger,and a master of verbal abuse. Even with those he genuinely admired and championed most notably Nabakov he eventually quarreled bitterly with.
With all this the story of his life and work is dramatic, interesting, filled with meetings with the central cultural and creative people of his time.
His life and work raise and do not answer the question, more extremely perhaps raised by the life and work of a more famous American writer who Wilson did not incidentally think much of , Robert Frost- i.e. how the writer can be so good, while the person so less than admirable.
Nonetheless, for all those interested in the literary life, in American cultural history this volume is an invaluable 'must'.

Edmund Wilson was the dominant literary critic of the 20th century. A brilliant scholar and writer, he was a problem drinker at best and a disaster in his relationships with women (see his four marriages and many love affairs). It is fair to sum up his life as a personal battlezone and a professional genius.

Mr Dabney was a friend and editor of Edmund Wilson's later literary accomplishments. He utilizes his personal knowledge, Mr. Wilson's extensive diaries/essays/books/reviews and other's written perceptions of him to create an exhaustive and definitive account of his life.

Mr. Wilson seems to have been as careless in his personal affairs (money management was unknown to him) as he was careful with his writing. An early advocate of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce, he became a political leftist during the Depression and an isolationist due to his experiences during World War I. The reader is referred to Mr. Wilson's classic account of the cost of war, "Patriotic Gore." The reader will not be bored by this well-written and colorful life of Edmund Wilson.

A superb review of Wilson's life and work, one which translates to a superb review of 20th century American literature in general. A bit heavy on the Princeton origins of Wilson and friends; but, what the hell, not a bad place to begin a writing life. A very good "read".
Arthur Bloom

Dabney has done an excellent, adademic yet highly readable workmanlike job of capturing the many facets of Wilson't private and public lives. Thorougly researced and long-awaited, it gives Wilson his due,estabishing his place in American letters in his time -- which convered decades of some of the most exciting phases in the development of modern literature,and the social upeavels to which he bore witness. If you know Wilson, you'll learn a lot. If you don't know Wilson, you should read this to find out what you've missed.

Dabney thoroughly researched this iconic literary critic and the book will certainly be useful for those researching Edmund Wilson. Since I did not know that much about the gentleman, the read was informative for me but also much as an assignment as I plowed through his references to other figures, their works, etc. What was quite interesting was the author's description of Wilson's sexual appetite and the many women who submitted to his "charms"...

I just finished today, actually, and am debating whether to retain in my collection or offer the volume up at our spring garage sale.

This is a superb biography of the leading American non-academic intellectual of the mid-20th century. Like Gore Vidal today, Wilson never took a professorship at a university, never attended graduate school, never became a slave to literary lynch mobs. This is the story of the leader of a dying breed of independent literary scholars, journalists, and men of letters who dominated our tastes and the tastes of publishers for a solid 50 years. Wilson was the sort invited to the White House (Can you imagine a New Yorker magazine book critic dining at the White House today?), but made his name celebrating the Russian Revolution. He thought Susan Sontag a light weight. Having studied Greek, Latin, and French in school, he taught himself to read Russian, Hebrew and Hungarian in middle-age. His friendship with Nabokov and his marriage to Mary McCarthy ended badly, and one doubts he will fair well in universities today where literature is considered too elitist a subject for our young bohemian scholars who prefer reading the letters of illiterate peasants and the diaries of felons. Wilson attended the Hill School and Princeton University; his generation's parents had already figured out the public schools were no place for the young.