The Sixties: The Last Journal, 1960-1972 [Hardcover]

Edmund Wilson (Author), Lewis M. Dabney (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1993

The final volume of journals by Edmund Wilson includes details of Wilson in Boston, Cambridge, Western Europe, Hungary, Jordan, and Israel; Wilson on Stravinsky, Auden, Andre+a7 Malraux, and Isaiah Berlin; and even Wilson in the White House.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This fifth and final installment of Wilson's journal is at once curiously detached from the 1960s (JFK's assassination gets a single bitter paragraph) and a barometer of that decade's convulsions and of the unraveling of the social fabric. Riddled with passages of great beauty and self-revelation, this hectic daybook is the most wide-ranging of Wilson's journals, covering his movements from his old stone house in upstate New York to teaching at Harvard to New York City, as well as trips to Canada, Hungary, Paris, London, Israel, Jordan. A vast humming collage, the diary is full of encounters with the likes of Stravinsky, Auden, Anais Nin, James Baldwin, George Kennan and Andre Malraux. Wilson, who died in 1972 at age 77, unveils his fulfilling relationship with fourth wife Elena Thornton and documents the emotional collapse of his daughter Rosalind, who had been raised by Wilson's mother. Dabney, who edited The Portable Edmund Wilson , has provided a useful introduction and more than 140 section headings that lend coherence to Wilson's musing on literature, politics and the intellectual scene.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The last of Wilson's five volumes of journals is as entertaining and full of gossipy detail as the first four (The Fifties, 1986, etc.)--and together they form an amazing literary document of the first half of the century. A cosmopolitan intellectual, Wilson knew most of the great cultural figures of his time. The journals are a record of his travels, a compendium of personalities, and a chronicle of his sexual history. Wilson examines himself in depth but is never self- absorbed or particularly mean-spirited. The names tumble across the page: In New York, Wilson hobnobs with Stravinsky, Auden, Kenneth Tynan, and Virgil Thomson, as well as with younger friends Mike Nichols, Jason Epstein, and Penelope Gilliat. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, he socializes with Isaiah Berlin, Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Lowell, and Stuart Hughes; in Wellfleet, he parties with survivors of Cape Cod's bohemian heyday; and in his ancestral home in Talcottville, New York, he displays as much interest in local friends as in his more famous pals. During the 60's, Wilson traveled extensively, and, here, he takes notes in Canada (for his study, O Canada); in Hungary (for his interest in the language); in Israel (for writings on the Dead Sea Scrolls); and in England, France, and Italy (for enjoyment). A self-described ``man of the twenties,'' he nevertheless is sensitive to ``nuclear age jitters'' and opposes the war in Vietnam. Throughout, he worries about his declining health and failing libido, but he adjusts to old age gracefully, maintaining his lifelong interest in magic and puppetry. Children bring out his best, while stupid people feed his misanthropy. Not only are the extended profiles indelible--a manic Robert Lowell; a dazzlingly witty Elaine May-- but the short-takes are unforgettable as well. Paddy Chayefsky is ``cheap, conceited, and vulgar''; Tom Wolfe is a ``smart-aleck jellybean''; and Susan Sontag is ``pretentious.'' Candor and intelligence come through on every page--in this always absorbing journal by perhaps the last great man of American letters. (Photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1019 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (July 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374265542
• ISBN-13: 978-0374265540
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,766,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The winter of an intellectual lion, December 28, 1999

By 

Jonathan Leach - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sixties (Paperback)

Meticulous account by Wilson of his coming to terms with old age. His precise observations of his increasing enfeeblement, and of the "glitterati" with whom he socialized, make for fascinating reading. His restless movement from Manhattan to the countryside to the beach to Europe contrasts with the subtle melancholy of his narrative; it's a page-turner with a wintry mood. Disappointed by the surprising shabbiness of the Princeton Club, for example, Wilson says, "I doubt that I shall go there again," and it's as much an acknowledgment of his own mortality as a comment on the flaking plaster. The occasional summer breeze blows through, as when he indulges his passion for Hungarian culture in a suprisingly jaunty European excursion. Gossipy and detailed insider's glimpses abound: Wilson shows us the "Camelot" White House, visits Scottie Fitzgerald, and comments on the star-crossed relationship of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. (A bonus: The paperback is beautifully "packaged." Fine design, wonderful photographs, and the heft and feel of an expensive hardbound book.)

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary anthropologist, November 22, 2006

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Sixties (Paperback)

The introduction notes that Wilson's journals are a collage. He was always the critic. In his gift for portraiture he is the equal of Dr. Johnson, Taine, and St.Beauve.

Wilson died at age seventy-seven at his desk, in the manner of Karl Marx. In the beginning of the decade he is at Harvard. He realizes that he drinks too much to get himself out of a depression. His wife Elena enjoys talking with their friend, Dawn Powell. Wilson feels, after watching Malraux at a dinner at the Kennedy White House, that Malraux practiced deception as a matter of course.

In Toronto, EW sees Morley Callaghan and his two sons. Callaghan had worked with Ernest Hemingway on the TORONTO STAR. Wilson travels to Quebec in the early sixties for the first time since a childhood stay in 1906.

Dickens, Kipling, and Upstate New York were matters of importance in EW's childhood, and Quebec falls into the category, too. Wilson finds he likes Isaiah Berlin's international personality better than his Oxford aspect. EW reads some Balzac who specialized in brazen cynical careerists. Zola and Proust were influenced by Balzac.

In Italy with Elena and his daughters Helen and Rosalind, Ew sees Lampedusa and Mario Praz. In Hungary he learns the inhabitants don't want anything having to do with Russia mentioned. The state controls housing. Everything is censored. Wilson believes that Hungarian, for reason of its stresses, is particularly appropriate for translating Greek and Roamn poets. Visiting Hungary, he is saddened because the 1848 Revolution was crushed and the same fate awaited the Revolt of 1956.

In London Wilson sees Sonia Orwell, Natasha Spender, Wystan Auden, and V.S. Pritchett. Wilson likes Hemingway's MOVEABLE FEAST because it shows his younger brighter self. He cites Hemingway's capacity to bring out personalities.

Wilson is appointed to the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan. The Wilsons find Middletown to be down at the heels and Hartford, by way of contrast, a happening place. Wilson learns from Brendan Gill that the gold dome in Hartford memorializes the fact that Russia was the first customer of the Colt factory located there.

When Dawn Powell visits Wilson at Talcottville, his family house in New York, she takes an interest in the events in the village. Dawm Powell dies in 1965. EW believes that dinner and drinks in Boston tend to be skimpy. He comments on this apropos a discussion of a dinner he attends at the American Academy of Arts and Science.

Wilson is cheered by reading the diary of Anais Nin. He is a kind of Literary anthropologist in many respects including a task he sets for himself of indentifying novelists and others in the region of Talcottville. He remarks that art centers are coming into vogue as the mid sixties mark the beginning of government subsidies for the arts.

When EW goes to the funeral of Waldo Frank in Cape Cod he thinks the undertaker is paying attention to some of the funeral-goers with a lecherous eye. Near the end of his life, EW visits Lily Dale where only spiritualists may buy property.