Edmund Wilson : a biography

Available (1)

Location	Collection	Call #
CLP - Main Library	Second Floor - Non-fiction	PS3545.I6245 Z76 1995
Location	CLP - Main Library
Collection	Second Floor - Non-fiction
Call Number	PS3545.I6245 Z76 1995

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Published Reviews

Booklist Review: "Wilson--ever-curious, erudite, and eloquent--was a pivotal and prodigious force in the coalescence of the modern sensibility. Author of hundreds of essays and reviews and 50 books, Wilson was associated with all the major literary magazines of his day, knew every writer of import, and developed fresh interests and sparked controversies right up to the end of his productive life. This groundbreaking study completes Meyers' trilogy of portraits of American literary giants, which includes his book on Hemingway and last year's superb biography of Fitzgerald. A proficient and prolific literary scholar and biographer, Meyers is as adept at explicating Wilson's often traumatic conflict over being a critical rather than a creative writer as he is at describing Wilson's heavy drinking, contentious personality, and rampant sexuality. Wilson, a man who was both charged with obscenity and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, loved books, languages, women, and sex and "never met a foot he didn't like." Meyers introduces Wilson's many lovers, including Edna St. Vincent Millay, and all four of his wives, including the revengeful Mary McCarthy, with evident relish and covers all of Wilson's intellectual and erotic territory with an eye to his tremendous influence and independence of spirit. --Donna Seaman"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "A remarkable feat of biographical sleuthing, this refreshingly down-to-earth life of critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) peers beneath the crusty persona of a grandee of the literary establishment to portray a tormented, restless, sexually hyperactive man, a difficult, heavy-drinking husband to four wives, a domineering, lecturing father to his three children. Biographer of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Meyers considers Wilson the most intelligent and cosmopolitan figure in American letters, a foe of mindless authority and ideological conformity; yet that assessment is undercut by Wilson's flirtation with communism, his isolationism in WWII and his insistence as late as 1957 that U.S. war crimes were even more horrible than Nazi Germany's. We learn that Wilson's second wife, California socialite Margaret Canby, died not by slipping on pavement, as newspapers reported; instead, ``almost certainly drunk,'' she fell down a flight of stairs and fractured her skull. Meyers rejects third wife Mary McCarthy's vitriolic-pen portraits of Wilson, arguing that their marriage, though stormy, was highly productive for both of them. He also illuminates Wilson's friendships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Malraux, Auden et al. and his sexual affairs with Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anais Nin and Louise Bogan. This is the fullest portrait to date of a writer who, in Meyers's judgment, became increasingly alienated from the modern world. Photos not seen by PW. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
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Additional Information

Subjects	Wilson, Edmund, -- 1895-1972. Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography. Critics -- United States -- Biography.
Publisher	Boston :Houghton Mifflin,1995
Language	English
Notes	"A Peter Davison book."
Description	xvii, 554 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography Notes	Includes bibliographical references (pages 535-540) and index.
ISBN	0395689937 :
Other	Classic View