By Jeffrey Meyers
This accomplished biography of prolific critic, essayist, historian, and novelist Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) posits, really effectively, that the topic lived a existence as romantic
and chaotic as his buddy F. Scott Fitzgerald's. Wilson suffered a worried breakdown and the tragic demise of his moment spouse (he used to be married 4 occasions, between them, Mary
McCarthy); had affairs with various attractive girls, together with Edna St. Vincent Millay; and used to be buddy to literary giants corresponding to John Dos Passos, Vladimir Nabakov, and
W.H. Auden. This biography lines the evolution of Edmund Wilson, the priggish younger student, whom e.e. cummings known as the fellow with the iron necktie. the main prodigious guy of letters of this century, Wilson's erudition, undefined, subtlety, acerbity and analytical energy made him stand by myself between scholar-writer-journalists. sixteen pages of images.
A awesome feat of biographical sleuthing, this refreshingly down-to-earth lifetime of critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) friends underneath the crusty character of a grandee of
the literary institution to painting a tormented, stressed, sexually hyperactive guy, a tricky, heavy-drinking husband to 4 other halves, a domineering, lecturing father to his
three youngsters. Biographer of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Meyers considers Wilson the main clever and cosmopolitan determine in American letters, a foe of senseless
authority and ideological conformity; but that evaluate is undercut through Wilson's flirtation with communism, his isolationism in WWII and his insistence as overdue as 1957 that U.S. battle crimes have been much more terrible than Nazi Germany's. We study that Wilson's moment spouse, California socialite Margaret Canby, died now not by means of slipping on pavement, as newspapers stated; in its place, "almost definitely drunk," she fell down a flight of stairs and fractured her cranium. Meyers rejects 3rd spouse Mary McCarthy's vitriolic-pen pics of Wilson, arguing that their marriage, although stormy, used to be hugely efficient for either one of them. He additionally 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 often the fullest portrait thus far of a author who, in Meyers's judgment, grew to become more and more alienated from the trendy world.
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Additional info for Edmund Wilson: A Biography
Sample text
192 1 and in 1945. The most important influence on Wilson at Princeton was Chris- who became a surrogate father and gave him the emotional companionship he never received from the remote and austere Edmund Sr. Gauss' father, who came from Baden, emigrated to the United States after participating in the abortive German revolution tian Gauss, and intellectual of 1848. Gauss himself, born thirty years later in a German-speaking household in Ann Arbor, graduated from the University of Michigan at The highly respectable Gauss had once enjoyed a the age of twenty.
Ill Outside of class, Wilson's life focused on his social club, on the Trian- and on the Nassau Literary Magazine. Wilson "stuck to- gle musicals The gether" with Stanley Dell and other friends from was choice but not — Hill, and joined like Ivy, Tiger, Charter. It Cap and Gown— one of the elite clubs. After being elected to Charter in his a respectable sophomore year, Wilson realized he had very little in Cottage, common with the rich and handsome blockheads in the club and scarcely knew what to do there.
I can't remember what they were about, they were so spontaneous. We would get very dramatic, and jump up and down plays. write the story and on the beds and turn effects. One day, lights on and Edmund and I I off for thunder and lightning went in the clothes closet with matches to make better lightning, and Mrs. Wilson came home. " always kept in touch with his charming companion, sent her amusing and flirtatious poems: A valentine greeting to Margaret Edwards, Whom at three years of age I could sometimes lead bedwards With much leaping about and ebullient laughter.