I don’t recall how I was first introduced to Edmund Wilson, the writer / literary critic in the first half of the 20th century, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Edmund Wilson failed as a writer (with one or two exceptions) but excelled as a critic and mentor.
As I wrote that line, I now remember where I first “met” Edmund Wilson. Browsing in Half-Price Bookstore I came across one of his books, Axel’s Castle, which I talk about below; it looked very interesting and I bought it. I didn’t understand all of it, but upon re-reading it made more sense. Now, years later, the book makes much more sense. I think it was one of the first books ever I picked up at Half-Price Bookstores – must have been about six years ago.
As a mentor and literary critic, he was directly responsible for the success of several novelists and poets due to his positive and excellent literary reviews. He probably had as much to do with F. Scott’s success as anyone else except for the latter’s editor and publisher.
I am enjoying a 1995 biography of Wilson by Jeffrey Meyers, which completes a trilogy; his other two biographies in this trilogy were of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It appears there was a golden age of American and British literature between 1900 and 1930. It is amazing all the authors with whom I am familiar and enjoy who are mentioned in the book, everything from passing mention to long passages including, of course, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Others include, somewhat alphabetically, as I go through the index: Dos Passos, Leon Edel, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Nabokov, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Proust, George Orwell, and dozens of others. Oh, yes, even Virginia Woolf. The first reference to Virginia Woolf was about Mrs Dalloway. As you may remember, I have read Mrs Dalloway three times and typed the entire novel in free verse from some years ago. It was during the second reading that I realized – on my own – that Mrs Dalloway was a prose poem, or whatever it’s called. Since then, I’ve learned others have said the same thing.
Speaking of which (a prose poem), through my blog, I’ve learned there is a “sleeper” best-seller out there, Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger. It is my understanding it is set in North Dakota, the climax coming in the Badlands. Apparently the writing is superb – again – some reviewers have called it “lyrical” which I assume is poetry in prose format. I will look for it at Half-Price Bookstores. I read the first page of the book online at Barnes and Noble.com, and of all coincidences, the narrator, the protagonist, I suppose, was born the same year I was, 1951!
Leon Edel. I’m at school so I don’t know what biography by him I have at home, but I do recall reading and enjoying one of his biographies – when I get home tonight I will see if I can find it. [It turns out it’s an abbreviated biography of Henry James. See next paragraph.]
According to Wikipedia, “though he [Leon Edel] wrote on James Joyce and on the Bloomsbury group, his lifework is summed up in his five-volume biography of Henry James which epitomizes biography as a literary form, a subject he had discussed … and enfolds a subjective author’s self-perceptions into his literary output.” The Wikipedia entry goes on, “Edel’s second and third volumes of the James biography earned him a Pulitzer Prize … in 1963. Edel enjoyed privileged access to letters and documents from James’ life housed in the Widener Library at Harvard University …” Again, all roads lead to Harvard.
On another note, I had a great day in Algebra yesterday. It’s not worth going into the details, but suffice it to say I probably had one of the best teaching sessions ever. The best part about it, there was another teacher in the room, a co-teacher, who I really like. Afterwards, he said he was very impressed and wondered why I didn’t’ teach full time. It was one of those rare times that things just clicked.
I had planned to write more but now I’ve run out of energy; maybe, later.
No comments:
Post a Comment