Edmund-Wilson
Alex Beam generates interest via his portrait of frenemies Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov as brainy but flawed human beings.
Read MoreEdmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (Paperback) By Lewis M. Dabney. Johns Hopkins University Press, 672 pages, $25. Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s (Library of America #176) By Edmund Wilson. Edited by Lewis M. Dabney. 1026 pages, $40. Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s (Library of America #177)…
Read MoreBack in the ’30s, Philip Rahv memorably divided American fiction writers into redskins and palefaces — Mark Twain epitomized the wild men, Henry James the civilized — a chasm that today may be outmoded or politically indelicate. But Lewis M. Dabney’s fine biography of Edmund Wilson suggests that when it comes to assessing literary critics…
Read MoreMore evidence bean counters will be picking the classics of the future: two novels by Ayn Rand – the unhinged saint of unbridled capitalism – have been reissued as Penguin Modern Classics.
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Author Reconsideration: The A, B, and C of Sue Grafton
The conveniently tidy endings do turn killing into an entertainment. They also allow us to briefly believe in redemption. And that is not the vainest of hopes.
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