In two new compact volumes, Edmund Wilson still looms large, by Michael Feingold
Like literature itself, literary criticism may be a thing of the past. Reading for pleasure has almost gone out of existence, replaced by web surfing and texting, exactly as, in the 1920s, musical evenings around the piano were gradually supplanted by record players and radios. Books—current books—are still consumed in quantity, and instantly forgotten, providing the same momentary pleasure as junk food; the notion of a permanent, constantly evolving literary heritage as a part of public awareness is slowly vanishing, along with the professional book reviewer and the magazines and newspapers he wrote for. Such tradition as remains is in the hands of academics, busily promoting their cockamamie theories and spouting their unreadable jargon. The literary critic, the person who loves and pursues the study of literature for its own sake, as an expression of the human spirit, must seem as antique, to this year’s college grads, as glassblowers, blacksmiths, and the lacemakers of medieval Bruges.
Unlike the mandarins of today’s English departments, critics approached a work, new or old, as something to be scrutinized first for sense, then for value, and lastly for its links to the literary tradition and to the world that, they were always aware, lived outside the world of books. If they had a strong ideology, or a fixed set of aesthetic principles, they used these to measure the work’s value—always conceding, if they had any brains, that in art rules are made to be changed, and that a work which alters them can still supply the lasting delight, wonder, and excitement that are the principal reasons people formerly read.For more than half a century, everything intelligent Americans meant when they said “literary critic” was embodied by Edmund Wilson (1895–1972), whose Literary Essays and Reviews from 1920 to 1950 have just been assembled in two compact volumes by the Library of America. Other critics may have been read more widely or had greater influence on the best-seller list; none was more respected. The son of a prominent New Jersey lawyer, Wilson showed his affinity for literature early: In a memoir of his prep-school years, “Mr. Rolfe” in The Triple Thinkers, he recalls his disappointment when the headmaster’s wife, a fervent evangelical who gave the boys individual lectures on the dangers of sin, saw fit to warn him only of the temptation of being too bookish and neglecting the outside world. Her worries were groundless: After graduating from Princeton and serving as a hospital orderly in France during World War I, Wilson established himself quickly in a series of cutting-edge journalistic jobs that demonstrated his gifts as a sharp-eyed observer not only of the literary scene but of the arts in general, politics, and society. …
