Although Edmund Wilson himself prepared much of his prodigious critical output for posterity, including three volumes of selected short essays, there is enough left over to make up a serviceable, if slightly reduced, overview. With Wilson's achievement (and reputation) in partial eclipse for his centenary, Groth (English/SUNY, Plattsburgh) and Castronovo (English/Pace Univ.), both of whom have written previously on Wilson, undertake a reconstruction of the development of his eclectic pursuits in one volume. They have picked mainly serious, slightly stodgy pieces, usually on Modernists, Marxists, or canonical figures like T.S. Eliot and Henry James; these add up to an essentially representative selection that begins with his earliest writings. Unlike the editors, though, Wilson wisely never collected his prep school and Nassau Literary Magazine juvenilia, which display his bad habits of pomposity and overemphatic pronouncement, such as a self-important survey of prep school literary magazines or tagging Chesterton "a genius, if you will." He curbed but never purged these tendencies from the lucid style he polished in the 1920s, though again his weighty attempts are over-represented in this section. More interesting are his fellow-traveler writings from the 1930s, which show aspects of his left-wing fervor that Wilson later smoothed over. But the neglect here of formative experiences in WW I fumbles a key to much of Wilson's cultural and political convictions. After WW II he reviewed regularly for the New Yorker, where he returned frequently to old favorites such as Stein, Faulkner, and Joyce, confident in his style of polished asperity. Groth and Castronovo have found both useful undertakings and curiosa from Wilson's career, but as a companion volume, this cannot quite keep up with the rest of his corpus.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8214-1127-6
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Ohio Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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