"He was, as painted, aristocratic, beyond any writer I've met, but in a Jeffersonian-American way that brooked no artificial distinctions. There was no cheap way you could impress him... It was a particular strength of his as a critic that he was not even impressed by the Dead as such. He could write of living authors in precisely the same tones, and applying the same standards, as he used for the Classics."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Literary criticsHistorians from the United StatesPeople from New JerseyTax resistersPolitical authors
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Wilfrid Sheed, The Good Word & Other Words (1978), Part I, ch. 1: "Edmund Wilson, 1895-1972," p. 6, [1980 Penguin edition ]
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Wilson
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson (8 May 1895 β 12 June 1972) was an American writer and literary critic.
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Edmund Wilson β
Related Quotes
"There is really no way of considering a book independently of one's special sensations in reading it on a particular β¦"
"Education, the last hope of the liberal in all periods."
"It may be that there is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income."
"Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals."
"I believe, that certain people β especially, perhaps, in Britain β have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. β¦ Youβ¦"
"The more I have thought about Figures of Earth β and its sequel The Silver Stallion β the more remarkable they have cβ¦"
"I'm furious at the critical attitude toward Carl Sandburg! It's largely the work of "Bunny" Wilson, who was far from β¦"
"Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who arβ¦"
"He was the perfect autodidact. He wanted to know it all."
"Wilson is not like other critics; some critics are boring even when they are original; he fascinates even when he is β¦"