• Last week Mary McCarthy, this week her ex-husband: I’ve been perusing two new Library of America volumes devoted to the essays of Edmund Wilson, who is now remembered chiefly by literary historians and readers of a more-than-certain age but once was America’s best-known literary critic. Between them, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920’s and 30’s and Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930’s and 40’s contain all of Wilson’s collected literary articles from the first half of his career. Additional volumes are in the pipeline, but these two bring together the bulk of Wilson’s most significant literary criticism in a convenient and attractive format not too far removed from that of the elegant little crown octavo volumes he favored for his essay collections.
I have no doubt that Wilson would have been pleased by these two volumes, for the Library of America was his idea, more or less, and for the most part it has been executed along the lines he had in mind when he envisioned a publishing venture devoted to “bringing out in a complete and compact form the principal American classics.” Yet I wonder how widely they will be read, and I’m not sure that Wilson’s memory will be served best by republishing his original collections in toto, as the Library of America apparently plans to do. Not only did he spend a fair amount of time and energy reviewing books that are no longer of any great interest today, but his work almost always becomes silly, even squalid, whenever it strays from the narrow path of art. In his journals, for instance, he preserved for posterity an enervatingly complete record of his senile couplings, while his political views were left-wing in all the most tiresome ways. Though deeply disillusioned by Stalin, Wilson thereafter embraced the idiot notion of moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the United States; on one infamous occasion he compared their relationship to that between a pair of hungry sea slugs bent on mutual engorgement.
Fortunately, these two volumes mostly give us the critic to whose infectious gusto I and so many other readers of my generation owe an all but endless debt. Even when he was most spectacularly wrong, he rarely failed to stimulate, and the plain-spoken prose and hard-headed common sense of his best criticism still has a tonic effect:
John O’Hara subjects to a Proustian scrutiny the tight-knotted social web of a large Pennsylvania town, the potpourri of New York night-life in the twenties, the nondescript fringes of Hollywood. In all this he has explored for the first time from his peculiar semi-snobbish point of view a good deal of interesting territory: the relations between Catholics and Protestants, the relations between college men and non-college men, the relations between the underworld and “legitimate” business, the ratings of café society; and to read him on a fashionable bar or the Gibbsville country club is to be shown on the screen of a fluoroscope gradations of social prestige of which one had not before been aware.
Has there ever been a critic who was better at charging such summary passages as these with the force and selectivity that makes them so perennially readable? Or who had a surer grasp of the indispensable critical skill of making his readers want to go out and buy the books he praised? It was The Shores of Light, The Wound and the Bow and Classics and Commercials, all contained in the Library of America’s first two Wilson volumes, that first inspired me to read O’Hara, Max Beerbohm, Cyril Connolly, Dr. Johnson, the later Kipling, Ring Lardner, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton, and Thornton Wilder, and it is still possible to read Wilson on these and many other writers with pleasure and profit.
Those already closely familiar with Wilson’s work will be pleased to see that Lewis Dabney, the editor of this series, also plans to include a selection of reviews that didn’t make it into any of his books. These two volumes, for instance, contain Wilson’s hitherto uncollected thoughts on Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man, William Maxwell’s The Folded Leaf, Dawn Powell’s My Home Is Far Away, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, plus the best essay Wilson ever wrote on H.L. Mencken. All these pieces are worth reading, and it is a puzzlement why he didn’t think them worth collecting.
“Goddamn Hamas?” I guess this Palestinian mother did not get the memo from Glenn Greenwald and Andrew “The Sarah Palin Vagina Monologues” Sullivan.
The problem with Walt’s thought experiment is that he assumes had the Arabs won the 6 Day War there would be millions of Jewish refugees. The fact of the matter is there would be no Jewish refugees only millions of Jewish corpes. This is a despicable man and Foreign Affairs sullies its reputation by allowing him a podium on its site.
“Imagine Professor Walt reading Rothkofp’s post and realizing that he was wrong all along…
This is as likely a scenario as the one he was asking his readers to visualize.”
Wow! Spot on.
i am happy to play along with professor walt’s gedankenexperiment:
what would happen in the scenario he describes would be non-surgical, area bombing strikes on that narrow strip of land designed to kill as many of those terrorist jews as quickly and as thoroughly as possible…the orthodox infrastructure would be deliberately targeted and destroyed …every effort possible to extinguish the threat would be explored…this would be widely celebrated on al-jazeera and other pan-arab channels (CNN would feel conflicted and Anderson Cooper would compare the carnage to Katrina; Fox would decry the carnage and be condemned for its evangelical jew-loving bias)…
..as all this happened, professor walt would publicly argue that this extermination initiative – not unlike darfur – is not america’s fight, not strategically significant and that the jews brought it on themselves by not recognizing the realpolitik of their situation…they should have learned their lesson from the holocaust about what kind of support extremist – or even moderate – jews get from the world
then he and mr mearsheimer would have lunch at the faculty lounge and complain about the declining quality of their graduate students and how difficult it was to get a chair funded by dubai…
If the arabs would lay sown their weaspons there would be peace. If the Jews laid down theirs, there would not bew anymore Jews. That is the only “thought” experiment worth engaging.
Actually there was a book written along those lines, by Richard Chesnoff, Edward Klein, and Robert Littell. Considering the high percentage of German expatriate officials in Syria and
Egypt, it was a pretty grim tale.
It would be interesting to see what kind of ‘resistance’ a million hard line orthodox Jews crammed into Gaza would come up with.
They would probably try and debate the arabs to death (props to Dennis Miller).
I have no doubt the UN would be quick to issue condemnations of this anyways, as being ‘disproportionate’, given the IQ discrepancies between the parties.
Has anyone else noticed that a large percentage of these so-called academics who are obsessive Israel/Jew haters have graduated from the same “university” : The US Military Academy.Walt and his co-author John Mearsheimer, both attended that “esteemed” institution. Another so-called academic who graduated from USMA is Andrew Bracevitch of Boston University. He is another obsessive hater of Israel and of course, the “neo-cons”. His articles frequently appear in the Buchanan rag; The American Conservative. Of course, who can forget another USMA George Patton who had such hatred for Jews, that his reaction on seeing the survivors of the concentration camps liberated by the US Army was to described them as ” lower than animals”. I may be exaggerating but after reading Bryan Riggs: “Hitler’s Jewish soldiers”, it seemed even Hitler was not much worse than some anti-semites in the US Army during WWII. I noticed even Hitler had a Jew as the de facto head of his Air Force. I wonder what the USMA curriculum was to produce such obvious anti-semites.
Joe,
DIsidain for the Jews as the perpetual victims of history? Their non martial sucking up of everything thrown their way since the expulsion from Judea? The perception that they tried to avoid combat?
Add that to the old school WASP anti-semitism endemic in America in bygone decades and there you have it.
Nowadays, of course, Jews are too martial a people for most people’s tastes.
We just can’t win. Go figure . . . .
F!@#-’em.
obsesssive jew haters? because they are interested in american foreign policy? lol
again, Commentary and it’s fan boys simply continue with the tactics Walt and mearsheimer expose in their book, thus legitamizing it all the more.
please continue.
“t] has become as biased a pleader of special interests as he accuses the Israel Lobby of being. And as such he has become a member of the anti-Israel Lobby”
walt and mearsheimer state that there is nothing wrong with the israeli lobby, but rather, the problem is the media and governments aqueiscence to it. lobbying is, as the book describes it “as american as apple pie”
thus, an anti israel lobby is thesimilar to the same classic american desert
“But just as proponents of a strong U.S. relationship with Israel would do well to realize the damage that has been done to Israel’s case by over-aggressive actions (most egregiously those associated with the brutal and mismanaged invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s), proponents of the Palestinian cause would do well ”
this is a total straw man. hamas are religious fanatics.
being opposed to the intervention in the middle east has NOTHING to do with having any sort of solidarity with hamas. only the leftists at places like Commentary would assume that is so.
it has to do with leaving the US people alone, something conservatives understand extremely well, or use to.
Lester, until the UN is dismantled, the US is unfortunately drawn into mid east issues.
There is nothing Israel would like more than to be left alone to defend itself without threat of binding UN Security Council Resolutions (which require an American veto to shoot down), or of the US resetting the game board after every Arab defeat or near defeat.
You seem to think the Israel lobby controls the US, along with hartland, grumpy and a few other obsessed posters who are drawn to this Jewish site like moths to fire.
America’s true US policy is rather more like this:
‘We need you to bleed, and, more importantly, to be seen to bleed, by the Arab world. We will shrink you down, over time, and in return for Arab acquiescence to our needs and machinations in the wider middle east, to the smallest size sustainable by the best military technology and diplomatic invention. When the technology improves, we can and will shrink you down further. This will continue until our needs in the middle east are fulfilled. You cannot refuse. By refusing, you will lose the American veto in the UN Security Council. This will subject you crippling sanctions. You will also lose access to critical military spare parts you must have, and you will lose assurance of resupply in the event of war with your neighbors. ‘
maine’s michael- “the US is unfortunately drawn into mid east issues”
i’m a US citizen and I say no it’s not. ever read the bill of rights? we aren’t a pagan society that believes there is no way fate can be changed .
if we want to leave the middle east today, with no word to anyone, we can do it. if want to invade poland and tell our soldiers to wear clown noses while they do it, we can.
it’s OUR country
Am I alone in almost instinctively thinking: “The Jews would have turned it into Singapore. Only noisier. And with more lawyers”?
Re: Walt’s “thought experiment”: If Israel had massed its troops on the Egyptian border, broadcast threats to drive the Arabs into the sea, and expelled UN peace keepers, then Israel would have deserved to be defeated and subject to military occupation.
Yeah, Shmuel, I’m really befuddled by Walt’s blog. I mean, this guy is a respected realist in the academic world. These posts of his are simply naive, ill-informed and bizarre: http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2009/01/better_realists_please.html.
Actually, we have an idea what would have happened from the Jewish settlements that were present in Gaza before the unilateral withdrawal. They were flourishing agricultural and enclaves with houses, schools etc. No suicide bombing death cultists anywhere. As for Walt, he is just another useful idiot.
Realism isn’t what it used to be.
he’s on the way up, you’re on the way down. whining aobut it won’t help. it’s… WHY they are on the way up and you are on the way down
It amazes me that a person with a doctoral degree would be unable to differentiate between a people who historically have just sought to live in peace — and until recently, had done so for thousands of years — and a people who haven’t stopped announcing to anyone who would listen for the past 1400 years that their goal is to dominate the entire world.
What can be the cause of such willfull blindness? Hmm. It’s a mystery.
cfb- ask yourself that while you are trying to get work in the bus station and walt and mearsheimer have million dollar book deals and a full social calender.
oh, and the answer to your question: no one cares
Why is Walt conducting a “thought experiment” on what would happen if Jews were expelled from the country in which they live? This in fact happened time and time again in 1948-49, as Jews were expelled from Arab countries from Iraq to Algiers to Yemen. The key is not the expulsion, but the reaction to the expulsion.
When hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Muslim countries in the aftermath of the Israeli War of Independence, they were taken into the State of Israel, at great expense; housed, clothed, educated and trained, and eventually (despite some fairly strong social discrimination against them) became full members of Israeli society.
On the other hand, Palestinian Arabs who came under the control of other Arab governments were not welcomed as brother Arabs and co-religionists, but were installed in squalid refugee camps, used as helots, and ultimately as pawns and cannon fodder against the Israeli state. If there is a Palestinian refugee problem today, the responsibility rests with the Arabs, not the Israelis. If there is no Jewish refugee problem today, the responsibility likewise rests with Israel, and not with the Arabs.
The Ultra Orthodox had this opportunity in the second world war and their answer was to sit tight and trust in god. Never did thay decide to fight back in any “underground” or overt way. If the followers of Hamas were such faithful Muslims then they would believe in gods’ intervention. The Holocaust is only history that people wish to forget.
“he Ultra Orthodox had this opportunity in the second world war and their answer was to sit tight and trust in god. Never did thay decide to fight back in any “underground” or overt way. ”
Neither, for that matter, did the utterly assimilated Jews of Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary or even Poland.
Walt’s latest reply is typical mumbo jumbo. He cites the pressure that J. Carter and Bush #41 put on Israel to advance the peace process as somehow benevolent and for Israel’s own good. Except, as we have seen in the last 10 years, IT WAS ALL A FARCE.
Egypt has all the anti-Israel incitement of Iran. Arafat showed he never wanted peace [see Dennis Ross' 'The Missing Peace']. The 2nd intifadah [read: infant-toddler] reaction was planned for a long time. And the ‘Pals’ have admitted as much. Arafat never really reigned in Hamas, never changed the “pal’ media or textbooks to teach peace and co-existence, nothing.
So when these pseudo-realists claim to have a clue…it makes me laugh and cry at the same time. I only hope the Israeli govt. has the “testicular fortitude” to do what has to be done…NOW…Hamas has to go.
It’s time to see if the Fatah folks have learned their lesson and are ready to be responsible for the governance of Gaza.