The Snug: A Blog

Edmund Wilson was a literary one-man band: literary critic (The Shores of Light, Axel's Castle), historian (To the Finland Station), memoirist (A Piece of My Mind), social commentator (The Twenties/ Thirties/ Forties/ Fifties/Sixties) and novelist (Memoirs of Hecate County). His activities as polymath of letters were made possible by his privileged upbringing–his father was the attorney-general of New Jersey–and, later, his connections throughout the New York literary scene. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that, for awhile in the Forties and Fifties, he (along with his third wife, Mary McCarthy) was the New York literary scene. His vices were the standard literary ones of womanizing and drinking, along with a generous helping of egotism. His virtues were a keen eye for literary originality and the courage and integrity to work tirelessly on behalf of unknown writers. Many such writers had him to thank for that, and owed him their careers; Vladimir Nabokov was one among many (Hemingway, Faulkner, and Dos Passos were others). In his early years of exile, Nabokov would probably have been nowhere without Wilson's support. This unknown Russian is a genius, said Wilson to his colleagues at The New Yorker and elsewhere; publish him! And they did. Wilson and Nabokov became the best of friends, and intellectual peers; they addressed each other as "Bunny" and "Volodya" in their correspondence, much of which was conducted in Russian, which Wilson spoke well, if not fluently. Then came Lolita–"Hurricane Lolita," as Nabokov later called it–and Wilson publicly disapproved. Their friendship developed cracks. But the last straw was Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin; Wilson found it overly literal, and said so as loudly as he said everything. VN, who objected to an American commenting on his Russian, took this poorly, and they fell out. Later, however, Vladimir's son Dmitri played the part of his father in Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya, a theatrical dramatization of the Nabokov-Wilson friendship that highlighted the warmth and respect that Wilson showed for the unknown Russian immigrant in the early years. 

Wilson was rich and influential from his youth, and remained so, despite some troubles with the IRS (he neglected to pay taxes for 10 years). He had, therefore, no need to beg and scrape and engage in self-promotion, in the manner of your average freelancing writer, and went so far as to have the following text printed and distributed on business cards: