The Fifties : from notebooks and diaries of the period

706 Pages·1986·30.513 MB·English

by  Wilson, Edward J. N., Edel, Leon

EDMUND WILSON
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Edited with an in
LEON ED
BOOKS BY EDMUND WILSON
AXEL'S CASTLE
THE TRIPLE THINKERS
TO THE FINLAND STATION
THE WOUND AND THE BOW
THE SHOCK OF RECOGNITION
MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY
CLASSICS AND COMMERCIALS
THE SHORES OF LIGHT
FIVE PLAYS
RED, BLACK, BLOND AND OLIVE
A PIECE OF MY MIND
THE AMERICAN EARTHQUAKE
APOLOGIES TO THE IROQUOIS
WILSON'S NIGHT THOUGHTS
PATRIOTIC GORE
THE COLD WAR AND THE INCOME TAX
OCANADA
THE BIT BETWEEN MY TEETH
EUROPE WITHOUT BAEDEKER
GALAHAD and I THOUGHT OF DAISY
A PRELUDE
THE DUKE OF PALERMO AND OTHER PLAYS
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: I947-1969
UPSTATE
A WINDOW ON RUSSIA
THE DEVILS AND CANON BARHAM
THE TWENTIES
LETTERS ON LITERATURE AND POLITICS
THE THIRTIES
THE FORTIES
THE FIFTIES
THE FIFTIES
Edmund Wilson, circa 1952
EDMUND WILSON
The Fifties
From Notebooks and Diaries
of the Period
Edited with an Introduction by
Leon Edel
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK
Copyright © I 986 by Helen Miranda Wilson
Introductory material copyright © I 986 by Leon Edel
All rights reserved
First edition, I 986
Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Collins Publishers, Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilson, Edmund, I895-I972.
The fifties : from notebooks and diaries of the
period.
Includes index.
1. Wilson, Edmund, I895-I972-Diaries. 2. Authors,
American-2oth century-Diaries. 3· Critics-United
States-Diaries. I. Edel, Leon, I907- II. Title.
PS3545.I6245Z464 I986 8I8'.52o3 [B] 86-9997
Parts of this book appeared originally in The New York
Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and
The Paris Review.
CONTENTS
Editor's Foreword ix
Edmund Wilson in the Fifties by Leon Edel xiii
Chronology xxxi
THE FIFTIES
I95o-1954
"Nothing but Deaths," 195o-1952 3
Charlottesville, 1952 23
Talcottville, 1952 32
Princeton, 1952-1953 44
Richmond and Washington, 1953 52
Talcottville, 1953 69
London and Oxford, 1954 97
Paris 151
Salzburg 167
Germany 177
Rapallo and Max Beerbohm 194
Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls 213
Return to France 248
WellHeet and Talcottville 262
v
vi CONTENTS
'955-1959
Auden in New York 29I
T alcottville, I 955 309
Wellfleet and New York, I955-I956 344
T alcottville, I9 56 356
Europe, I956 368
Wellfleet and Cambridge 3¢>
Talcottville, I957 4I6
Visit to Nabokov 422
Talcottville Again 429
Cambridge and Robert Lowell 450
The Iroquois, I957 455
Indian Ceremonies 479
Wellfleet, New Haven, New York, I958 5I8
St. Regis and Onchiota 542
Djuna Barnes 550
Talcottville, I958 557
Deganawida's Prophecy 567
Wellfleet 582
Toronto 592
Wellfleet, New York, Talcottville 6o3
Tonawanda 6I2
Talcottville, I959 627
Index 645
ILLUSTRATIO;.'\S
Facing page
Edmund Wilson, circa 1952 l1l
Elena, Helen, and Edmund Wilson, Wellfleet 30
Barbara and Jason Epstein, Rome, 1954 104
Mamaine Paget Koestler 104
Elena and Helen Wilson, Salzburg, 1954 105
Edmund Wilson in upstate New York 270
The Stone House in Talcottville 270
Lillian Burnham, Dorothy Sharp, Huldah Loomis,
Helen and Rosalind Wilson; Edmund Wilson
and John Gaus; Fern and Otis Munn and Jane
Gaus, Talcottville, 1955 274
Elena, Helen, and Edmund Wilson; Reuel Wilson;
Henry and Daphne Thornton, Wellfleet,
1957 436
Eastern Iroquois settlements 484
The healing rite of the Falsefaces 484
Elena and Edmund Wilson and Leon Edel,
Wellfleet, 1958 538
Acknowledgment is made to George Weidenfeld & l\'icolson
for permission to reproduce the photo of Mamaine Paget
Koestler published in Living with Koestler ( 198 5 ); and to
the New York State Museum and Science Ser\'ice for the
painting by Ernest Smith facing page 484.
vii
EDITOR'S FOREWORD
Edmund Wilson kept his diaries and journals of the
fifties with much greater regularity and in a more
systematic way than during his earlier years. Age and
domestication, regularity of habits and fewer wanderings,
contributed to this. Where he used to make sporadic
entries at irregular intervals, he now kept track of his
dates; by using his calendar as guide he constructed a
largely retrospective journal. This means that the dates,
when they are given, refer not to the time of writing
but to the happenings and encounters of a recent time.
Evidence points clearly now to an intention to publish
his journals: and he planned, if he had an opportunity,
to introduce further retrospective passages, as he did in
The Twenties, which was incomplete at the time of his
death.
The manuscripts comprising the present volume are
a mixture of neatness and scribble. There were days
when he wrote with copybook care. On other occasions
his pen would run away with him; he would be impatient
and abbreviate words and reduce names to initials. I
have in most cases expanded these abbreviations but
IX