Edmund Wilson
Effortless superiority
It was only in 1948 that the term WASP was coined — by a Florida folklorist, Stetson Kennedy. Yet White…
Hurricane Lolita
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov’s nostalgic memoir, reflects on his life from the age of three to 41, taking us from…
Pessimism keeps breaking in
State-of-criticism overviews and assessments almost always strike a bleak note —the critical mind naturally angles towards pessimism — so it…
Poison pen letters
Richard Bradford has written more than 20 books of literary criticism and biography. This latest one is a compendium of…
