Upstate: Records and Recollections of Northern New York
by Edmund Wilson
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Historical recollections of life in upstate New York from Edmund Wilson, one of America's preeminent literary critics of the twentieth century."What I have written . . . shows the gradual but steady expiration of the world of New York State as I knew it in my childhood and the modifications that its life has undergone. It is true that Lowville and Boonville have changed less--unless perhaps Charlottesville, Virginia--than any other part of this country that I knew when I was a child. But, as show more has been seen, it has reflected all the changes that, to a greater degree, have been taking place in the life of the country as a whole." - Edmund Wilson show lessTags
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SnootyBaronet Fraught friendship of Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov
Member Reviews
New York is not a city, the Big Apple notwithstanding. It’s a vast and varied state, as the famed literary critic Edmund Wilson details in this history-memoir-genealogy of northern New York, where he spent summers through most of his life. Peppering his story with historical and contemporary anecdotes of hardworking farmers, religious cults, and famous figures, Wilson brings to life the wildness and inhuman beauty of the region. But what drew him, summer after summer, were not the stories and the great outdoors. “A phase of American life is preserved here,” he says, a phase partly Wilson’s own, and which he knew was disappearing. Yet Wilson seems not unhappy to see it gone. The heartbreak of this book isn't just the year in, show more year out account of the demise of a phase of American life; but the inability of this magnificent inheritor to mourn it. show less
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ThingScore 92
Upstate is a highly satisfactory Wilsonian book, filled with sharp personal details, long scholarly asides on those things or people or notions (like New York religions) that had caught his fancy.
added by SnootyBaronet
Only the European panoptic scholars come near matching Wilson for learning, and for sheer range of critical occupation there is no modern man to match him, not even Croce. If Upstate tends to give the impression that his wonted energy now only faintly flickers, the reader needs to remind himself sharply that the mental power in question is still of an order sufficient to illuminate the average show more city...
Upstate very nearly is a hopeless book, and for a long while we suspect that Wilson has gone cold on America. But finally we see that he hasn’t, quite: as the girl Mary works to establish herself in a way that her European origins would probably not have allowed, the American adventure haltingly begins all over again, at the eleventh hour and in the fifty-ninth minute. show less
Upstate very nearly is a hopeless book, and for a long while we suspect that Wilson has gone cold on America. But finally we see that he hasn’t, quite: as the girl Mary works to establish herself in a way that her European origins would probably not have allowed, the American adventure haltingly begins all over again, at the eleventh hour and in the fifty-ninth minute. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Diaries are only for dipping into, but the attraction of Mr. Wilson’s lies in its unconscious self-portraiture. He is energized by the interests that have made him a great American critic and masterful eccentric. He has always been a searching observer. As he says, he has always been interested in countries, flora, fauna, primitive men and mechanized men, as well as in books, and now, after show more a long life, and, alas, ailing, he expects no real novelty. His curiosity now is for what mildly amuses his formidable faculties. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Author Information
94+ Works 8,872 Members
Wilson roamed the world and read widely in many languages. He was a journalist for leading literary periodicals: Vanity Fair, where he was briefly managing editor; The New Republic, where he was associate editor for five years; and the New Yorker, where he was book reviewer in the 1940s. These varied experiences were typical of Wilson's range of show more interests and ability. Eternally productive and endlessly readable, he conquered American literature in countless essays. If he is idiosyncratic and lacks a rigid mold, that probably contributes to his success as a literary critic, since he was not committed to interpretation in the straitjacket of some popular approach or dogma. His critical position suits his cosmopolitan background---historical and sociological considerations prevail. He went through a brief Marxist period and experimented with Freudian criticism. Axel's Castle (1931), a penetrating analysis of the symbolist writer, has exerted a great influence on contemporary literary criticism. Its dedication, to Christian Gauss of Princeton, reads:"It was principally from you that I acquired.. .my idea of what literary criticism ought to be---a history of man's ideas and imaginings in the setting of the conditions which have shaped them."His volume of satiric short stories, Memoirs of Hecate County (1946), with its frankly erotic passages, was the subject of court cases in a less tolerant decade than the present one. It was Wilson's own favorite among his writings, but he complained that those individuals who like his other work tend to disregard it. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Quotations
- One morning when I was up at 6, the pane with the Nabokov poem on the upstairs door to the balcony came out in a beautiful way against the pink background at dawn, looking like a pattern of frost. I called up Volodya and told... (show all) him this, and he came back with one of his inescapable puns: “There’s an English word for that, rime.”
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, Literature Studies and Criticism, History, Travel, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 929.2 — History & geography Biographies, Genealogy, Healdry Genealogy, Flags, Heraldry, Civil Records Families
- LCC
- F124 .W726 — Local History of the United States, Canada and Latin America United States local history New York
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 150
- Popularity
- 217,627
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.25)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 5
