Edmund Wilson was born on this day in Red Bank, N.J., in 1895. An English major, I didn't discover Wilson until I got out of college, and he was one of those finds that make you grateful to be done with school. Books like Classics and Commercials and The Bit Between My Teeth were like survey courses in world literature and culture, taught by a man of impressive learning and daunting scope.
He even wrote travel books (oh for the days when our most esteemed man of letters also wrote travel): Upstate, about that part of New York where he had a house; Red, Black, Blond and Olive, an account of trips to the American Southwest, Haiti, Soviet Russia and Israel; and Europe Without Baedeker, reports from his journey around England and the Continent just at the conclusion of World War II. These books took travel seriously (as Wilson took everything), seeing it as a valuable means for studying cultures and societies. And Wilson was alert to everything, from the shoes worn by Roman women - "the only attractive footwear that I have seen since I came to Europe" - to the anti-Americanism practiced by the Brits, while they, at the same time, consumed our popular culture. (Not much has changed.) "Our Hollywood stars are already their stars, our best-sellers their best-sellers. To an American, these signs of Americanization seem mostly stale and depressing. The British feed themselves on our banality without catching our excitement and gusto. Many of them now chew gum."
