Books: Caviar for the General

CLASSICS AND COMMERCIALS (534 pp.) —Edmund Wilson—Farrar, Straus ($5).

In the whole arid field of current U.S. literary criticism, few critics have successfully brought their acres to cultivation; most of the yield consists either of dried academic pods or fluttery reviewing that could thrive nearly as well on book jackets. Critic Edmund Wilson's small crop of evaluations (Axel's Castle, The Triple Thinkers, The Wound and the Bow) is the hardiest, the most varied and the one with the best chance of preservation. His new book, Classics and Commercials, is made up entirely of pieces...