THE FORTIES by Edmund Wilson, edited by Leon Edel Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 369 pages; $17.95
In the gin-fueled jazz age, a young Edmund Wilson pursued Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay along a stretch of Cape Cod beach. "By the time we're 50," he promised, "we'll be two of the most interesting people in the United States." He kept his word. By midlife, Wilson was regarded as America's leading man of letters, a redoubtable scholar and a critic whose opinion could make or break a literary reputation. Critic Malcolm Cowley called him a combination...
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