THE DEVILS AND CANON BARHAM
by EDMUND WILSON
219 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $7.95.
The wretched old physique decays.
One smoulders in a slump for days;
Goes blank on names; gaga, forgets
What one was saying; loses bets.
And yet the effort must he made.
The bell to take the stage obeyed .
Edmund Wilson, who wrote those lines almost two decades before his death last year at 77, obeyed the bell to the end. The ten essays and reviews collected in The Devils and Canon Barham are the last turns in what he once called the...
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