Word: wilson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Wilson cannot imagine that some of his remarks will be swallowed easily. In his essay on sex, after propounding the wisdom of selective breeding through artificial insemination, he closes: "Do not say that you turn in distaste from a selection so calculated and conscious, which does not depend on 'the heart.' In how many marriages and liasons in the society we actually inhabit does no calculation enter or the heart play a cardinal role?" This is necessarily repugnant to those of young enthusiasms--perhaps of healthy emotional enthusiasms. But Wilson does not demand that it be eaten; he asks only...
This is not to say that all the ideas expressed in this book are likely to upset the reader. On the contrary, it is only at the moment when one disagrees with them that Wilson's views suddenly appear too extreme. He is generally convincing, always interesting, and filled with fascinating bits of information gleaned from a long lifetime of looking into all the various areas of human activity. His explanation of the "mystery" of the Russians, however valid, offers new points of view on a topic that is of deep interest today. The section of the book devoted...
...this search for clarity which is most basic to Wilson's work, both in regard to thought and expression. It is his intense concern with the most accurate possible correlation of the world and the thought which provides an understanding of his intellectual method. In his remarks about religion, Wilson is concerned by the fact that there is no longer any valid correlative for the time-honored distinction between human and animal has led to a degeneration of meaning in the word "soul." These verbal failures lead in turn to the confusion and failure of thought about religious concepts...
Languages as a tool of thought, the crucial importance of an understanding of semantic problems: these concept are fundamental, and Wilson displays his deep concern with them in his discussion of the horrible deficiencies in the current teaching of English in America. In speaking of his own education, by contrast, Wilson says, "He drilled us in sentence structure, grammar, the device of 'rhetoric' and prosody, as if we had been studying a foreign languages; and we were made to take very seriously--as I have never, indeed, ceased to do--the great Trinity: Lucidity, Force and Ease...
...essays in this book are another product of this serious devotion. If Edmund Wilson's brilliance is circumscribed, he speaks at least with the authority of a man of candor, skill, and high intelligence