|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
To the Life of the Silver Harbor
Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy on Cape Cod
Reuel K. Wilson
University Press of New England
2008 • 192 pp. 30 6 x 9"
Comparative Literature / Memoir / Cape Cod
$26.95 Cloth, 978-1-58465-713-2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Cape as evoked and experienced by a legendary literary couple
Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) and Mary McCarthy (1912–1989), famed authors, literary critics, libertines, and leftists, were married for seven years and had one child together, Reuel K. Wilson. While bringing forward new biographical revelations, as well as texts that have never been published before, Reuel K. Wilson chronicles his parents’ lives on Cape Cod, together and apart, while examining their relationships with the landscape around them, both human and physical. The book combines biography, cultural history, and literary analysis in an effort to, as the author writes, “impart a sense of the two protagonists’ flesh, blood, nerves, and determination to make an artistic synthesis from observation and experience. If they recreate the place, my role has been to recreate them in it.”
“Reuel Wilson retraces the eye-opening natures walks he took with his father, side by side, when he was entering adolescence. Gull Pond in Wellfleet, “almost a perfect circle,” allowed ample time for a memorable lecture of the Lady’s Slipper, Edmund Wilson’s favorite wildflower, and how its slipper-like pouch seems to connect with his father’s fascination with women’s feet. The author’s boyhood innocence is saturated with mature wisdom. His book offers us a rare and intimate glimpse into the sophisticated Bohemian culture made famous in the writings of his parents.”—Christopher Busa, founder and editor, Provincetown Arts
“Invaluable for anyone who cares deeply about Mary McCarthy or Edmund Wilson, this is a lovely book—vivid, lucid, and wise."—Frances Kiernan, author of Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy
|
|
REUEL K. WILSON is the son of renowned literary critic Edmund Wilson and the writer Mary McCarthy. Now retired from teaching Russian, Polish, and Comparative Literature at the University of Western Ontario, he is the author of The Literary Travelogue (1973) and Poland’s Caribbean Tragedy (1986) and numerous articles, including portions of this material in The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Cape Cod Voice. He maintains a part-time residence in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
