A PRELUDE

No doubt the popes of literary fashion will proclaim the divinity of Edmund Wilson at any moment. Even so one wonders whether it was really a good idea to publish these "Landscapes, Characters and Conversations from the Earlier Years of My Life." A diary, written when Wilson was thirteen, has appealing interludes: "Naples is a very dirty place, full of howling dagoes. We visited the Aquarium, which, though small, has many interesting fish, including several octopi which we watched a long time." The Princeton notebook should prove a biographical mine for all graduate students interested in the walking habits of Wilson or Scott Fitzgerald. The undergraduate verse is also noteworthy, though perhaps lacking the Daisy Ashford simplicity of the diary. The log Wilson kept as a soldier during the First World War has many snappy tales, and concludes with a "List of books and pamphlets read beginning last of August, 1917," which we have all breathlessly awaited. Wilson's interlocking commentary on these efforts is amiable, inconsequential, and detached.