{"id":301,"date":"2008-01-19T15:25:34","date_gmt":"2008-01-19T20:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=301"},"modified":"2008-01-19T15:25:34","modified_gmt":"2008-01-19T20:25:34","slug":"edmund-wilson-and-the-loa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Edmund Wilson and the LOA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, aldaily.com points to an article<\/a> calling the two-volume set of Edmund Wilson’s essays and reviews, published by the Library of America, “one of the summits of twentieth-century literary criticism.”<\/p>\n

This struck me because it wasn’t long ago that I received the first volume in the mail, and I was impressed with it. In fact, yesterday I wrote a post<\/a> with a side mention of Virginia Woolf’s opinion of American English. The article today reminded me that I only know her opinion because of one of the essays in that first volume of the Wilson set.<\/p>\n

The Library of America<\/a> (or LOA) publishes works by American authors, and exists to ensure that those works never go out of print. The books are well made, well edited, and well chosen. If you’re a member (I am) then you get the books in their own slipcover, which beats the hell out of a dust jacket for actually protecting the book.<\/p>\n

As a member, you choose how often you want to get the books sent, and which books you want. Then each year you choose from that year’s new list of stuff they’re publishing. In other words, you don’t ever get a book that you didn’t specifically choose.<\/p>\n

For a long time, I was very careful in what I chose to receive, but then I threw caution to wind! WOO HOO!<\/p>\n

Now, unless I know I don’t want something (a lot of poetry, for example, or a book I’ve already got, or anything by Faulkner), I go ahead and have them send it along.<\/p>\n

And it’s been great. I had never heard of Wilson, in fact, when I saw him on the LOA list. I’m very happy that I know of him now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, aldaily.com points to an article calling the two-volume set of Edmund Wilson’s essays and reviews, published by the Library of America, “one of the summits of twentieth-century literary criticism.” This struck me because it wasn’t long ago that I received the first volume in the mail, and I was impressed with it. In fact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}