essay on authors, readers, reviewers, editors, correspondents

I’m referring to Edmund Wilson’s excellent essay “The Literary Worker’s Polonius: A Brief Guide for Authors and Editors.” It’s all about the various sorts of conflicts and misunderstandings that can arise between people of the categories listed above. My only complaint is that the essay is 13 pages long rather than 300. He left out some topics; I can’t see any where he’s off the mark.

I was going to quote some of the essay’s best passages here, but some of them remain so to the point for us today that they would look like underhanded digs about past blog wars, and that would detract from the innate value of the essay itself. Instead, I’ll just send any interested person to read it directly.

One place you can find the essay is on pages 482-495 of the Library of America’s first Edmund Wilson volume, which is entitled “Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s and 30s.”