Edmund Wilson: Combat and Comradeship

132 SHOFAR Spring 1998 Vol. 16, No.3 Reflection Edmund Wilson: Combat and Comradeship David Castronovo Anne Whitehouse Isaac Bashevis Singer's article about meeting Edmund Wilson at a Harvard dinner, which originally appeared in the Forward under his pen name Isaac Warshawsky in 1962, has a fascinating story attached to it-as well as a larger significance for Wilson's readers. As the editors of the Wilson-Landau correspondence, we have unearthed the relevant documents and fleshed out the story which follows. In June 1962, Singer was invited to lecture at Brandeis and Harvard. After the Harvard lecture, Rabbi Ben Zion Gold, the associate director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at Harvard, hosted a dinner for Singer. Present at the dinner were rabbis, professors ofJewish studies, Jewish professors in other disciplines, the non-Jewish dean ofHarvard Divinity School, a non-Jewish poet, and Edmund Wilson. The universities represented included Harvard, Columbia, and M.LT. Singer was impressed by the academic luminaries gathered in his honor, for he names them one by one in his Forward article, identifying them by title and accomplishment . But he was most impressed of all with non-academician Edmund Wilson. The bulk of the article relates his conversation with Wilson in detail. Yet Singer's admiration of Wilson, as expressed in the article, is not uncomplicated . There is a sharp edge to the piece, a tendency to accept Wilson's self-proclaimed mastery of so many subjects with skepticism. Singer's tone of almost abject awe and respect ("In conversation with this gentleman I could not but marvel at his tremendous and literary knowledge. No matter what the subject, Mr. Wilson had read and known about it. Conversely, on subjects he mentioned, I could hardly reply") is mixed with irony and sly needling. It's a reaction to Wilson the polymath perfonning with his peers. How does Wilson have so much time to read and study? Singer ponders, as if that is all there is to Wilson's intellectual mastery. Does Wilson really know Yiddish and Hebrew as he claims he does? Singer wonders. That Singer found Wilson a little bit puffed up with hot air and in need ofpricking is evidenced by his gesture ofsending the article in Yiddish to Wilson. Singer must have felt pretty certain that Wilson would not be able to read it. One can sense him savoring his triumph over Wilson. Edmund Wilson: Combat and Comradeship 133 But Wilson, who lacked the ability to read the article, had the next best thing: a Yiddish translator, and one who seemed so completely out of Singer's circle that Singer would not hear of him. Jacob Landau, as we described in our Forward article ofNovember 6, 1992 ("Jacob Landau: Edmund Wilson's 'Jewish Ambassador"'), was a Bogota, New Jersey, clockmaker and electrician, a sometime tavern owner, an amateur astronomer, an observant Jew, a Hebrew scholar, and a great fan of the writing of Edmund Wilson. Six years previously, in 1956, Landau had initiated a correspondence with Wilson, which was to last until Wilson's death in 1971. Contrary to his officially stated practice, Wilson did respond to Landau's letters. Very soon, Wilson began to refer his questions about Hebrew and Jewish learning to Landau, who was delighted to play the role of "Jewish ambassador" to the living American writer whom he most admired. One year older than Wilson, Landau had been born in Europe, in a town near the Polish-Czech border. He had come to this country at the age of eight and grown up in Louisville, Kentucky. He was so thoroughly assimilated that no one would think he was not a native-born American. Yet he had leamed Yiddish before he learned English, and so he was a natural choice for Wilson's Yiddish translator. On June 19, 1962, Wilson wrote Landau: "Dear Jack, Do you know about Isaac Singer, the Yiddish novelist? If not I recommend strongly his novel The Magician of Lublin. (His new one, The Slave, I haven't read yet.) I met him at Cambridge and heard him read, and he has sent me this account of his visit. I want to...