The Metropolitan Critic

This splendid collection of literary essays . . . the opening essay on Edmund Wilson is almost like a preliminary schema by which we are invited to judge the rest of the book. He demonstrates over and over again that he shares, in varying degrees, all the high qualities which he admires so much in Wilson . . . like any first-rate critic, he much prefers praising to blaming . . . Mr James is a very formidable metropolitan indeed