Jeffrey Meyers (1) (1939–)

Brisk, readable (though frequently repetitive) bio of a difficult, conflicted man with a terrifically observant, curious, and passionate mind. Calls' em as he sees 'em, even if he sees different sides at different times. A political progressive who saw the evils of totalitarianism, and a doting father (to his credit), and who chased women and was reluctant to consent to his wife's hysterectomy for uterine cancer because it meant she'd not be able to have any more children (um, not so much, and she died on the table). A brilliant writer, whose essays read as crisp and fresh today as eighty years ago, and who would happily drink and talk till closing time with writers he had savaged in print the day before...and whose names he would turn around and send off to the British government's secret propaganda office as communist sympathizers, "homosexuals," or just "Stupid." Meyers glosses over this aspect (though to be fair the list wasn't made widely public till after this book was published), minimizing it as doing what he felt was a "patriotic duty."

Repeatedly described as a Gothic, guilt-ridden, "saintly" character (and more than a bit of a poseur as well), Orwell is still a cryptic and contradictory being... and one still worth reading.… (meer)

Let's say up front that I like the book but not the man described therein. Which is not to say that that man is not interesting.

His father was a district attorney whose everyday conversation style carried over from the courtroom, and his mother was hard of hearing; consequently his own conversational style was loud and hectoring. His reputation as America's twentieth century man of letters perhaps explains his large number of sexual partners which continued to increase well up into his seventies. His promiscuous appetite for sex and alcohol was only exceeded by his love for writing and literary reputation. His high output, however, is at least partially explained by anthologizing and repackaging. He was consistently a critical but not a commercial success.

Physically he was a sorry specimen, never learning to drive and failing to even hit the target during military marksmanship training. His diet left him pot bellied by his thirties and the only time he drove a motorcycle ended in accident and citation if not arrest. The author regards as apocryphal that he once leapt a somersault while waiting for an elevator.

Despite at least two trips to the Soviet Union in the 1930s he only reluctantly acknowledged its social reality in the 1960s. Conversely his service as a U. S. Army medic well behind the front lines in WWI France left him a lifetime pacifist even after the invasion of Russia in 1941.

The book has a number of humorous anecdotes although not enough for 483 pages of text. One of the most revealing was that he hired a taxi to take him from his home in Cape Cod to John Dos Passos' in northern Virginia. Once there Wilson refused to sit at the dinner table with the taxi driver. (The black cook refused to allow a white man to eat in the kitchen.) Wilson had never forgiven Dos Passos for turning against Communism in the 1930s anyway and they never saw each other again after that visit.

Summers he would leave Cape Cod and spend them in his gloomy and secluded ancestral (as he thought of it) home near Utica, New York. Unsurprising his wife refused to accompany him.

A good deal of the text is literary comment and criticism. Occasionally I got the impression the author was being more tactful than candid.… (meer)