Upstate: Records and Recollections of Northern New York

by Edmund Wilson

'Upstate', Edmund Wilson's history and memories of twenty years in the Old Stone Huse in Talcottville, New York, was perhaps his most warmly received book. It is an account of a region and its people, a social and personal history that seems sure to become a classic, worthy of the extraordinary praise it received.

Genres: New York, History, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Essays, Autobiography

386 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. See also physicist Edmund Wilson.

Edmund Wilson Jr. was a towering figure in 20th-century American literary criticism, known for his expansive intellect, stylistic clarity, and commitment to serious literary and political engagement. Over a prolific career, Wilson wrote for Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, shaping the critical conversation on literature, politics, and culture. His major critical works—such as Axel's Castle and Patriotic Gore—combined literary analysis with historical insight, and he ventured boldly into subjects typically reserved for academic specialists, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Native American cultures, and the American Civil War.
Wilson was also the author of fiction, memoirs, and plays, though his influence rested most strongly on his literary essays and political writing. He was instrumental in promoting the reputations of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others. Despite his friendships with several of these authors, his criticism could be unflinching, even scathing—as seen in his public dismissal of H. P. Lovecraft and J. R. R. Tolkien. His combative literary style often drew attention, and his exacting standards for writing, along with his distaste for popular or commercial literature, placed him in a tradition of high-minded literary seriousness.
Beyond the realm of letters, Wilson was politically active, aligning himself at times with socialist ideals and vocally opposing Cold War policies and the Vietnam War. His principled refusal to pay income tax in protest of U.S. militarization led to a legal battle and a widely read protest book.
Wilson was married four times and had several significant personal and intellectual relationships, including with Fitzgerald and Nabokov. He also advocated for the preservation and celebration of American literary heritage, a vision realized in the creation of the Library of America after his death. For his contributions to American letters, Wilson received multiple honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His legacy endures through his extensive body of work, which remains a touchstone for literary scholars and general readers alike.

Reviews

[Seán · Rating 4 out of 5]

It gets going with a few chapters on the history of Wilson's maternal ancestors, the Talcotts, and their eponymous hamlet just west of the Adirondacks, just east of the Burned-over District. These chapters include a fascinating meditation on outre sects that found a footing upstate in the 19th Century (note: these bizarre New York-origin faiths include the Shakers, Millerites, and Mormons--the Empire State has a lot to answer for, I know). The bulk of the book consists of edited diary entries from 1950 to 1970 recording Wilson's time mixing it up with farmers, Hungarian immigrants, literary lights, Hamilton College profs, teenage delinquents (a persistent late 20th Century concern), and at least three aunts named Dorothy.

Edmund Wilson's Summer of 1955 Reading List:

Barrett Wendell's Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Lady Byron Vindicated
Aldous Huxley's The Genius and the Goddess
M.L. Clarke's Richard Porson
Faith Compton Mackenzie's As Much as I Dare
Siegfried Trebitch's Chronicle of a Life
Desmond Chapman-Huston's Bavarian Fantasy
Ivan Turgenev's Nest of Gentlefolk
Maxim Gorky's Lower Depths
Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone (1861-1868)
Ralph Izzard's The Abominable Snowman
Morley Callaghan's The Loved and the Lost
Maxim Litvinov's Notes for a Journal
V.N. Zhitova's The Turgenev Family
Miscellaneous shite re: the Dead Sea Scrolls
*Roger Peyrefitte's Les Clés de Saint-Pierre
*Katherine Jones' Heroines of Dixie

Sean Corley's Summer of 2010 Fantasy Project: live in a Tiny House on a sedgy hollow above the Sacandaga River; consume water and pastrami sandwiches daily; read each of these books.

[*Books that have no part in this fantasy:]

[Don Chubb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been raised in Onondaga and Madison county and lived in Oneida County this was an interesting read.

[Peter Strauss · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have affection for Upstate New York, and the book's title lead to to the first of Wilson's work I encountered. Diaries can be cutting, accounts to settle scores with others. Wilson's diaries tend toward the other direction; they are more like doors that swing inward towards the home of the writer's soul rather than out. From here I went on to all the others he published. I don't think he wrote these with publication in mind necessarily. They are too intimate to be so free. Yet he displays a certain confidence in us, our openness and respect for others, that is almost ( to use a term that doesn't quite capture my meaning) friendly -- at least in a mature and heart felt fashion.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York is not a city, the Big Apple notwithstanding. It’s a vast and varied state, as the famed literary critic Edmund Wilson details in this history-memoir-genealogy of northern New York, where he spent summers through most of his life. Peppering his story with historical and contemporary anecdotes of hardworking farmers, religious cults, and famous figures, Wilson brings to life the wildness and inhuman beauty of the region. But what drew him, summer after summer, were not the stories and the great outdoors. “A phase of American life is preserved here,” he says, a phase partly Wilson’s own, and which he knew was disappearing. Yet Wilson seems not unhappy to see it gone. The heartbreak of this book isn't just the year in, year out account of the demise of a phase of American life; but the inability of this magnificent inheritor to mourn it.

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the chapters most about the region and his family’s connection to it. But some sections were far too much about who he was socializing with and reading, and his personal issues, which were less interesting.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because of an interest in Talcottville, which has only been partially satisfied. The jounral entries during the time Wilson spent in Talcottville reveal lots about the NNY culture as well as his literary and intellectual circles.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first 50 pages of this book - made up of charming historical essays on the authors' ancestors and Talcottville. Once it got into his actual diary, I found it horrendously tedious and put it down at page 83. Oh well.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice, slow, summer read. Essentially literary critic and author, Edmund Wilson's diary kept during his days at his summer home in Talcottville, New York in the Adirondack Park from 1950-1970.