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America's best critic

From The Nation, the left's literary canon has neglected the contributions less-celebrated writers have made to the political significance of literature: A review of Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade by Alan Wald. From New Statesman, America's best critic: A review of Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s and 1930s and Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s and 1940s by Edmund Wilson. From The New Yorker, James Wood on understanding the capricious God of the Psalms; and drive, he wrote: Louis Menand on what the Beats were about. [The latest issue of Bookforum includes an article on fifty years after the publication of On the Road: Where was Kerouac going?]