June 3, 2004

In another, later piece Wilson had expressed his astonishment that he had endured where so many of his contemporaries from the twenties had failed to do so, gone to madness, to alcohol, to causes betrayed, and it gave me a very real warmth to know that a man could live with truth so long and survive. He was, he knew, an anachronism. He did not drive, he could not "abide" the radio, and leafing through the weekly picture magazines, he could not recognize their contents as reflecting a single aspect of the America he knew; so that, in his own word, he felt himself "stranded" from his country. Often, when driving by, I repressed an overpowering urge to slam on the brakes, to disembark, to proceed blithely to the door, to knock boldly, and, on his opening to my knock, to shout, "Eddie, baby! I too am stranded!" Because Wilson elsewhere had said that literary idolaters fell somewhere between blubbering ninnies and acutely frustrated maidens, I never did stop.

Frederick Exley, A Fan's Notes.