United States: Essays 1952-1992 Study Guide

A sly send-up of the ingrown literary world, this essay employs the device of using literary masks, or personas, to expose and attack those who use literary masks and personas. It is written in the form of an interview between a "visitor" from the New York Review of Books and Eckermann, whose real identity is difficult to nail down. The interviewer tells his subject there is nothing in the back issues of the Review by anyone named Eckermann, although there was a self-interview 25 years ago by the critic Edmund Wilson called "Every Man His Own Eckermann," which discusses music and painting—subjects Wilson confesses he knows little about. (read more)