ABSTRACT
Wilson had declared himself a Communist during the mid-1930s, but soon after became disillusioned with events in Russia, especially Stalin's rise to power. He and Dos Passos had become good friends during the 1920s and remained so. Earlier in the year Wilson had written a letter to his friend expressing his reservations about the character development of Glenn Spotswood, the hero of Adventures of a Young Man. In June Dos Passos wrote back, defending his behaviouristic method of ‘generating the insides of the characters by external description’ (Ludington (ed.), The Fourteenth Chronicle, 522). What follows is Wilson's response, contained in a letter (Edmund Wilson, Letters on Literature and Politics 1912–1972, ed. Elena Wilson (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977, 319–20.))
