To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History

I had decided to read TTFS because so many other books that I have read cited it as a good book to read. I have to admit with some shame that I had very little sense what it was about when I picked it up and began. Wilson starts in on Michelet and the history of the historians of the French revolution, and without really being clear what he's doing he drags the reader into the mindset of revolution and reaction that was current at Michelet's time. The great thing is that I didn't need to know what the book was about, I was hooked and willing to follow it wherever it was going to lead after just reading one chapter.He explains just what he found so great about Michelet as a historian and then happily goes on to write his own history in the same style. As a reading experience, TTFS is by turns sly, informative, moving and funny. Wilson incorporates anecdotes from the lives of his history's characters, but I never had the feeling that he was distracting me with funny stories. I felt like I learned an enormous amount from reading the book, but I never felt lectured to. Best of all was the feeling of Wilson himself leaning over your shoulder commenting on the history-- I liked the tone of the man (critic) that came through as commentary on the people he was discussing. He was definitely present, though not intrusive.The only thing I missed was footnotes-- the version that I was reading was old (1960) and there wasn't anything in the way of footnotes or bibliography provided. I hope that the newer versions are annotated, because it cost me some time tracking down books which Wilson was referring to.A must-read.

This is the story of the journey of an idea - that of engineering a society conceived as an organism - from its roots in the romantic movement with Michelet to Lenin, the ultimate man of action, on the threshold of power. Only Edmund Wilson, whose erudition as an autodidact was unsurpassed in his time, could have pulled this off: the ideas and inspiration pulse with life on every page. You get to know Marx, ENgels, and scores of other characters intimately as they dream of building a socialist order that would fundamentally re-order society and its economy. WHile I was never a sympathiser for communism, this most certainly gave me a feeling for the seductive beauty of the dream. THere is even a forward by Wilson, who admits to being overly optimistic, that what he chronicled with such excitment actually led to "one of the most horrible tyrannies in the history of mankind." THis is intellectual history at its very best, freed in the hands of a master writer from the pedantry and puffery of academia, and unflinching in the audacity of its partisan interpretations. Also beautifully written, it is a window into the hopes and dream of the 20C. Warmly recommended.

It has been twenty years since I read "To the Finland Station", a story of the rise of communist thinking, from its earliest beginnings to Lenin's triumphal return to St. Petersburg. I don't recall much of it, except this: it is the best work of history I have ever read. Anyone who wants to know what it means to be a writer should read this book, regardless of his or her interest in the subject. As night follows from day, those who are interested should read it, as well. It is a perfect illustration for one who believes that how a story is told is ever as important as the story, itself, and who wants to study an example where both are exceptional. The content will prove valuable to anyone concerned with modern world history.

Edmund Wilson's "To The Finland Station" is a history of communism from Michelet to Lenin. Well that's not exactly correct-this book is many books rolled into one. First it is a history of the idea of a Marxist interpretation of history. Second it is a first-hand account of the efforts by Marx and Engels to start a communist revolution. Third it is a literary criticism of "Das Kapital", the books of Michelet and other writers.Edmund Wilson was the book reviewer for "The New Yorker" magazine for many years. I picked up this book wanting to read something, anything from the literary critic who many consider the finest since, say, Samuel Johnson. Wilson is famous for, among other things, writing about the literature of the Civil War, "Patriotic Gore", and learning Hebrew so that he could write "The Dead Sea Scrolls". (He must have understood French and German too since he seems to have read Michelet and Marx in the original.) Wilson was also notorious for panning "The Maltese Falcon" and all mystery writing in general. Perhaps his greatest contribution was to revive from obscurity and make famous the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby", who books had gone out of print."To the Finland Station" is a long book that is often difficult to read. The long discussion of Hegel and Dialectical Materialism-while no doubt important to the idea of a Marxist interpretation of history-had me rereading the same paragraphs over and over. Still I don't understand any of it. But the terse nature of this prose and the theories they contain render one of the most startling ideas in the book. Marx says that most shallow readers-I guess he had me in mind-have missed the idea of communism completely. It is not simply the progression from capitalism to a struggle between the proletarian and bourgeois.Wilson writes that Marx says "To many simple minded persons who have just heard about Marxism, it means something extremely simple: it means that people always act from motives of economic interest and the everything that everything mankind has thought or done is susceptible of being explained in those terms". Yes, that is my precise understanding of Marxism and I learned it in high school.Until I read this book I did not know that Marx and Engels were not just pointy headed intellectuals working away in the safety of a university. No, they were front-line politicians and revolutionaries who risked their necks and their money to foment revolution. As Wilson points out, Marx used his inherited money to buy weapons for revolutionaries in Belgium. Both were expelled from Belgium, Prussia, France, and Marx finally settled in London. He and Engels spent much of their efforts trying re-ignite the Paris Commune (a French civil war in the 1870's where the communists actually took Paris for a few days) in revolutions in Austria and elsewhere. It is interesting to note that capitalism and the lack of money caused Marx and his family great s

Wilsons examination of Lenin is valuable even though it's too sympathetic. This is because at the time he wrote it (1930's) he wasn't afforded the needed documentation of Lenins murderous misdeeds...Wilsons portrait of Marx however, is without peers. He makes you feel like you're a fly on the wall of Marx's smoke filled study. He makes you feel like you're a witness to history. He makes complicated philosophic and economic issues understandable for the layperson. He gives you a roadmap as to how modern socialist/utopian thought developed, he traces it back to its source and he does it in such a way as to make the reader feel like an explorer. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It saddens me to see that it's out of print. This book is far too important to be out of print.