Great Regulars: [Edmund Wilson] also reviewed all

the new books of the period, which meant that he was writing an early draft of literary history. He wrote the first American review of "The Waste Land," even before T. S. Eliot added the notes, and one of the first reviews of "Ulysses." He was among the first critics to make a substantial case for Yeats as a major poet.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: A Shaper of the Canon Gets His Place in It

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What's getting the heave are most hyphens linking the halves of a compound noun. Some, like "ice cream," "fig leaf," "hobby horse" and "water bed," have been fractured into two words, while many others, like " bumblebee," "crybaby" and "pigeonhole," have been squeezed into one.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Death-Knell. Or Death Knell.

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