Critical Reception
When Poe wrote to Washington Irving asking for a word of endorsement, he specifically requested a response to "William Wilson", calling it "my best effort". Irving responded, "It is managed in a highly picturesque Style and the Singular and Mysterious interest is well sustained throughout". Thomas Mann said of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Double: A Petersburg Poem, which explores a similar doppelgänger theme, "by no means improved on Edgar Allan Poe's 'William Wilson,' a tale that deals with the same old romantic motif in a way far more profound on the moral side and more successfully resolving the critical in the poetic".
Read more about this topic: William Wilson (short Story)
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest.... It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)