[2] According to The Philadelphia Inquirer he is among the "first rank of" contemporary American (20th and early 21st century) "literary journalists...(reminiscent) of Naipaul, Norman Mailer and Agee".
His most recent book is A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age.
[8] Before Wilkinson was a writer, he spent a year as a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, which is the subject of Midnights, a Year with the Wellfleet Police,[9] and before that he was a rock and roll musician, playing in a number of bands, including one in Berkeley, California with Tony Garnier, Bob Dylan's longtime bass player and bandleader.
[citation needed] Wilkinson began writing when he was 24, showing work to William Maxwell, his father's friend, who in addition to being a novelist and short-story writer, had for forty years been an editor of fiction at The New Yorker.
Wilkinson's honors include a Lyndhurst Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.