Customer Reviews

The Memoirs of Hecate County

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"I took to walking in the evenings on Fourteenth Street, which had a certain animation and variety. I got to like the big-hipped cat-faced women of the photographs shown as lures out in front of the burlesque show; the announcements of moving picture palaces bejeweled with paste-bright lights; the little music shops that had radios blasted into the street." That of course is Wilson describing a slice of Manhattan during the Depression Era from his magnificent novel, Princess With the Golden Hair, which is two-hundred pages of brilliance. Vivid and stylized descriptions of 30s New York are sprinkled throughout what Wilson himself has remarked is his personal favorite of all his books. Memoirs of Hecate County consists of six completely separate stories, five of which are moderately good at best, it's Princess With the Golden Hair that carries the day.

The dialogue between him and Imogen (the upperclass woman he's having an affair with) and him and Anna (the poor woman he's simultaneously scheduling assignations) is fantastically written. At one point he remarks to Imogen that she's a beauty yet doesn't act like it. Beauties, he explains, expect to be admired and courted. She, the suburban philistine, at one point has enough honesty to remark that if he got to know her he wouldn't like her. Meanwhile, in another passage Anna concludes that poor people can't love their mothers the way other girls do because their mothers aren't able to look after them, and physically abuse them. It's this constant juxtaposition running the length of the book which makes for fascinating reading. He jumps back and forth from Imogen to Anna -- two starkly different worlds for which he somewhat uncomfortably has a foot ensconced in each. On another occasion he reflects to himself how Imogen's peers would react to the going-ons in Anna's life, the thought of their incredulous responses is almost comical.

With a deft hand Wilson incorporates into his novel such topics as class stratification and the unwritten and unseen barriers separating the well-to-do from the poor. Towards the end he finally ventures to Anna's Brooklyn 'hood and is slapped in the face with what it truly means to be poor. He later becomes convinced America's rich do indeed constitute a bourgeoisie, and that Anna's proletariat world is the base on which everything rests, including Imogen's superficial reality. He concludes on a somber note lamenting how he will never have Anna again.

Included in Memoirs is an afterword by Updike who makes two extremely pertinent points: 1.) It was Wilson's conscious intent to bring Euro sexual realism into American fiction for the first time, and 2.) Memoirs, specifically Princess With the Golden Hair, was at the time an intelligent attempt by an American male to dramatize sexual behavior as a function of personality. Also included in the afterword is a quite interesting Q&A with intellectual heavyweight, Lionel Trilling, which took place during Memoirs' obscenity hearing.

Princess With the Golden Hair works on a number of levels. The cornerstone being that it contrasts two completely different worlds in the eyes of an intelligent critic. Judging by Memoirs, Wilson's foray into literature is an easy success, and an insightful look into 1930's mores.

I had recently read and loved _To the Finland Station_, Wilson's great non-fiction work treating the history of revolutionary thought in Europe. I had wanted to read something else of his and decided to read MoHC largely because of its infamous reputation.

(For those who don't know, MoHC was the subject of one of the pivotal battles over obscenity in literature. Although tame by today's standards, it was too frank about sexuality to get past the censors of the time. The Supreme Court upheld Doubleday's conviction for publishing the book.)

I really really liked Memoirs. It should be viewed as more of a collection of six loosely linked short stories than truly as a novel. ("The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles", "Ellen Terhune", "Glimpses of Wilbur Flick", "The Princess with the Golden Hair", "The Milhollands and Their Damned Soul", and "Mr. and Mrs. Blackburn at Home"). The narrator, a kind of educated everyman, uses his participation in the stories to paint portraits of the other characters he encounters.

True to the name of the book, a kind of magic realism swirls through the stories. Ellen Terhune may or may not be a ghost, and publishers may make a pact with the devil. But this is not an uplifting or gentle magic realism. The magic in this book is more of a feeling that people can step off the edge of the map more easily than they realize.

The book reminds me, in a way, of Fitzgerald. Some of the concerns and situations are largely the same. What strikes me the most, however, are how acerbic Wilson makes some of these portraits. I found myself actually wincing at times at how accurately he targeted common human weaknesses and behaviours. There is something rigorous and unforgiving about the narrator's look at life. It is very well-written. I particularly liked the view on relationships exposed in "The Princess With Golden Hair".

As noted, the digression into pages and pages written in French (although it only happens once) is really annoying. For me particularly it was frustrating because my French simply is not up to more than just getting the basic ideas. Still, it is worth putting up with the annoyance to read the book.

Wilson was the preeminent literary critic of his day, and advanced the careers of many of the names we associate with belles lettres the first part of the twentieth century. This foray into literature exposed a different talent. A left leaning intellectual, the protagonist explores his mythical Hecate county using modernist effects. The stories are written wryly, at times humorously, at times seriously, with an utter command of the language, in a latinate style. Leftist themes predominate--recall that at this time many intellectuals were enamoured with socialism. Stories involve him breaking class barriers in his romance, or writing about themes that were scandelous in their day. His parodies of the rich and franchised are funny, but nuanced and compassionate at the same time. His writes with gentle shades of grey, and, simply put, there are few nowadays who can write this well. He captures a world of independent intellectuals that does not exist today, moving between different social strata, and his depiction of females is based on a chivalric model, and stories possess, at the same time as displaying some of the novel ideas of the time, a nostolgic glance backward. Most interestingly, he writes of the days when an intellectual could live independently, if poorly, and explore the variegated social world around him. A book that should be part of everyone's literary education. Damon LaBarbera, Ph.D.

First I encountered Vladimir Nabokov's gentle, sad and funny novel PNIN, then DEAR BUNNY, DEAR VOLODYA: THE NABOKOV-WILSON LETTERS. Because I had found Nabokov so very enjoyable to read and because he thought highly of Edmund Wilson, I was determined to read some of the latter's works. I shall still get around to some of Wilson's non-fiction works, but MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY has convinced me that Wilson is not among the great fiction writers of American literature.

MEMOIRS consists of six quite independent and rather different stories, linked only by the presence of the same narrator and his references to life in Hecate County. The first two, "The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles" and "Ellen Terhune," are perfectly fine short stories with identifiable themes. I especially like the first one with its message of the pervasive dominance of evil over beauty in the world of human values and its linking of evil with the idea of capitalistic profit-making. The fifth story, "The Milhollands and Their Damned Soul," while slower-moving than the first two, is also amusing for the nearly non-stop editorial comments on the book publishing and marketing trade; the reader clearly senses the conflicts between authors and publishers and feels that Wilson is speaking quite loudly through the lips of his fictional narrator.

The last short story, "Mr. And Mrs. Blackburn at Home," struck me as confused and unedifying. It contains a definite supernatural element, as do the first two stories, but the contribution of that element to any theme quite eluded me. This story is also frustrating in that Wilson has one of the characters deliver a multi-page monologue entirely in French. My own command of French is usually adequate for a few isolated sentences or phrases here and there, nor do I object to having recourse to a translating dictionary for an unusual French term now and then. However, encountering eleven straight pages of French text exceeded my patience, and most of the speech went untranslated and, therefore, unread. Is it fair to criticize an author for the reader's lack of linguistic skill? Perhaps not, but be aware that a fair proportion of this story is not written in English.

The longest story, more of a novelette, is "The Princess with the Golden Hair." It is this story that caused Wilson's book to be banned as indecent by New York courts in the mid-1940s, but it is not Wilson's detailed descriptions of female anatomy that alienated me but rather the fact that I can find no point to the story. It is, admittedly, a fine example of realistic, some will say naturalistic, writing, and the reader comes to visualize the characters quite clearly. Whether or not the reader will like any of those characters is, of course, another matter entirely. By and large, their lives seem based on self delusion as well as on their self-absorbed relationships with others. One feels the need to bathe after consorting with these characters, even vicariously.

"The Princess" does contain one rather interesting revelation. Throughout all of the stories, the narrator is portrayed as, shall we say, a theoretical Marxist, ever ready to condemn the economic inequities of capitalism and to extol the benefits of socialism. However, his relationship with Anna, the quintessential example of the exploited proletariat, leads him to admit that reality and theory have parted company, and that his assumptions and beliefs may not be as accurate and inviolable as he thought. Nothing much comes of this, and the narrator experiences no epiphany or political conversion by any means, yet his conviction in the righteousness of his opinion has developed a crack. This may be the only example of character development in the entire story.

As to Wilson's writing style, let me quote Kate Blackburn from the final story. Speaking to the narrator, she says, "...[I]f you only wouldn't try sometimes to put quite so much into one sentence-and would talk about things a little more concretely,..." That pretty well sums up my feelings toward the syntax of a typical Wilson sentence.

In brief, then, I found some of the short stories in MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY to be both entertaining and creative; others I found pointless. The longest one struck me as having gone nowhere. The last one simply reminded me that I am far from fluent in French. While I am honestly looking forward to reading Wilson's TO THE FINLAND STATION, I must confess that I have no desire to tackle another fictional work by him, and I am left wondering if Nabokov's generous remarks about MEMOIRS stemmed more from his personal friendship with Wilson than from his honest evaluation as a professional writer.

On Christmas Day 2001 I was in San Francisco when I began reading this literary collection of six interrelated novelettes. I learned of the book while reading 'THE SCARLET PROFESSOR--Arvin Newton'. I was anxious to read it because the book was banned in 1947 because of its heatedly debated subject matter of descriptive sex, adultery, venereal disease and a mixture of the upper and lower class values of the time. My dear friend, Gloria Weiner-Freiman-Cohen, would surprise me with the gift of this book. While I was pleasantly surprised the author, Edmund Wilson, has encouraged me to write in my journal again as he did nightly in his 'Wilson's Night Thoughts'--(everyone has NIGHT THOUGHTS, right?). I'm sure that is an interesting book as well. This book is written in a very 'twenties style' of literary competence that I truly love. It just sweeps me back to the beauty of words that are often not used in this manner today. I liked the following lines from the book:
-Right is right and wrong is wrong and you have to choose between them!
-...it's the dead...that give life its price, its importance. You feel them under the ground just lying there and never moving.
-Every work of art is a trick by which the artist manipulates appearances so as to put over the illusion that experience has some sort of harmony and order and to make us forget that it's impossible to pluck billard-balls out of the air. ...he had been spurred by no need to make money.
-The only things that were fresh in the streets were the headlines--new words--on the newsstands, and most of these announced dismal events.
-They didn't worry about their social position because the life that an artist leads is outside all the social positions. The artist makes his own position, which is about the nearest thing you can get to being above the classes.
-He really needs somebody to hold his hand!
-...it was all on the kindergarten level.

The five yarns in this book, loosely linked, are very engaging and captivating - even seductive. But in the end I hated them. It's just that the first person character is a male who takes liberties in his relationships and then bristles at suggested whiffs of engagement of his partner or partners with other people - even if the implied infidelity is far from established. I find it very hard not to identify the character with Edmund Wilson himself, and then it's so hard to avoid a real repugnance for the man and the hypocrisy displayed by his character.

I have met this feeling before with Paul Theroux, even in his travel stories which are openly autobiographical. I'm sure I could never expose my thinking in the way Mr Theroux does. But, on the other hand there are extenuating circumstances with Mr Theroux and he does recognise the unfairness of his attitude, even regrets it. This doesn't happen with Edmund Wilson's character who seems not to think that his self-centred behaviour should be questioned - he's a man and he can do whatever he wants - not so those who associate with him. His entreaties to the women he seduces seem so [weak] to me - and yet they are successful in the novel - 'You know you're the only woman I've ever wanted to marry!'

And inexcuseable (for me anyway), towards the end of the novel there are pages and pages in French. I understand that multilingual people do sometimes switch between languages but I think this is appalling behaviour by the writer and the publisher when many, if not most, readers will not be able to read these passages. What are we expected to do - go out and hire a translator to translate the text for us?

The stories are engaging, even amusing, perhaps enlightening. But in the end I just didn't like them for the arrogance of the character, the vulnerability of the women he associates with (none of them stand up against him), and the self-indulgence of the author.

I admire Wilson's essays and criticism and was curious to see what he attempted, and accomplished, in this, one of his few forays into fiction. I also was curious to see what passed for "obscenity" in the late forties, when the author and publisher were successfully prosecuted and the book withdrawn from publication in the US for about 10 years. I did wonder if, some sixty years on, I would even notice the "objectionable" content.
AS to the second issue, the book is comprised of 6 loosely related stories, all told by the same narrator in the first person, and all touching upon his life between NYC and the suburban community of Hecate County. The only really "objectionable" story is the fourth, by far the longest, and the centerpiece of the collection, "The Princess with the Golden Hair." And yes, I did notice the "objectionable" passages, but (for good or ill) they all seem rather tame by today's standards: in general, the narrator, a relatively young man working on a book on art and politics, pursues a fairly active sex life, has three or four affairs that are recounted in varying degrees of detail, contracts a STD, describes the genitalia of one his assignations in detail more poetic than graphic, and mentions his skill in arousing one woman by the manipulation of her breasts. There is a bit more, and there is some sexual content in the final story, "Mr and Mrs Blackburn at Home," but overall, this isn't a book you would turn to for titillation. Outside of these details, the "obscenity" probably lay as much in the narrator's commitment to his sex life, which may have seemed at the time an "obsession" of unhealthy proportions. I don't think it seems so today. Rather, the narrator seems to us a relatively normal, if amorous, callow and amoral young man. Further, regardless of the overall success of the "Princess" story, his affairs explain a great deal about the narrator's character and are an integral part of the story. (I believe somewhere Wilson stated he was interested in showing "sex" as a natural function of personality.) More specifically, the "Princess" stands for a kind of chivalric ideal--she is married to another man and, for the longest time, conducts a more or less platonic relationship with our narrator, who pines after her in rather typically chivalric manner (even befriending her husband), only to find that his attraction is lessened, if not destroyed, when he actually possesses her and discovers that the back problems of which she complains may be psychosomatic rather than physical. As to his other primary interest, Anna, she is the daughter of eastern European immigrants and appeals to the narrator in large part as a representative of the proletariat, which reinforces the narrator's rather vague Marxist convictions. All in all, it is interesting to see what constituted "obscenity" in the late forties, but I couldn't recommend the book on that count alone.
As to the stories, well, they are a varied lot. The first three are the most successful, but none actually aims that high. "The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles" is more in the line of an engaging fable about the conflict of aesthetics and capitalism in a rather peculiar member of the country bourgeoisie. It is nicely done. "Ellen Terhune" is in the line of a ghost story that also is reasonably accomplished, but it seems as if Wilson might have made a bit more of it. "Glimpses of Wilbur Flick" is an amusing portrait of a spoiled, directionless and changeable would-be American aristocrat who begins with the politics that the lower classes should, by and large, be taken out and dumped at sea, ends by championing his new wife's communism, and finds his greatest fulfillment in practicing magic tricks.
The book probably stands or falls with the "Princess" story, which takes up fully half the book. This story has some of the finest writing in the book, including a particularly memorable description of the narrator crossing a bridge out of NYC into the "hinterland." It also is a pretty decent piece of realistic fiction depicting a modern young man in that milieu. Still, we never quite engage with the narrator (as perhaps we are not supposed to), who seems in the end confused and rather shallow, and for all of its fine detail and description, it is hard not to find the story unrewarding.
The final two pieces didn't engage me. "The Mulhollands" is an extended satiric piece that some have valued for its critique of the publishing world. "Mr and Mrs Blackburn," seems something of an overview of the social world of the suburbs and includes the famous 10 pages of French dialogue, mostly about politics, art, the coming of Hitler, etc.
All in all, if you are interested in Wilson, the book is worth reading. However, I was disappointed. At best, some of the stories were well done, the stories attempt to seriously address issues of art and politics, and I can see that the book opened the way for other writers like Updike and even Cheever to treat American life and sexual relations in a realistic, and sometimes fantastic, manner. All told, however, it seems a good thing that Wilson devoted himself primarily to essays and criticism, and I can't agree that this is a forgotten or lost "classic" of American literature.

Edmund Wilson is one of the great literary and social critics of the 20th century. This collection, largely forgotten in his voluminous interpretive texts, is a group of 6 interrelated stories which explore aspects of contemporary society (published in 1946). Wilson's keen analytical mind, gives these tales a penetrating, still relevant, perspective. The venue is upscale Hecate County, New York (Hecate is the Queen of Witches), built of marriages of form, and a social life of formalities. Passion, here, swirls in a cauldron of manners. The matriarchal community is dominated by a self involved, status-seeking, unsatisfied type of woman. These are stories of intrigue, even bewitchment, bound by strictures of guilt or conformity. Pathos mingles with humour and observation to produce a sharp relief of the cultural terrain. His methods include both biting satire and tantalizing insights of intimacy. The elliptical conversations provide a platform for far ranging, not so subtle social criticism. The women are weavers of charms. They form only a spectral presence in some of the stories, but are always a catalyst in the vaguely destructive relationships. In the most ambitious story, Princess With the Golden Hair, oblique sensual imagery imbues an erotic undertone; sexuality itself is portrayed in morally ambiguous, layered contradictions. Wilson is examining conventions which bind people in structures sapped of meaning, while confessing subliminally the need for standards-- and for love. In this way the book reflects both the mid century suburban angst and the more persistent predicaments of the heart.

I know too little to critique this book - a book is like a painting as we turn the pages the picture gets brighter and brighter. Most of the time the picture is incomplete and then it is our job to imagine the completion. In this canvas there are the back ground colors (in musical terms these are noises) and there are the primary characters over that background. It is important that the artiste do not mix up too much of the back ground with the primary focuses. In this book the back ground overpowers the focused characters.
We use examples to reinforce our ideas and thought and not to divert the actual discussion - in all the five stories the examples fudge the primary discussions. I never question the fact that Edmund Wilson is extremely knowledgeable but that does not mean I have to get a dose of that in every page. Hemingway's book "the old man and the sea" is not thick and there are no examples but it still captures our imagination while these five stories do not. May be this book was not for me - my recommendation is try one story and then plan for the rest of the book.