Synopses & Reviews
Memoirs of Hecate County has been overlooked perhaps because of Edmund Wilson's too-commanding reputation as a critic, but also no doubt because its remarkably graphic and unsentimental depictions of sex attracted the attentions of the censor and provoked a scandal. Hecate County is the bewitched center of the American libido, a sleepy bedroom community just beyond the city walls where drinks flow endlessly and fantasies of sexual fulfillment take form and or fade away in an atmosphere of persistent unreality. But at the heart of the book is a New York story, "The Princess with the Golden Hair," Wilson's riverting, comic, and ultimately very moving account of a man caught up in concurrent love affairs. Written in a fine, clear style that is not in the least dated, Memoirs of Hecate County is, along with the best novels of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, among the finest accomplishments of 20th-century American fiction.
Synopsis:
Hecate is the Greek goddess of sorcery, and Edmund Wilson's Hecate County is the bewitched center of the American Dream, a sleepy bedroom community where drinks flow endlessly and sexual fantasies fill the air. Memoirs of Hecate County, Wilson's favorite among his many books, is a set of interlinked stories combining the supernatural and the satirical, astute social observation and unusual personal detail. But the heart of the book, The Princess with the Golden Hair, is a starkly realistic novella about New York City, its dance halls and speakeasies and slums. So sexually frank that for years Wilson's book was suppressed, this story is one of the great lost works of twentieth-century American literature: an astringent, comic, ultimately devastating exploration of lust and love, how they do and do not overlap.
Synopsis:
Written in a fine, clear style that is not in the least dated, this is the riveting, comic, and ultimately very moving account of a man caught up in concurrent love affairs.
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