The Memoirs of Hecate County

Rating:
Summary: The Critic as Writer
Review: "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.

Rating:
Summary: The Critic as Writer
Review: "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.

Rating:
Summary: the charms and spells of Hecate
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Pedagogy, erudition and the focus on the canvas?????
Review: 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.


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

(For those who aren't aware, 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 isn't an uplifting or gentle magic realism, it's 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's something rigorous and unforgiving about the narrator's look at life. It's 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 isn't up to more than just getting the basic ideas. Still, it's worth putting up with the annoyance to read the book.

Rating:
Summary: A Literary Find that won't be for 'everyone'
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Unpleasant
Review: 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.