Memoirs of Hecate County

A collection of short stories dusted with ghosts, devils, and the stultifying ambience of 1930s upstate New York. Most of the stories in Memoirs of Hecate County are arranged along the same design: a banal situation is touched by the supernatural, dread begins to seep through the story, and an eerie climax recapitulates the protagonist's central banal dilemma. A woman begins receding through time to justify her birth; a demon leaps in and out of unsuspecting heads; the devil strikes a bargain with a book publisher. Once you've read one of these stories, you know how the rest will go; the central mainspring is always the same. The main exception to this mechanical system is the best story in the collection, "The Princess with the Golden show more Hair," which follows the narrator's self-absorbed efforts to simultaneously pursue two women. He ultimately attains neither of them, but the experience suffices to liberate him from his arrogance and callousness. show less

I have a tremendous respect for Wilson the literary and social critic. I wish I couls say the same thing for Wilson the fiction-writer as represented in this book. There is a smug coarseness which troubles me throughout. It's one thing to create characters who are dyspathetic, but it is quite another for another to leave the impression, past the narrative itself, that a cold or even nasty mind has been at work. One a much lower level, it's an interesting comment on chganging values that HECATE COUNTY should have been highly controversial upon its initial publication. Compared to an hour of FOX-TV, this book is a Methodist sermon.

What does one do when one occupies a time and a world greatly depressed? When roaring revolution is behind you and ugly obliteration is on the horizon? When your position, purpose, and classification are lost in the fog of woe? When all things foreign make more sense? When the grass is not green on either side? When the present moment becomes the holy grail? Breath, touch, liquids, flutters, chills, sweats, gasps, smacks, screams, blows, regurgitations. A fine line in the fever dream between the luxurious and the sewer and the big sleep. "Time passes, listen"

A set of six tales with a common narrator and all situated in New England and New York. I liked the use of fantasy, restrained to the extent that it becomes realistic, mirrors those few moments of genuine oddness that we all seem to experience in our lives. There is magic here, but it's momentary, and leaves the characters guessing and second guessing long after we leave them. "Ellen Terhune" is I guess the most avowedly supernatural story, but its time-shifting spookery is handled so adroitly as to take the reader entirely unawares. I'd locate it between Henry and M.R. James's ghost stories - perhaps closer to Henry. The central piece, "The Princess with the Golden Hair", is quite objectionable in the chauvinism of its narrator and its show more predictability, but it's soaked in a weird sexual fever (it was banned for a while) that makes you keep reading. My favourite was "Mr. And Mrs. Blackburn at Home", but that's because I can't resist a good literary Satan, and here he speaks excellent French and much good sense. He is as good an Old Nick as I've read.

On the other hand, there is not much depth to these stories. If you don't care for the milieu, or Wilson's or the narrator's style, you will probably detest them. There's nothing groundbreaking about "Memoirs of Hecate County", but I found it surprisingly good. I must read some of his non-fiction. show less

I'm afraid the best thing I can say about this collection of five stories and one long novella by noted critic Edmund Wilson is that I bought it at a remaindered price. The narrator for all the stories is a 30- or 40 something art historian who lives both in New York City and the fictional Hecate County, presumably a Connecticut suburb, in the 1920s and early 1930s. Although this was certainly a lively time, most of the stories present intellectual arguments about art, publishing, music, or politics, rather than introducing interesting characters in interesting situations; some even have supernatural touches. The novella, "The Princess with the Golden Hair," is notorious, because it got the book banned when it was published in 1946 due show more to what now seem tame descriptions of female anatomy; it is better than the stories in its presentation of characters from various walks of life but, unfortunately, they all seem designed to be symbolic, rather than real people, and i couldn't work up any sympathy for any of them, including the rather obtuse narrator. I ended up skimming the final two stories after the novella.

This is one of the very few NYRB books I have read that was a real disappointment. show less