Memoirs of Hecate County

Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) is widely regarded as the preeminent American man of letters of the twentieth century. Over his long career, he wrote for Vanity Fair, helped edit The New Republic, served as chief book critic for The New Yorker, and was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Wilson was the author of more than twenty books, including Axel's Castle, Patriotic Gore, and a work of fiction, Memoirs of Hecate County. »

Louis Menand is the Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, and a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of The Metaphysical Club—which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize in 2002—and of American Studies, a collection of essays. »

Memoirs of Hecate County

By Edmund Wilson
Introduction by Louis Menand

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.

Reviews

An obscene book in violation of subdivision 1 of section 1141 of the Penal Law... would tend to deprave or corrupt those whose minds were open to such immoral influences.
— New York Court of Appeals, November 13, 1947

No longer shocking, and never meant to be, this 'memoir' remains...the most intelligent attempt by an American male to dramatize sexual behavior as a function of, rather than a suspension of, personality.
— John Updike

Also see:

To the Finland Station
By Edmund Wilson
Foreword by Louis Menand

Wilson combines his polymathic talents as critic, journalist, historian, and novelist, making this one of the greatest works by twentieth-century America's greatest man of letters.

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $19.95
Price: $14.96 (25% off)

Sep 30, 2004
472 pages
ISBN: 1590170938
9781590170939
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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