Memoirs of Hecate County (New York Review Books Classics)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
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.
The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Collection of six loosely connected short stories by Edmund Wilson, first published in 1946. Because of the frankly sexual nature of the story "The Princess with the Golden Hair,"the book was suppressed on obscenity charges until 1959, at which time Wilson published a revised edition. Some of the stories are narrated by an upper-middle-class intellectual recollecting his past sexual relationships and friendships in Manhattan and in insular, suburban Hecate county. Each story portrays a different aspect of socially dysfunctional America, such as the vapid ritual of the cocktail hour, bogus artists, and the erosion of intellectual rigor by popular culture.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Memoirs of Hecate County (New York Review Books Classics)
Memoirs of Hecate County (New York Review Books Classics),Edmund Wilson,Louis Menand,New York Review Books Classics,1590170938,20th Century American Novel And Short Story,Fiction,General,Intellectuals,Literary,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Manhattan (New York, N.Y.),Middle class,Suburban life,Fiction / General,Fiction / Literary
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