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Title: The Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson, John Updike ISBN: 0-374-52432-7 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: April, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Critic as Writer
Comment: "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: 4
Summary: Ascerbic and Incisive
Comment: 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: 3
Summary: Unpleasant
Comment: 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.
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Title: To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (New York Review Books Classics) by Edmund Wilson, Louis Menand (Introduction) ISBN: 1590170334 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lingeman ISBN: 0451527704 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta by Gore Vidal ISBN: 1560255021 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston ISBN: 1591840198 Publisher: Portfolio Pub. Date: 25 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: I Thought of Daisy by Edmund Wilson, Neale Reinitz ISBN: 0877457697 Publisher: University of Iowa Press Pub. Date: 15 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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