Memoirs of Hecate County ( New York Review Books Classic Series) Book

I had been looking forward to reading this book, mostly because Frederick Exley had sung its praises in his writing, and because it is Wilson's favorite among his works. And his works are no minor achievement, including among them some truly brilliant essays and nonfiction. He was perhaps the leading American critic of his time, and a well-known personality. So given that, I have to see this mixed bag of fiction (and possibly fictionalized memoir) as something of a disappointment.

This book contains 5 short stories - some of them fairly long ones, and a short novel. The stories wander thru a range of situations and are quite different from one another. There are a few threads that keep them together, although they don't really seem to be enough. There is the author's cool, refined, intelligent voice, which hints at hidden reserves of passion and humor. There is his tendency, at least from today's perspective, to go on long-windedly after the point has been made. There is also the setting - among the well-to-do of a fictional upstate New York region. But there is so much variation here that the gambit seems unnecessary.

"The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles" is funny and entertaining, and had me wondering if this book was going to be full of this kind of enjoyable stuff - but this was not to be. The most interesting story in the bunch followed: "Ellen Terhune", about a man who goes to visit a female friend, and each time he visits her house, the clock has moved back another decade, and that decade's family situation is then presented to him. This was a terrific literary Twilight Zonesque piece, and made me look forward to more in this vein - but this too was not forthcoming. "Glimpses of Wilbur Flick" is a cross between social criticism and absurd humor, about a rich man whose useless life becomes ever more strange until he becomes an alcoholic magician. "The Milhollands and Their Damned Soul" seems focused on gossip and criticism about the publishing world, and could be of great interest to those who are fascinated with the publishing business of the 1930s and 1940s. "Mr. And Mrs. at Home" is another surreal piece, and at times it is quite mysterious. But it does not have the benefit of a coherent plot and the divergences into French and other languages had me skipping pages to get to the end.

The novella is entitled "The Princess with the Golden Hair". Despite its length, it somehow reads like a very long short story and does not really develop into a novelistic work. This concerns a well-heeled but callow 30ish intellectual who becomes involved with two women. One, the beauty of the title, is the wife of a friend, and the protagonist pursues her with great fervency and slyness for a long, and seemingly hopeless, period. He also becomes involved with a lower class, part-Ukrainian girl. The narrator marvels at the exotic horrors of her rough and tumble life, and tries to help her and love her as much as he can, but the boundaries of class and taste seem to prohibit him from really going for her.

In summary, this is a grab bag of pieces that does contain some interesting writing but did not hold my interest throughout.