Memoirs of Hecate County is a series of interrelated chronicles about a group of suburbanites, typical of the generation so glibly called "lost." Under Mr. Wilson's scrutiny they take on a new dimension, and that term no longer describes them. Lost they are, but they are also bedeviled. Evil is a positive power in their universe, and this is the keynote to their spectacular failure.One of the stories in this book is "The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles," a masterpiece of macabre irony in which a man who conquers and turns to success his greatest mania is at last defeated and destroyed by it. "Glimpses of Wilbur Flick" is the story of a spoiled rich man looking for an excuse for his existence. Success, when it comes, is ephemeral and we see him in the end supporting a group of ineffectual left-wing intellectuals—the last resort of a rich man's sense of guilt. All are about the American middle class between the wars which has often been analyzed in fiction but never with the detachment and finality that Edmund Wilson achieves in this brilliant work. Nabokov indulged it, Chandler drubbed it, the courts banned it,&nbsp;England saved it, and Wilson himself revised it. Now you too may partake in this too-hot-for-1940s classic, and see what all the hubbub was about.(Updike commentary not included.)

Memoirs of Hecate County (1946): Revised Edition PDF

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