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Memoirs of Hecate County
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Memoirs of Hecate County

short stories by Wilson
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Article History

Memoirs of Hecate County, 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. Memoirs of Hecate County could not be sold legally or circulated in public libraries until 1959, at which time Wilson published a revised edition. The other stories in the collection are “The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles,” “Ellen Terhune,” “Glimpses of Wilbur Flick,” “The Milhollands and Their Damned Soul,” and “Mr. and Mrs. Blackburn at Home.”

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 ritual of the cocktail hour, bogus artists, and the erosion of intellectual rigour by popular culture.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.