Hecate County

I've been rereading Memoirs of Hecate County. My two old favorites, "Glimpses of Wilbur Flick" and "The Milhollands and Their Damned Soul," remain my favorites on this reading. A disturbing moment when it occurred to me that Wilbur Flick and his miserable life might be stand-ins for something historical and specific, like American capitalism from the turn of the century to the New Deal. In the sanitorium, the narrator visits him and worries that Flick's high spirits might be followed by "a slump." Of course the Depression had already set in by this point of the story, so maybe not.

Still don't understand "The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles."  Kind of embarrassing when the author goes to so much trouble to highlight big-think aspects of the story. One character actually calls another Manichean, and there I am, still following along on the surface. Ah well.