[The Cabala (1926)] deals with a variety of plots, intrigues, and society gossip among a rather loosely joined group composed of wealthy, extremely conservative individuals—some of aristocratic backgrounds—living in modern Rome. Unable to adjust to modern political realities—the growing threat of fascism is mentioned occasionally—they cultivate ideas of a peculiarly retrogressive, highly reactionary utopia. (p. 14)

Wilder is obviously less interested in the history of the Cabala than in the character and fate of its individual members. Without exception they are cases of human existence on the borderline between reality and nonreality. Yet in the very marginal nature of their lives they reveal crises of the spirit that transcend the banal, the practical, and the purely factual. (pp. 14-15)

The novel actually consists of separate tales depicting the fate of each of these figures and their relationships to one another. There is a certain vacillation, a...