The hilarious and disturbing introduction to Ethan Frome

Started Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome" last night and yes I know every high-school honors English class reads it our used to read it - though I never did till much later in life (my college and grad school barely acknowledged the existence of American lit) and I remember liking it, dark, gloomy, a sled accident - I don't remember much else so that's why I'm re-reading it - also, it's our September book group selection. Anyone coming at it today will find Wharton's introduction hilarious at best and disturbing at worst. She says she rarely writes/wrote these things but was prevailed upon by a publisher - and she tries I think to sounds like (her friend) Henry James, ruminative, complex, analytic - writing mostly about her narrative decisions as an author, the problem she faced in trying to tell a story about an event whose climactic moment happened many years in the past. Writers will identify readily with some of her thoughts, about how ideas arise, entice us, sometimes totally deceive use leading to years of waste and suffering. But most striking are her comments about her characters: what a challenge she faced in writing about these rural dolts! How difficult it was for her to capture their simplicity! Can you imagine? These country bumpkins actually have thoughts, feelings, memories - even intelligence. What a novel insight! How brave of Wharton to pioneer this territory and to explore the minds of this alien tribe. I know she lived for several years in the Berkshires - have visited her estate there - but she seems to have brought to her time there nothing but a European snob sensibility of the worst kind, a self-doubting, self-loathing American inferiority complex. Her introduction would totally make me not want to read the book - but, fortunately, she's a better writer than (self) critic, perhaps a better writer than person.