Generation of Vipers was published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1942. It became one of the most controversial books in American publishing history — denounced from pulpits, banned from libraries, and yet selling over 180,000 copies in hardcover (extraordinary for a work of cultural criticism) and remaining continuously in print for decades. Wylie’s rage — directed at virtually every institution of American life — was so extreme, so unsparing, and so entertaining that readers kept buying the book even as they claimed to be offended.
The book is a polemic against American culture in toto: its complacency (attacked during wartime, when complacency was potentially fatal), its materialism (the worship of things over ideas), its anti-intellectualism (the suspicion of anyone who thinks), its religiosity (which Wylie saw as sanctimonious hypocrisy), its political corruption, and — most famously — its “Momism.”
“Momism” is Wylie’s term for the cultural elevation of motherhood into a sacred institution that places mothers beyond criticism while giving them absolute emotional power over their sons. American mothers, Wylie argued, had become a “generation of vipers” — using guilt, sentimentality, and emotional manipulation to keep their sons dependent, infantile, and incapable of adult autonomy. The chapter on Momism is the one most remembered — it electrified a culture that was (as Wylie correctly diagnosed) deeply ambivalent about the power of mothers, and it anticipated Philip Roth, the men’s movement, and feminist critiques of compulsory motherhood by decades.
Wylie was already known as a science fiction writer (Gladiator, 1930, which influenced the creation of Superman; When Worlds Collide, 1933) and as a screenwriter. Generation of Vipers revealed him as a cultural critic of ferocious energy — entertaining even when wrong, prescient even when exaggerating, and absolutely unwilling to temper his arguments for politeness.
Collecting Generation of Vipers
First edition (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1942): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$75
- Annotated edition (1955, with Wylie’s responses to critics): $15–$30
- Without jacket: $8–$15
A cultural landmark more often cited than read. The annotated 1955 edition (where Wylie responds to thirteen years of outraged letters) is considered the definitive text.