Product Description

The stunning, classic coming-of-age novel written by one of America's foremost Southern writers

A legendary author on par with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward, Angel, his first novel, about a young man's burning desire to leave his small town and tumultuous family in search of a better life, in 1929. It gave the world proof of his genius and launched a powerful legacy.

The novel follows the trajectory of Eugene Gant, a brilliant and restless young man whose wanderlust and passion shape his adolescent years in rural North Carolina. Wolfe said that Look Homeward, Angel is "a book made out of my life," and his largely autobiographical story about the quest for a greater intellectual life has resonated with and influenced generations of readers, including some of today's most important novelists. Rich with lyrical prose and vivid characterizations, this twentieth-century American classic will capture the hearts and imaginations of every reader. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (77)

It's okay
The book was more marked up than I expected, but it was cheap & arrived in a timely fashion, so no complaints.

Family and small towns- You can't escape them!
In this American classic, Thomas Wolfe presents the Gant family, a spirited, feisty, multigenerational family living restless lives but unable to resist the magnetic pull of family and the small town in which they live.The centerpiece of the novel is Eugene Gant, the youngest, most intelligent, and possibly weirdest of the clan.From the time of his first thoughts, Eugene has the urge to flee, escaping the confines of the situation he was borne into in order to find a richer existence; no matter what he does, however, he finds himself back at home, among the people from whom he desperately wants to escape.
Such is the story of every Gant member so brilliantly depicted in the novel.The oldest son fails to live up to any expectations and moves away in shame, only to return at the prospect of an inheritance.The daughters marry and try to create families of their own, only to return to help nurse the sick or with heads bowed down unable to conceive.The brothers strike out into the world in a variety of ways- as businessmen, soldiers, wanderers looking for a good time- only to find themselves back in the arms of their not too welcoming family.Each is a manifestation of their vibrant and restless parents, a drunk father who fights off an illness that has claimed many, and a money hungry mother who puts finances above family, all for the sake of the family.
The characters are unforgettable, and Wolfe's depiction of small town life captures a time in this nation that has long been abandoned.The writing is beautiful, sarcastic, insightful, whimsical, lyrical, and when it comes to capturing the emotions of life- first loves, first heartbreaks, death- powerful.
A must read.

HAUNTING AND POETIC COMING-OF-AGE STORY
After a recent visit to Thomas Wolfe's home in Asheville, I felt like I had to read this book. I was particularly curious as to why everyone in his hometown was in such an uproar upon its publication in 1929. Now I understand.

I checked this book out from the library, but now I simply must own it to add to my shelf of absolute favorites. It's a long book, so I spent a LONG time getting to know Eugene Gant/Thomas Wolfe, and I love the author all the more for letting me in on his autobiography in such a beautiful, poetic way.

Wolfe came from a difficult family situation, with an alcoholic father and a poor mother who worked herself to the bone trying to run her boarding house, known as Dixieland in the novel. You can tour this home in Asheville; the house is actually called the Old Kentucky Home. Throughout the novel, he's searching, trying to find meaning to his many losses: his brothers who died, a lost love, his innocence, his childhood.

In the end, Eugene Gant/Tom Wolfe finally feels free to leave his home forever. He'll be leaving North Carolina for Harvard, and now we all know that he left his life as a small-town boy with big dreams to become one of the most beloved authors of all time. I can't wait to read the sequel, Of Time and the River. I highly recommend Look Homeward, Angel to anyone who is a student of great American literature, and especially to writers of autobiographical fiction.

Good companions to this book are Thomas Wolfe's The Story of a Novel and John Chandler Griffin's Memories of Thomas Wolfe: A Pictorial Companion to Look Homeward, Angel. If you're reading Look Homeward, Angel for the first time, Griffin's volume is a must. You'll be able to see Wolfe's actual family photo album, from which he drew his characters. After staring into the real Ben Wolfe's eyes, it took me several days to fully grasp the haunting story of what happened to him (I won't spoil it for you.) I have definitely become a Thomas Wolfe fan and only wish he hadn't died so young so that we'd have more of his genius works to ponder and enjoy.

Not yet read
I wanted to find a book to read for pleasure (since I am typically found reading college text books).A Bad Religion song references this author/book, and that was why I chose it.However, I have not yet found time to sit down and start it, but it looks great and the subject matter sounds very interesting.I think anything that Bad Religion references would be an educational and interesting pick.

Masterpiece of the Highest Order
Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel is many things, all of them great; profoundly emotional yet deeply philosophical, it is one of the all-time best bildungsromans, an unforgettable evocation of the mountain American South in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, and a masterpiece of poetic prose. It is an immortal American classic absolutely essential for anyone even remotely interested in American literature.

The first thing we notice is the sparkling prose, which is some of the most poetic ever. Wolfe's writing is not simply beautiful but truly sublime; his sentences are lovely, his descriptions lush, and his tropes stunningly memorable. After two major successes, he fell out of favor in an era that valued concision and ambiguity, and time has only made him less conventionally palatable. The book is over five hundred pages, its sentences long, and its vocabulary dense; few readers would now not be scared by such a work. However, Wolfe shines at least as brightly as ever for those truly alive to language's beauty; his prose is near-unparalleled for inventiveness and sheer exquisiteness, making him one of America's great stylists.

More fundamentally, the main thing making Look still so undeniably great is its masterful bildungsroman aspect. The novel is above all Eugene Gant's coming-of-age story. There are of course many such stories, but this is one of the very best. We follow Eugene literally from birth until he truly comes into his own in young adulthood and are deeply interested in his journey. The story is firmly rooted in Wolfe's life and thus has many particular trappings, but youth's essential experiences are universal, letting the book speak powerfully to many. We truly feel with and for Eugene because we see ourselves in him; he reminds us of our own youth - what could have been as much as what was. Wolfe tells his story with truly engaging emotion, quickly drawing us in and never letting go; we feel Eugene's ups and downs almost as if they are ours - which of course they are to a large degree. Though admirable in many ways, Eugene has clear faults that only make him seem more human and thus easily identifiable. Few bildungsromans are so transcendentally relatable or thoroughly stirring.

However, calling Look a bildungsroman sells it rather short; it is a grand, sweeping epic of many facets. There are numerous other characters, a variety of situations, and several settings. The book is in a larger sense a story of the Gant family, following all members at various times and to various degrees. They are their own family, and we can admire or criticize as we please, but they are also in the truest sense archetypal. The interactions - strife at least as much as joy - that they represent are familiar to nearly everyone. We become as intrigued in their story as in Eugene's, feeling and growing along with them.

Characterization is another Wolfe strength. All the Gants have strong individuality and are drawn strongly and evocatively, as are other characters. Wolfe interestingly combines Dickensian eccentricities with American realism's best aspects, creating a genuinely engaging and unforgettable cast.

Look is also notable for bringing the Mountain South alive. Local color writing has a long and grand American tradition, and this is one of the best entries. Its Altamont is closely based on Wolfe's Asheville, North Carolina hometown, and he describes with the precision and subtlety only experience can give. Few writers have a greater sense of place. He makes us see landscapes nearly as if we are there and understand what it was like to live in such a place in regard to everything from speech to economics. On top of everything else, Look is thus of substantial historical value to anyone wondering how such people lived in such places in this era.

The great William Faulkner called Wolfe the best writer of their time, and it is easy to see why. His writing is universal in the best sense, but he mastered the truly American grain that began with Twain and ran through the likes of Faulkner and Steinbeck. Dialect and place are of course a big part, and Wolfe has them down brilliantly, but it also runs deeper. Faulkner said art is worth nothing unless shot through with eternal feelings and thoughts, and Wolfe handles them with unusual deftness. He makes us feel as few writers can but also makes us think. Look is a deeply philosophical work focusing on themes like life's meaning, individuality vs. wider responsibility, the loss of youth's illusions, aestheticism vs. practicality, etc. It also touches on issues like class and race that are integral to American art and culture - and indeed to the world's. Novels encompassing all these threads are very rare, and only a few dozen have tied them together so well, much less so movingly.

One problem with reading Look today is its unflinching racism depiction. Blacks are consistently treated poorly in it, the victims of prejudice and innumerable slurs from all white characters. More disturbingly, the narrative portrayal itself is grossly unflattering and lacks nuance, being also full of racial epithets and other highly derogatory comments. Jews are also shown unflatteringly but far more subtly.This is particularly worrisome in that Look is known to be highly autobiographical and that - unlike with, say, Twain - it is not satirical. It is impossible to deny that Wolfe grew up with many racial prejudices, at least some of which seem to have lingered when writing Look. His views later liberalized, as reflected in subsequent works, but Look remains clouded. Some will not be able to get past this, which is understandable. However, it is important to keep in mind that his prime purpose was realism; characters talk as people of the era really did, and the narrator writes as someone from Wolfe's background portraying such events almost inevitably would. The real problem is not Wolfe or the book but the era; he presents things as they were, for better or worse. This also adds to the historical value, though that of course does not atone. In fairness, we must remember that, however autobiographical, this is a novel and should not be used to determine personal views. I believe this should be a foundational critical principle, and it applies here as well as elsewhere. As for Look, all must judge by their own hearts and consciences. It is certainly a product of its time, which is no excuse but does explain the prevalence of views now rightly considered unacceptable.

Excepting this admittedly large caveat, Look is superb in all respects, an American literary monument that will not be soon forgotten.
... Read more

Product Description
"The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe" stands as the most comprehensive edition of Thomas Wolfe's short fiction to date. Collected by Francis E. Skipp, these fifty-eight stories span the breadth of Thomas Wolfe's career, from hte uninhibited young writer meticulously describing the enchanting birth of springtime in "The Train and the City" to his mature, sober account of a terrible lynching in "The Child by Tiger". Thirty-five of these stories have never before been collected, and "The Spanish Letter" is published here for the first time. Vital, compassionate, remarkably attuned to character, scene, and social context, "The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe" represents the last work we have from the author of "Look Homeward", "Angel", who was considered "the most promising writer of his generation" (The New York Times). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Short Stories of a Novelist
A man of enormous size and ambitions, Thomas Wolfe was a novelist and not a short story writer. Wolfe's editors and agent cut out parts of his epic sized manuscript and had them published as stories in various outlets. Readers of Wolfe's novels will recognize a few of the stories since they often appeared as chapters in his books. While admittedly not a short story writer, Wolfe's talents make this collection worth having. Wolfe fans can take pleasure that some of his abandoned novels appear as stories here (for example his "Hound of Darkness" idea shows up as "Prelude to America" in this collection). While some of the reviewers may balk at Wolfe's use of stereotyping, some of the works here, including a number of pieces bashing Nazi Germany, may help salvage Wolfe's reputation. The most powerful and finest crafted story in the collection offers a cold, condemning look at a lynching. With excellent introductions by James Dickey and Francis Skipp, this collection serves as an excellent introduction to a great and unfairly neglected writer.

TrancendentReading Experience
I've treasured this work of Mr. Wolfe's since purchasing it in the first edition in 1988. I can think of few authors who can transport their readership into relms of utter beauty and transcedence. Experiencing them is a gift to behold.
A MUST start for those who have not read anything by Wolfe.
A treasure for all times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

treasure for Thomas Wolfe
I am so glad this book was written in fullness.I am a distant relative of Thomas Wolfe, and I know this means so much to Thomas Wolfe fans and others who love him.

"Forever And The Earth"
I have Ray Bradbury to thank for meeting with Thomas Wolfe early in my life - when I probably would have never heard about him otherwise. He never was (still isn't) a part of school literature programme in Russia.

Bradbury's magnificent short story "Forever and the Earth" in a remarkably good Russian translation was the reason why as soon as I saw a Wolfe's novel in a bookshop in 1983, I bought it immediately. It was "You Can't Go Home Again". Ever since I keep reading him and re-reading again and again. It is a slow read but so intoxicating. Being a fast reader, I have to do it by 10 or 15 pages at a a time - otherwise I get rather tipsy on his words.

"He was a wirlwind. He lifted up mountains and collected winds...
Tom Wolfe's the man, the necessary man, to write of space, of time, of huge things like nebulae and galactic war, meteors and planets, all the dakr things that he loved and put on paper were like this.He was born out of his time. He needed really big things to play with and never found them on Earth." (Ray Bradbury "Forever and the Earth". )
I still think there is nothing written about Thomas Wolfe's work that is better than Bradbury's short story.

Interesting, but not revolutionary
Look Homeward Angel has for decades been a standard coming of age book read devotedly by people in their late teens and early twenties. Over the years, stories developed concerning the amount of cutting that editor Maxwell Perkins (who also edited Hemingway and Fitzgerald) did on the book. The accepted wisdom was that Perkins pulled a masterpiece out of a huge, unpublishable manuscript. This edition, which is based on Wolfe's orginial manuscript and uses his chosen title, shows that while Perkins did help to shape the book, the text that he began with was not the monstrosity it was later believed to be. Some of the cuts Perkins made, such as W.O. Gant's memories of Gettysburg, would appear in Of Time and the River, and Perkins later admitted that he was wrong to cut it. Other material that one reads for the first time seems less important. Overall, I did not find the book to be that different from Look Homeward Angel. It shows both Wolfe's strengts and weaknesses, his abiliy to create Whitmanesque passages, and to engage in self-indulgent prose. I agree with the other reviewers that it is unfortunate that this book so quickly was allowed to go out of print. Whichever version you read, this is a book best read before you are 30.

Finally, the lost is found
I first re read Look Homeward Angel,( which I had not read for almost 50 years) then O Lost. I think that the original manuscript is far superior to the edited version, that was originally published.Certainly the introduction is excellant and sets the stage for W.O.Gant's odessey.Admittedly, some editing would be helpful, to make a smoother transition from one chapter to another, but only minor ones, not the radical surgery that was actually done.

I think that Wolfe realized this, and that was why he changed publishers.I look forward to the unedited manuscripts of the Web and the Rock, and You can't go home again.

My only problem is that during the period when I first read these novels, I have had medical and particularly psychiatric training.It is obvious that W.O. suffered from severe bipolar or manic depressive psychosis.With modern treatment, he would have been a happier man, or at least those around him would have had better lives.But then perhaps Thomas Wolfe would not have been the writer that he was to become.

Time regained
What a wonderful book. It's too bad so many readers today know only Tom Wolfe, not Thomas Wolfe. Even though it has been at least 10 years since reading Look Homewood Angel, I knew almost immediately when I came to the new sections. They add a depth to the novel, bringing in the whole town and relatives, rather being only about Eugene Gant. My favorite Wolfe readings involve trains; the experience about time stopping for a moment when you look into the eyes of someone looking directly at you into the train, is exactly as I remember my earlier train rides.What are they doing now, that the train has passed? Other 800 page books might be dull, but not this one.Having been given it as a present recently, I am very surprised and disappointed that it is already 'out of print." More people should know about O Lost! ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Wolfe, one of the giants of twentieth-century American fiction, is also one of the most misunderstood of our major novelists. A man massive in his size, his passions, and his gifts, Wolfe has long been considered something of an unconscious genius, whose undisciplined flow of prose was shaped into novels by his editor, the celebrated Maxwell Perkins. In this definitive and compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Herbert Donald dismantles that myth and demonstrates that Wolfe was a boldly aware experimental artist who, like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and John Dos Passos, deliberately pushed at the boundaries of the modern novel. Donald takes a new measure of this complex, tormented man as he reveals Wolfe's difficult childhood, when he was buffeted between an alcoholic father and a resentful mother; his "magical" years at the University of North Carolina, where his writing talent first flourished; his rise to literary fame after repeated rejection; and the full story of Wolfe's passionate affair with Aline Bernstein, including their intimate letters."Supersedes all previous Wolfe biographies in illuminating detail, in empathy for its complex unhappy subject, in sympathy for what he wanted to do, and what he did, as a writer, and in its own literary distinction ... A work of great subtlety and sophistication."--Washington Post Book WorldAmazon.com Review
Thomas Wolfewas a writer who famously spewed out words upon the page in endless streams,attempting to achieve The Great American Novel by putting his own life onpaper. He wrote four massive novels, combining passages of over-the-top badwriting with some of the most beautiful prose ever committed to paper. Hiseditors MaxwellPerkins and Edward Aswell became almost as famous as Wolfe for theirHerculean efforts in getting his titanic manuscripts into publishable form.Look Homeward, Angel (1929),Of Time and the River (1935),and his two posthumously published works, The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940)are classics of American literature, though today entirely unfashionable.Harvard historian David Herbert Donald won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for thisappreciative biography of the genius of purple prose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Major Historian On a Major Writer
David Herbert Donald is an expert on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. What in the world is he doing writing a book on the tormented North Carolina novelist Thomas Wolfe? Yet Donald pulls it off wonderfully, recreating Wolfe's troubled life and capturing his creative process. Only two of Wolfe's novels were published in his short life but Donald is perhaps at his best when he examines his subject's unpublished works as well as two posthumous novels assembled by an editor. Donald may not convince you that Wolfe was a great American writer but he may just convince you that you may not know the real Thomas Wolfe. While not the most scholarly of works, Donald's biography is vivid and captures a larger than life figure (in more ways than one) and his epic vision of America and art. This is one of the best biographies of a major American writer and, best of all, it is very accessible and readable.

I wish I could live in Asheville too
Did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway all had the same editor at Charles Scribner's and Sons: Maxwell Perkins.Some critics have said that Perkins basically wrote Tom Wolfe's last novel because it was a too-long mess that needed to be edited into a cohesive whole.I read halfway through "Look HomeWard Angel" and "Of Time and the River".Both read like a hot day in Asheville, North Carolina.When I have time I plan to go back and reread these novels because Shelby Foote and Walker Percy spoke highly of them. ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Wolfe's The Lost Boy is a captivating and poignant retelling of an episode from Wolfe's childhood. The story of Wolfe's brother Grover and his trip to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair is told from four perspectives, each articulating the sentiments of a different family member. The Lost Boy also captures beautifully the experiences of growing up at the turn of the century and the exhilaration and loss of childhood.

For this illustrated edition, James Clark unearthed Wolfe's original manuscript, which was first published in the 1930s in a heavily abridged form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Kind of Rashomon
This is a very brief story, which can be read in a couple of hours. It is a compilation of viewpoints, or remembrances, of a boy who died at the age of 12 from typhoid (before there was such a thing as antibiotics). The remembrances are from the relatives' standpoint. The boy was apparently a mature, very intelligent and principled young man. As with the death of all children, the event was a sad one.

There was one part which was disturbing, frankly sickening. During a train trip, the mother and son travel from Missouri, which has Jim Crow laws, into Indiana. As soon as the border is crossed, a black passenger moves from the black carriage into the white carriage. The mother objects and the black passenger explains that they are now in Indiana. The boy confronts the man and sends him back to "where he belongs," in the process humiliating him. I can understand that Wolfe used that incident to make the point that Grover was courageous and principled, yet the specific instance is nonetheless sickening. This one event marred an otherwise good narration. (I would be curious to know what was Wolfe's stand on the race issue at the time) In short, Grover was no Huck Finn.

a nouvellette's treasure
Ever remembered a sentence or two from the book and, still later on, didn't recall where it comes from? Well, there is one in the 'The lost boy' that I'd say I'll never forget. It goes: 'Light came and went and came again...' I would believe this is the best definition of Time I've ever read. It tells what we all already know - that the Time is here, all around, that it passes, eternally, incessantly, giving us no chance to do anything about it. And although there's much more to the nouvellette, it's worth reading it from the beginning to the end. It's 'realness' moves you all along.

The Lost Boy
This book is a gem!It is brimming with lyricism, longing and passion. It is Wolfe at his very best.For those who feel that Wolfe tended to ramble, here they will find him constrained by the limits of the novella form.They will find his skill for characterization (which was always remarkable) honed to an even higher degree of excellence in this piece.The story is autobiographical and deeply felt by Wolfe and he succeeds in transmitting those feelings to the reader.It is my belief that even if he had written nothing else, his reputation could rest comfortably on this piece alone. ... Read more

Product Description
George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home. He begins a search for his own identity that takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. At last Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.

"If there stills lingers and doubt as to Wolfe's right to a place among the immortals of American letters, this work should dispel it."
--Cleveland News

"Wolfe wrote as one inspired. No one of his generation had his command of language, his passion, his energy."
--The New Yorker

"You Can't Go Home Again will stand apart from everything else that he wrote because this is the book of a man who had come to terms with himself, who has something profoundly important to say."
--New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (42)

You Can't Go Home Again
This was a present - the intended owner requested it for some reason or another.

I remember reading it when in college in the late 70's. The title itself explains the main theme of the book; You Can't Go Home Again. In other words you can't return to anything and experience it in the same way as when you did the first time.

You Can't Go Home Again
Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again is a big book in every sense of the word. It is a dauntingly ambitious novel of massive scope that can at times seem overwhelming. The story follows George Webber, a young writer living in 1920's New York City. Webber is charismatic and realistic, full of all the insecurities and conflicts that define us all. He is socially awkward, hungry for fame but terrified of the spotlight, yet brilliant and driven. Over the course of the novel, Webber achieves fame and recognition, but also finds something greater within himself and in America. He wanders to England and Germany, living under Hitler's shadow. He sees injustice, death, love, hate, and returns to America with a new hope in his nation's promise.
The huge scale of this novel can seem daunting, and Wolfe's writing is a never-ending stream of thought, jokes, critique, and revelations. The novel is saved and made truly engaging by Wolfe's incredible grasp of the English language. He is scary good at writing. Every line is fluid, conversational, and beautifully written. In the end, the engaging stories, near-poetic writing, and far-reaching themes combine to create a truly moving book. George Webber can never go home again, and neither can Wolfe. All we can do is press on with them and see what we can find.

grossly over-written
Every sentence is over-written. Seems to have been written to please the author and "literary" critics, but not the reader.

you cant go home again
this is the single most beautiful and honest literary piece i have ever known. it is simply stunning and true. If you are the kind of person who just wants a story,a plot, then this book is not for you. The message is not in the story but in the journey. In each sentence there is the beauty of clear and simple truth. Thomas wolfe, that beautiful, kind and brilliant man, poured his soul into this book and that makes it so much more than just a story.

Don't get this Kindle version!!
This Kindle version is loaded with distracting typos, on every page.Not worth the price. ... Read more

Product Description
Literary critics ranked him with Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Melville. His vibrant autobiographical novels Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River won Thomas Wolfe the admiration of his peers, and writers as various as Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and Kurt Vonnegut have acknowledged a debt to him.

With extracts from his personal papers as well as trenchant reviews of his work and cogent assessments of his genius, this handsomely illustrated volume poignantly recounts the course of Wolfe's career and bolsters his literary reputation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent pictorial sourcebook.
There are other and better biographies of Wolfe but the real treasure of the book is the cornucopia of pictorial material and the reproductions of manuscript pages.

Splendid New Wolfe Book!!
For Thomas Wolfe fans, this new illustrated biography is absolutely delicious. Mitchell is to be congratulated on his excellent work and it will certainly be appreciated by all Wolfe lovers. Mitchell is contributing to a more than worthy cause - keeping this exquisite author in the public eye. Three cheers!!! ... Read more

Product Description

The sequel to Thomas Wolfe's remarkable first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Of Time and the River is one of the great classics of American literature. The book chronicles the maturing of Wolfe's autobiographical character, Eugene Gant, in his desperate search for fulfillment, making his way from small-town North Carolina to the wider world of Harvard University, New York City, and Europe. In a massive, ambitious, and boldly passionate novel, Wolfe examines the passing of time and the nature of the creative process, as Gant slowly but ecstatically embraces the urban life, recognizing it as a necessary ordeal for the birth of his creative genius as a writer.

The work of an exceptionally expressive writer of fertile imagination and startling emotional intensity, Of Time and the River illuminates universal truths about art and life, city and country, past and present. It is a novel that is majestic and enduring. As P. M. Jack observed in The New York Times, "It is a triumphant demonstration that Thomas Wolfe has the stamina to produce a magnificent epic of American life."

This edition, published in celebration of Wolfe's centennial anniversary, contains a new introduction by Pat Conroy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Poor condition
The book is in poor condition. No dust cover, cover is torn, dirty, pages are very yelllowed none of which was stated. It's an old library copy which is not a problem for me and it's legible so I will keep it and read it but I would not offer it for sale or trade without noting the really poor condition.

Of Time and the River
Reading the prequel, Look Homeward, Angel, evokes in the reader (if the reader was ever a boy) crystalline images of their youth. This presumes that one grew up in the 50's and 60's before small cities, such as Asheville, moved to the suburbs. I found Of Time and the River, to lack the imagery that I found so appealing in Look Homeward. Perhaps it is that I do not feel the distance from my 20's that I feel from being 11 or 12. Still, I commend the book.

Brilliant Writting - Just a little long at points
There is no doubt that Mr. Wolfe was a brilliant writer. More than once I found myself saying "Yes, I know exactly how you feel!" I suspect I am not alone in this regard. The biggest drawback, and the reason I only assign four starts, is the sensation that I am mining for greatness. What do I mean?

There were some long stretches throughout the book that I found tedious.My advice is to plough ahead for I assure you the sections that speak to the reader are that good. Wolfe's death at a young age was loss for us all.

Dense but Entertaining
I kept waiting for Wolfe to share with us what would make Eugene the writer he was waiting to be - where would he find the courage to not only fail (or fail again) but to believe in himself and know that he could write after reading the thousands of books he gorged himself on.

And then as the book winds down, it happens, he falls in love.And in a few paragraphs, we learn that the momentual problems of the past were wiped away.He finds his courage and the book ends abruptly.Perhaps a little more editing earlier would have led Wolfe to write more about this episode.

I enjoyed the novel though not as much as the prequel.

of time and the river
It was early 1980 when I first read "Look Homeward.." for a University of Colorado course. The professor who seemed to be a hundred years old to me at the time instructed me to read my critical report to the entire class. After smugly concluding Wolfe was lacking in many areas the professor graded my paper an "A"...then she patted my young shoulders and told methat one day I'd be old enough to understand Wolfe. She was right and my criticicm was dead wrong. Wolfes' wordiness is his beauty. The scene in"Of Time And The River" where his father dies is as beautiful and compelling as anything I've read. I think the book is unique and those who are critical of it may need to read it again -when they are a little older. ... Read more

Product Description

Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again, The Hills Beyond, and The Web and the Rock.

Customer Reviews (1)

They got the TITLE wrong!
For crying out loud, it's The Web and the ROCK. How could they screw THAT up?

That said, this is more of a slog than anything else Wolfe wrote, and I am at a loss to understand why he spent time on what essentially is an inferior rewrite of Look Homeward, Angel. Instead of Eugene Gant, we have an apelike George Webber. To be fair, The Web and the Rock, as well as You Can't Go Home Again, weren't meant by Wolfe to be stand-alone novels - they were posthumously edited out of a much larger manuscript titled The October Fair. But I would MUCH rather have Of Time and the River than both of the posthumous works together. If you haven't read Look Homeward, Angel, please skip this entirely. And if you've finished both Angel and Of Time and the River, start this one only if you really feel the need, because I was quite disappointed. ... Read more

Product Description
Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Aldo P. Magi, The Magical Campus collects for the first time Thomas Wolfe's earliest published work--including poems, plays, short fiction, news articles, and essays--both signed and unsigned, assembled in chronological order.

Wolfe began his collegiate career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1916, when he was fifteen, with a freshman year marked by obscurity and loneliness. By his junior year he had emerged as a recognized and popular figure in campus life, a participant in organizations, clubs, and fraternities as well as the editor of several student publications. He began in these apprenticeship years his ascendancy to iconic literary status.

Included in The Magical Campus is Wolfe's first published work, the poem "A Field in Flanders" from the November 1917 issue of the Magazine. Here too is the poem "The Challenge," Wolfe's first piece to be reprinted off campus, in his hometown newspaper and elsewhere across the Southeast. "A Cullenden of Virginia" represents his inaugural foray into published fiction; and his folk plays, such as The Return of Buck Gavin and Deferred Payment, mark the start of his unrealized ambitions to be a playwright.

Though they lack the sophistication and scale of the grand fictions that now define Wolfe's place in literature, these and others of his student publications testify to the potential he had tapped into through instruction and encouragement at Chapel Hill. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A compilation of the early writings of acclaimed author Thomas Wolfe
Few people are ever masters of their craft straight from the get go. "The Magical Campus: University of North Carolina Writings 1917-1920" is a compilation of the early writings of acclaimed author Thomas Wolfe. Even the best practitioners of the craft of writing bumbled many an attempt in their young age; these early works are a good sign of what's to come and an optimistic view for young writers to keep trying even if told they're not very good now. Highly recommended for community library literary collections.
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Product Description
An author of tremendous energy, rich imagination, and powerful rhetorical style, Thomas Wolfe was the first novelist from North Carolina to become a major force in American literature. In his famous novel Look Homeward, Angel and other works, he vividly portrayed aspects of life in the mountains of North Carolina in the early twentieth century.

This book traces Wolfe's life and career from his birth in Asheville, NC, in 1900 until his untimely death in 1938. It includes information about his parents and siblings; his patron, Aline Bernstein; his editor, Maxwell Perkins; and his agent, Elizabeth Nowell.This biography draws on Wolfe's writings and other materials about him in archival collections in Asheville, NC, and at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Harvard University. Numerous photographs of Thomas Wolfe, his family, and his associates illustrate the text.

An earlier edition of Thomas Wolfe: A Writer's Life originally was published by the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site in Asheville. This sustantially revised edition contains new material by the author. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

3 1/2
There are many arresting passages in this dense "goat-cry" of a book, and there are many which are rendered in simply demotic English.While his power over the language was prodigious his finesse was not tantamount by any means.Faulkner rated him highly 50 years ago (as the greatest among American writers) but he was greater--even in his last years.Monk's exchanges with Esther Jack are at times enough to make you chew your arm off, for their bathos and mawkishness.And while she is "rosy" and "cheerful" one never really gets a sense of what this 40 year-old looked like, though her spirit certainly is manifested.
The episodes about the Brobdingnagian mother and her impassive butcher husband, and the black Army vet explosing into violence are compelling and really drivethe first half of this book.The end is puzzling, rather an epilogue concerning his European travels after he dumps the comely Jewess; it recalls "A Cool Million" though the latter is rtendered with greater tragi-comic effect.Wolfe is seldom funnty when treating plot developments involving Monk, but Monk's reminiscences are certainly very funny.
I'm on "You Can't Go Home Again", the last of the four.The first three have all been good, but I hesitate to call him the greatest or even to compare him with Faulkner, the "master craftsman".

Words for Words' Sake
Wolfe tells his coming of age story with extensive, descriptive passages that sometimes get in the way of the plot and the reader's ability to actually develop an attraction to the characters themselves.With Wolfe, it seems to be more about the thrill of putting words together than actually telling a story.

Classic Wolfe
If you have enjoyed any of his other books, this one will not disappoint; same beautifully fictionalized memoir, same lyrical touch.

A quintessential bildungsroman...
Preface: I would give this book ten stars if I could.

Thomas Wolfe was a [woefully underrated] master of the English language and character development. The Web and the Rock, perhaps the finest of his works, invites you into the tortured mind of George Webber without any sort of forceful literary entry. His forays into Webber's psyche are never contrived, never as dissonant as the failed attempts of other writers to accomplish the same sort of candor. The alternating ebb and flow of George's dialogue and inner monologue feel as natural as inhaling and exhaling, and the text takes on a sort of organic quality in that sense. Though some criticize Wolfe's writing for its convoluted streams of consciousness and tangents, these are the things that make his characters so intense and tangible to the reader.

There is an unapologetic candor to Wolfe's bildungsroman, an innate willingness to open up a secret world to the reader, one of mental anguish, feelings of inadequacy, and the passion that can simultaneously electrify and destroy a man's life. There is nothing forced about his philosophical asides--they are natural progressions of Webber's inner monologue and some of the most deliciously probing prose I have ever had the pleasure to read.

I will leave you with two of the most compelling quotes of the novel--and, perhaps, some of the most honest, candid passages in all of American literature:

"So all were gone at last, one by one, each swept out into the mighty flood tide of the city's life, there to prove, to test, to find, to lose himself, as each man must--alone" (272).

"The sight of these closed golden houses with their warmth of life awoke in him a bitter, poignant, strangely mixed emotion of exile and return, of loneliness and security, of being forever shut out from the palpable and passionate integument of life and fellowship, and of being so close to it that he could touch it with his hand, enter it by a door, possess it with a word--a word that, somehow, he could never speak, a door that, somehow he would never open" (170).

You have to persevere with it...
This book is best described as a kind of bildungsroman. Unfortunately Thomas Wolfe has been overshadowed by that other more modern writer sharing his name. It would be safe to say that that other writer was more revolutionary. Thomas Wolfe is not doing much new, he is a story teller, and one not to all tastes. Tom Wolfe you read for his place in literary history, Thomas Wolfe you read more for its description of the second quarter of the twentieth century and New York.

He rambles a lot. He repeats himself. Sometimes it's hard to tell where he's going with something, and sometimes it's very obvious we're dealing with roman a clef, or what Wolfe wished his life to have been. It's more a collection of incidents, until he meets his "gal". I get the feeling Wolfe was striving after that elusive "Great American Novel", and its whole look at life is very American. It concerns the boy from the small town south (thinly veiled North (? South) Carolina), symbolically coming together with the North (including his girlfriend who is an epitome of the North). But it's difficult to see much more depth than that, that's not to say it isn't there, but there isn't much sign of it.

If you keep on at it, it's not a bad read, but it's not the best read I've had either. His style makes for fairly slow reading and it drags a little a third of the way through. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Letters, Bad Comments
The story of the relationship between Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein is an interesting one and one can not really understand Wolfe's career and his later writings without comprehending it. The letters between them offer great insight into both of these personalities. The problem is the commentary offered by Suzanne Stutman and some odd editing. In his introduction, Richard Kennedy, Stutman's mentor, gushes about how much Stutman is like Aline Bernstein. Uh oh. This identification with Ms. Bernstein comes through clearly in Stutman's comments as she makes Bernstein to be the white hat and Wolfe wears the black hat. Even worse, she offers a lousy psychological profile on Wolfe which is repetitive even to the point of being almost verbatim in some places. No doubt Wolfe was an odd duck but Stutman is too heavy handed in her psychological analysis. Stutman argues that Wolfe hated his mother which led to his bad relationship with women as he saw them as either saints or whores. Anyone with any familiarity with Wolfe's career would know how wrong that is-the best example being Wolfe's relationship with his agent Elizabeth Nowell. Nor is this the only real howler. Stutman goes out of her way to argue how much Wolfe admired his father uncritically. Really? Really? Apparently Stutman seems to think W.O.Gant in "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Of Time and the River" is an ideal character with few flaws. The letters themselves are fine though why the editor allowed them to be without simple headers saying who the letter was from is annoying and somewhat confusing. Having said all that, the letters redeem a great deal of the flawed commentary. Wolfe and Bernstein had an interesting and often memorable correspondence. ... Read more

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This wonderful and compelling collection of stories and character sketches contains some of the finest Wolfe ever wrote. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Far and Away
This collection of stories is far and away the best sampling of his true literary mastery.I have always enjoyed Southern writers (Faulkner,Capote,..), but Wolfe touches a particular vein of the satiricalsocial landscape of the South that is unmatched. His work, I believe, isless about the South than Faulkner's, but Wolfe still has that southernglow of tragedy but with a simple beauty.Though some may find his novelstedious and long-winded, it is difficult to not like this work.Just bepatient and let the words come to you.The thing I like most about hisshort stories is that they often leave you with a feeling of lying in bedon a summer's night listening to the train pass through town or maybe alone dog barking in the distance, hollow... but thinking that you couldlive forever.

corralled by form, finally
This is a collection of short-stories.For us who may be heratics in our beloved Southern Literature when it concerns Thomas Wolfe, we contend that he is a very verbose, messy messy author. His first editor had to cut andshape a large manuscript into three seperate novels (I believe that I'mcorrect in this), of which Look Homeward Angel was the first. (Apparentlyhe wrote them on top of a refridgerator: a tall man.)And that book goes onand on and on--like the bunny commercial. He totally ignores any kind ofsembulance of form. That is his problem, he does not brible his passionproperly, Look H-- is a good book--but it could have been great--or atleastgreater, dependingon your view point.

Hemingway said that he was gooduntil he began writing about other places than his home. I have to agreewith that.

Now. This book, however, is his best crafted fiction. Thatsimple. Something about the demanding, concise form of the short storyworks him over well. The first time that I read it I thought--that'sit! The Southern author I've been looking for. But, unfortunately, I becameall worked up for Look H-- and after reading that it all fizzled. Onewonders two things: 1. what if he had lived longer?, he seems to have justbecome the craftsman that was always demanded for his ferver; and 2. whatif he had written Look Homeward Angel, after he had true command of hisskills.

This is a great book. In my opinion his best. Read it. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Brimming With Passion, Fury, and Intensity
In the opinion of many, Thomas Wolfe and Theodore Dreiser were two of the finest writers to emerge in the first half of the twentieth century. Dreiser interpreted contemporary events and spun them into finely crafted novels that painted a complete picture of American life in the times he lived. Wolfe, on the other hand, was a less effective story teller, but a wonderfully expressive writer--a true wordsmith from the North Carolina hills whose emotional intensity explodes in every well-turned phrase. It is said that he could never have become the literary spokesman for the disaffected generation of college writers coming of age during the Depression without the firm and guiding hand of Maxwell Perkins, his faithful editor nursing him past the troubling demons of his personal life. However, I have to wonder if Perkins caused irreparable harm by excising too much material. The recently published Starwick chapters which were purged from the original manuscript by Perkins in 1934, show the young novelist at his very best. One wonders just how much better this literary masterpiece would have been, if Wolfe's original draft (which they say filled a box the size of a coffin) had been left alone. Thomas Wolfe's passing at so young an age created a terrible void in American letters, but he inspired thousands of idealistic but unpublished authors to pursue their craft with the same mystic that he poured into every paragraph and every phrase of these majestic novels and short stories.

Vivid imagery of young Wolfe's passage through America, life
Even if you never slog all the way through this tome, you owe it to yourself to thumb through until you reach Wolfe's vivid descriptions of the following: 1.His fertile imagination fixing on small town life as his train rolls from his hometown up to Harvard 2.His description of the state of mind and body of the old men in the club car, playing cards and waxing philosophic in their cocoon of smoke and upholstered comfort 3.His self transfer into the still strong mind and emaciated body of his dying father. 4.The train.There is always the train.Behemoth.Chariot to freedom.Iron Leviathan.Taking himaway fromAshmont,clinging love, bitter memory, clay, dust, dirt, flower, self. If there is any more skillful recreator of all these elements, all of these forces, in our own beings, from any age ... in any language ... please, please ... let me know ... Read more