Unappreciated: Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe

 

“. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.
Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.
Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”   (from Look Homeward, Angel)

 

Thomas Clayton Wolfe (Oct. 3, 1900 - Sept. 15, 1938) was one of the twentieth century's most relentlessly original authors. Not to be confused with drug-addled "Tom" Wolfe, Thomas grew up in the North Carolina city of Asheville during the boom times of the early 1900's. With railroads, spas, industries and that tiny little Vanderbilt family - the quaint little mountain town became a hot-spot for southern living.

Son of a stonecutter, Thomas was the youngest of eight children. While his mother struggled to keep the home fires burning and made a side-living renting out guest rooms in the family's home at 48 Spruce Street, Thomas turned into a quiet, introverted child - hidden in the shadows of all his siblings and badgered by his abusive, alcoholic father.

There's very little that I can add that hasn't already been said about Mr. Wolfe. Rather than prattle on about the boring details of his biography - I'll jump over to my self-absorbtion for a while.

When I first discovered Wolfe, it was as the result of a quote from one of my all-time favorite writers, William Faulkner who credited the younger author as "the greatest talent of our generation." You have to give some credit to anyone who could get such a compliment from a man like Faulkner. I truly believe that Faulkner's used toilet paper could have won a Pulitzer - so this accolade instantly pushed me across the library to the meager collection of Thomas Wolfe novels.

Meager - yes. Thomas only made it to 38 years old when he died from tuburculosis of the brain. He managed to leave behind (literally a ton) a dump-truck of manuscripts. Only four completed novels (and only two published during his lifetime), Thomas Wolfe died without ever realizing his gift to the world of American letters. His first novel - a whirlwind success (for all the wrong reasons), is entitled Look Homeward, Angel and was originally released in 1929. Some people call this a "semi-autobiographical" novel. I do not. This is as autobiographical as you can get - all he did was alter the names of the main characters to keep his ass out of legal trouble. Every other fine detail is perfectly recorded and documents the life in Asheville during the early twentieth century. Problem: in case you're not a resident of the great state of NC - you may not be aware ... NC is full of snippy, nosy, bitter people. People who really didn't enjoy reading about all their sins and scandals printed for all the world to see - so despite the impressive debut of Wolfe's first novel, in his home state - he was hated with a passion. He let it bother him - so much so that this would go on to be the motivating plot point for his final two novels (published posthumously, of course).


After LHA took off - Scribner's wanted more. There was no other author at work that was anything like Thomas Wolfe. There are fifteen billion different descriptions of a Wolfe novel but my favorite is by the New York Times, who claimed the author to be "gifted with the act of putting words on paper but his pen has a debilitating case of diarrhea." That pretty much nails it. Wolfe's angelic gift with words will literally drown the unsuspecting reader. Some of his prose will stretch on for many pages - no periods, just stream-of-consciousness - microscopic descriptions and internal dialogue for days. You have to succumb to this. Don't fight it. Let yourself be swept away into a twenty page description of a tablecloth - it's okay. You'll come out on the other side a much better person for experiencing this. Wolfe fought a struggle with this while trying to write his second novel (the lesser-known sequel) Of Time And The River.

It took six years. While traveling the world and pimping out LHA, Wolfe poured himself into his next novel. Originally he had planned to write a series of autobiographical fiction - six. The only reference to this - and the proposed titles, is in the first edition/first run of the second book. There were only five thousand copies of this mammoth door-stopper of a book printed. I own two copies, both locked deep inside my vault (last time I price checked, these were well over $5k a copy). I would have really loved to have an entire series about the Gant family just so I could drown in Wolfe's sticky prose, but he got sick and died instead. I have to be okay with that.

Of Time and The River is not the best book in the world. It's not even a good sequel - nor is it easy to find. Out of the four published Wolfe novels - this is the one that no one wants to revisit. I will agree - getting through this novel is a lot like cutting your own kidney out. Rather than slim down his sequel to LHA, Wolfe beefed it up. Well over 1,000 pages - the story continues following Eugene Gant (Wolfe's alterego) as he becomes famous for his first novel and sets sail for Europe (where Wolfe would get the inspiration for his next two novels). I would recommend reading this, despite how awful it is. Read it last. You get the sense that Wolfe knew this would be a flop and wrote every word as it came to him. Screw the editors! I believe this is a good example of what an unedited Thomas Wolfe manuscript would have sounded like. Just pages and pages and pages of babbling - something which would normally be incredibly frustrating to read...is a juicy, delicious dream. I can't explain it - you'd just have to spend six months reading this one for yourself. Bring a microscope, the font is ridiculously small.

"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being--the reward he seeks--the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity."  (from Of Time and The River)

This second novel pretty much sealed Wolfe's fate. Scorned, ridiculed, dismissed, mocked, chastised and still despised in his own home town - his career as an author plummeted with the epic flop from the sale of his second novel. He was his biggest fan - so despite the wave of depression, loneliness and isolation that began blanketing down around him, Wolfe continued writing like a fiend. He taught at Harvard, he toured all over Europe and dazzled the elite upper crust of society with his pompous manner of speaking. He made friends, he found money, he hobo-'ed his way through life while tirelessly penning his final two books as his health slowly began to suffer.

The Web and The Rock was released a few months after his death. The last thing Wolfe saw published was a chapter from this novel entitled The Lost Boy (which...eh...didn't do so well). This novel begins the trend all over again. Critics will bash this one - hard...so don't read the reviews. At first glance - you get the impression you're reading LHA all over again. Sometimes the similarities are too close to dismiss. The plot, characters and setting are basically identical to the ones found in Wolfe's first novel - but what we have this time is a much more mature, intelligent work. It's like the loose strands from LHA that had no real home in the first novel - all come back for a reprise. I personally cannot stand this book. I love, admire and adore it because of who wrote it ... but as a novel standing on its own merit ... you should probably save this one for last. There are some very important scenes in this novel - most likely scenes you'll read in some other location as most of this book was sliced apart and used as "excerpts." The overall product is confusing, messy and disjoined - but if you're a fan of Faulkner...that won't bother you too much.

“What is it that a young man wants? Where is the central source of that wild fury that boils up in him, that goads and drives and lashes him, that explodes his energies and strews his purpose to the wind of a thousand instant and chaotic impulses? The older and assured people of the world, who have learned to work without waste and error, think they know the reason for the chaos and confusion of a young man’s life. They have learned the thing at hand, and learned to follow their single way through all the million shifting hues and tones and cadences of living, to thread neatly with unperturbed heart their single thread through that huge labyrinth of shifting forms and intersecting energies that make up life—and they say, therefore, that the reason for a young man’s confusion, lack of purpose, and erratic living is because he has not “found himself.”  (from The Web and The Rock)

Now for one you've probably heard of - Wolfe's second "major success" came with the sequel to W&R, entitled...drumroll please...You Can't Go Home Again. Released to lackluster cheers in 1940, this novel is a parallel to Of Time and The River, building off the same themes he first visited in the earlier novel - this book tells the story of a young author struggling to come to terms with his own artistic output during a burgeoning time in world history. I think I love this book, but it's still not as badass as the first one. This should be the second book by Wolfe you read, and in lots of ways - it will roughly tell you the same story as the (planned) sequel Of Time and The River, even save you about four hundred pages of reading - but still a monster of a book in its own right.

“But why had he always felt so strongly the magnetic pull of home, why had he thought so much about it and remembered it with such blazing accuracy, if it did not matter, and if this little town, and the immortal hills around it, was not the only home he had on earth? He did not know. All that he knew was that the years flow by like water, and that one day men come home again.” (from You Can't Go Home Again)

 

I can't end this without mentioning the revamped novel O, Lost! by Thomas Wolfe. What's that? I didn't mention it before? Shame on me, right? Technically - I did.

O, Lost! was released about fifteen years ago - thank you Jesus, and is the full, unedited manuscript from Wolfe's original Look Homeward, Angel. Basically, if you read the novel and felt like it's eight hundred pages weren't sufficient - you can read the full, unexpurgated text here. Already out of print - you can still find copies online in hardcover (and I would recommend doing this as the value is going to steadily rise...forever). If you're new to the Wolfe canon, adventurous, and have the world's greatest attention span - read this instead of LHA for a more fulfilling Gant experience. Watch out for those Mountain Grills, y'all...sunsabitcheries.