2022 reads, #48. DID NOT FINISH.

I've been eager to explore the works of Thomas Wolfe for over 30 years. It all began when I became a devotee of the Beat Poets in my early twenties and learned that this Early Modernist luminary was a highly influential favorite of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others. So, when his name was brought to my attention once again a couple of weeks ago, I impulsively rushed to the library and borrowed his 1929 debut, Look Homeward, Angel. This unabashedly autobiographical novel delves into Wolfe's tumultuous childhood in Asheville, North Carolina (where he ultimately became a pariah due to his unflattering portrayal of the town and its residents).

However, after reading just 50 or so pages, I uncovered the same truth that countless disappointed readers have discovered over the past 93 years. Unless you have a profound connection with Wolfe's meandering, digressive prose, which is heavily influenced by the rise of stream-of-consciousness writing among his Early Modernist contemporaries, you will likely find this book a disheveled and nearly unreadable jumble. There are undeniably beautiful moments here and there, but they are surrounded by page after page of self-indulgent fluff that turns many people away from this particular era of literary history.

Certainly, if someone were to create a special reading challenge titled "How We Eventually Got To The Modern MFA Novel," I can now clearly envision Wolfe being included in such a challenge, alongside contemporaries like Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson. Even from the small portion I read, I could trace a direct lineage from Wolfe to Robert Penn Warren, then to John Updike, and finally to Jonathan Franzen. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a big fan of the Modern MFA Novel. To be fair, you could just as easily include this book in a reading challenge called "How We Eventually Got All The Freaking Problems Of The Modern MFA Novel." It should be approached with the understanding that it is essentially a prototype for a story style that wouldn't be refined until the Postmodernist authors of the 1970s, and your response to it will be intricately linked to your reaction to modern Wolfesque authors like Joyce Carol Oates and others. Buyer beware!

This book is my nemesis.

Seriously, I've been attempting to read it for nearly six years. I've made efforts in every season - spring, summer, fall, and winter. I've tried on various means of transportation like planes, buses, and the El, in different cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and North Carolina. But every single time, I get stuck around 60% of the way through.

Stargate: Atlantis fans think that John Sheppard is still struggling to read War and Peace after three years in the Pegasus Galaxy. Well, I, by some sort of literary canon, can't finish Look Homeward, Angel.

I know I shouldn't be bothered. I don't really believe in there being books that one "should" read, like the classics. After all, you should read what you desire. But this one does bother me. As a student (even if only an amateur) of Southern literature, this is a significant work, right up there with all of Faulkner's and other greats like The Moviegoer by Walker Percy and Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price. In North Carolina, it's THE big one.

And yet, I just can't seem to finish it.

I don't know if it's good, bad, or just relying on its academic reputation. All I know is that this book is the greatest challenge of my life. I just purchased a used copy at the public library, and I'm determined to finish this darn book even if it takes all my efforts.

I had the opportunity to watch and fell in love with the movie “Genius” which is about Max Perkins and Thomas Wolfe. As I was watching it, I suddenly realized that I had skipped this particular movie when I was a kid. It was truly a regretful oversight on my part.

The story presented in “Genius” is both captivating and thought-provoking. It delves into the complex relationship between Perkins, a renowned editor, and Wolfe, a talented but troubled writer. The movie beautifully showcases the creative process, the struggles of an artist, and the importance of a good editor in bringing out the best in a writer.

Watching this movie as an adult, I was able to appreciate its depth and significance on a whole new level. It made me realize that sometimes, we miss out on truly great things when we are younger. But it’s never too late to discover and enjoy them. I would highly recommend “Genius” to anyone who has an interest in literature, the creative process, or simply a good story.

An American masterpiece that will remain etched in my memory for a very long time. It is beautifully written, presenting an authentic portrayal of the culture of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I truly wish I could have read this in a class or with a book club to analyze it more comprehensively. However, I found myself lacking the patience to reread extensive portions. Instead, I simply devoured the long, meandering passages and continued on. I deducted one star due to its solipsism. I constantly thought that I would have preferred to read the exact same content as told by an 80-year-old Thomas Wolfe/Eugene Gant. I believe he might have had a different, perhaps more empathetic, perspective on the whole thing. Nevertheless, it is still a wonderful work as it is.

When we talk about this book, and basically about this writer, it is essential to understand and "focus" on the fact that understanding the minuteness and detail of his work is a crucial part of his way of narrating and transmitting. Appealing to such intensity, everything he has to offer us; supposing, of course, that this is also one of the reasons for the transformation of this prose into a classic that has served as a guiding light for many who came after.

The story that makes up this novel has the transparency and simplicity of the village air, constantly confronted with the sordidness and morbidity also characteristic of these places.

Thus, it is undoubtedly a real account (even if it is supposed to be autobiographical from the outset) and with the consequent crudeness and horror that this "real" character confers on everything it contemplates.

Embarking on its reading is to fully immerse oneself in a time of constant tremors that the body and spirit of each reader will know how to navigate in the best way, as necessary.

It is a beautiful work. Absolutely beautiful.

I adored Thomas Wolfe, and this novel in particular, when I was in my teens.

Alas, now I find him practically unreadable. It's rather a pity how our tastes change over time.

This is a novel for the young -- and I mean that in a good way. It captures the essence of youth with its vivid portrayal of angst, the intense longing for something more, and the process of discovery.

For the young, it can be a mirror reflecting their own inner turmoil and hopes.

However, as we grow older and gain more life experiences, our perspectives shift. What once seemed profound and moving may now seem overly sentimental or lacking in depth.

Nonetheless, this novel still holds a special place in my heart as a reminder of my youthful days and the power of literature to touch our souls at different stages of our lives.

I have been attempting to read this book for decades. Literally, it has been that long. So, since it was chosen for the July 2014 read by the GR group On the Southern Literary Trail, I have yet another opportunity. Perhaps reading it with a group will be the magic I require.

This book, in its original hardcover format, exceeds 500 pages and is filled to the brim with details. Here is a paragraph about Eugene, our protagonist, in his youth:

There was in him a savage honesty, which exercised an uncontrollable domination over him when his heart or head were deeply involved. Thus, at the funeral of some remote kinsman, or of some acquaintance of the family, for whom he had never acquired any considerable affection, he would grow bitterly shamefast if, while listening to the solemn drone of the minister, or the sorrowful chanting of the singers, he felt his face had assumed an expression of unfelt and counterfeited grief: as a consequence he would shift about matter-of-factly, cross his legs, gaze indifferently at the ceiling, or look out of the window with a smile, until he was conscious his conduct had attracted the attention of people, and that they were looking on him with disfavor. Then, he felt a certain grim satisfaction as if, although having lost esteem, he had recorded his life.

This is on page 96, with over four hundred pages still to go! (I glance around, trying to mask a look of horror with a patient smile.)

Part one of the three-part story concludes approximately one-quarter through the book, with Eugene and his mother traveling back to the North Carolina mountains from a trip into the deep South that had a lasting impact on our twelve-year-old protagonist, whose life experience far surpasses his young years.

The commonness of all things in the earth he remembered with a strange familiarity – he dreamed of the quiet roads, the moonlit woodlands, and he thought that one day he would come to them on foot, and find them unchanged, in all the wonder of recognition. They had existed for him anciently and forever.

I am reading Look Homeward, Angel, simultaneously moving the bookmark in the hard cover and following the text on the Kindle screen as I listen to the Audible recording. As if that isn't enough, I also follow the summary at eNotes.com at the beginning and end of each chapter. This has to be an overdone compulsion that drives me on. Sometimes I just listen to the Audible words as they wash beautifully over me – just for a sentence or paragraph, least I lose my place – and have those few seconds of enjoyment when I am not puzzling over the inaction or the meaning. I once carried a canvas newspaper sack as the young Eugene does, but never with such poetry.

At first, the canvas strap of the paper-bag bit cruelly across his slender shoulders. He strained against the galling weight that pulled him earthwards. The first weeks were like a warring nightmare: day after day he fought his way up to liberation. He knew all the sorrow of those who carry weight; he knew, morning by morning, the aerial ecstasy of release. As his load lightened with the progress of his route, his leaning shoulder rose with winged buoyancy, his straining limbs grew light: at the end of his labor his flesh, touched sensuously by fatigue, bounded lightly from the earth.

Eugene continues to grow up, torn between two very different parents. His mother smothers him, while his father is harsh. He is “not quite sixteen years old when he is sent away to the university.”

\\"He's ready to go,\\" said Gant, \\"and he's going to the State University, and nowhere else. He'll be given as good an education there as he can get anywhere. Furthermore, he will make friends there who will stand by him the rest of his life.\\" He turned upon his son a glance of bitter reproach. \\"There are very few boys who have had your chance,\\" said he, \\"and you ought to be grateful instead of turning up your nose at it. Mark my words, you'll live to see the day when you'll thank me for sending you there. Now, I've given you my last word: you'll go where I send you or you'll go nowhere at all.\\"

Part Three of the book commences somewhat less than two-thirds of the way through, with the start of Eugene's university career. He had been a precocious scholar in the private school he attended at home in Altamont. Now he heads out to live apart from his family. I am going to provide you with some chunks of the text now to give you your own taste.

Eugene begins his time at the university:

Eugene's first year at the university was filled for him with loneliness, pain, and failure. Within three weeks of his matriculation, he had been made the dupe of a half-dozen classic jokes, his ignorance of all campus tradition had been exploited, his gullibility was a byword. He was the greenest of all green Freshmen, past and present: he had listened attentively to a sermon in chapel by a sophomore with false whiskers; he had prepared studiously for an examination on the contents of the college catalogue; and he had been guilty of the inexcusable blunder of making a speech of acceptance on his election, with fifty others, to the literary society. And these buffooneries--a little cruel, but only with the cruelty of vacant laughter, and a part of the schedule of rough humor in an American college--salty, extravagant, and national--opened deep wounds in him, which his companions hardly suspected. He was conspicuous at once not only because of his blunders, but also because of his young wild child's face, and his great raw length of body, with the bounding scissor legs. The undergraduates passed him in grinning clusters: he saluted them obediently, but with a sick heart. And the smug smiling faces of his own classmen, the wiser Freshmen, complacently guiltless of his own mistakes, touched him at moments with insane fury.

Wolfe describes the campus life with some humorous depreciation:

In this pastoral setting a young man was enabled to loaf comfortably and delightfully through four luxurious and indolent years. There was, God knows, seclusion enough for monastic scholarship, but the rare romantic quality of the atmosphere, the prodigal opulence of Springtime, thick with flowers and drenched in a fragrant warmth of green shimmering light, quenched pretty thoroughly any incipient rash of bookishness. Instead, they loafed and invited their souls or, with great energy and enthusiasm, promoted the affairs of glee-clubs, athletic teams, class politics, fraternities, debating societies, and dramatic clubs. And they talked--always they talked, under the trees, against the ivied walls, assembled in their rooms, they talked--in limp sprawls--incessant, charming, empty Southern talk; they talked with a large easy fluency about God, the Devil, and philosophy, the girls, politics, athletics, fraternities and the girls--My God! how they talked!

Part of the background of the book is the Great War (WWI). Alcohol is also a recurring theme, and Eugene, at the age of seventeen, discovers that he is his father's son.

The terrible draught smote him with the speed and power of a man's fist. He was made instantly drunken, and he knew instantly why men drank. It was, he knew, one of the great moments in his life— he lay, greedily watching the mastery of the grape over his virgin flesh, like a girl for the first time in the embrace of her lover. And suddenly, he knew how completely he was his father's son--how completely, and with what added power and exquisite refinement of sensation, was he Gantian. He exulted in the great length of his limbs and his body, through which the mighty liquor could better work its wizardry. In all the earth there was no other like him, no other fitted to be so sublimely and magnificently drunken. It was greater than all the music he had ever heard; it was as great as the highest poetry. Why had he never been told? Why had no one ever written adequately about it? Why, when it was possible to buy a god in a bottle, and drink him off, and become a god oneself, were men not forever drunken?

Eugene's rage over his lot in life finally explodes. This is a family that regularly experiences outbursts of rage.

\\"I've been given nothing!\\" said Eugene, his voice mounting with a husky flame of passion. \\"I'll go bent over no longer in this house. What chance I have I've made for myself in spite of you all, and over your opposition. You sent me away to the university when you could do nothing else, when it would have been a crying disgrace to you among the people in this town if you hadn't. You sent me off after the Leonards had cried me up for three years, and then you sent me a year too soon--before I was sixteen--with a box of sandwiches, two suits of clothes, and instructions to be a good boy.\\"

The book continues to cover the continuous family drama in Eugene's life until just after his college graduation, when he is nineteen and deciding what to do next in his young life.

This book has been overly long and tedious. However, the writing is often beautiful – just too much of it! How can those two statements be true simultaneously? I want to skim through sections, but skimming is not a skill I possess. I listened to the Audible recording of the book while following along on the Kindle. That is my technique for keeping moving through the pages. I am not registering every word all the time, and sometimes I would have a hard time summarizing the story after hearing it. That is why I read the summaries at eNotes.com, usually before and after listening to a chapter. It sounds confusing and time-consuming, doesn't it?

I spent a significant amount of time immersing this long story into my eyes and ears, hoping that my brain would retain some of it! And it worked to some extent! But the effort I made was too great to result in anything much better than okay. At its most successful moments, this was a three-star book for me; this occurred mostly after the time when Eugene left home for college. But the book as a whole just wasn't rewarding enough to earn more than two stars from me. I want to cheer that I have finally read this book and post my Certificate of Accomplishment, and, thanks to Audible, I must say that I have actually heard almost all of the book. I mark it up as a completed task, but clearly not one that prompts me to recommend this particular classic to others.

I understand that this book is regarded as having a profound influence on a number of esteemed 20th-century writers.

And I am aware that several of the passages are experimental and ground-breaking.

However, my goodness, this is one of the most overly-written, flowery, sentimental, and pretentious works I have read in quite a while.

There is essentially no plot. As far as I can tell, none of the characters have a discernible arc. I think the fact that all the family members are contradictory is intended to make them nuanced, but they are just caricatures. He is a fluent drunkard, she is cruelly mothering, and so on. Every single person is bitter. Our protagonist claims to have been manipulative and desperate to escape from infancy onward. The idea that this is somewhat autobiographical is horrifying, not only from the perspective of a child growing up in such an environment but also because the author seems to think that his conduct makes him admirable in any way. Eccentricity is not automatically a mark of genius - a tendency to bray in people's faces just makes you an ass.

And if I had to read the phrases "o lost!" or "a stone, a leaf, a door" one more time, I think I would have thrown the book at the wall.

The author mistakes verbosity for wisdom and misanthropy for profundity. Truly, it is a waste of time.

I'm not entirely certain how to adequately describe this book, except perhaps through a series of fragmented sentences.

Life is filled with random accidents. There are those moments when you suddenly stop and wonder, "How did I end up here?" Even when surrounded by loved ones, there is a sense of loneliness and isolation in the everyday. Families often find themselves running in desperate circles. And then there is the complex web of guilt, shame, pride, expectations, and defiance that comes with having a legacy of a large, powerful, rampaging, and drunken father.

I'm the type of person who always skips to the last page and reads the ending paragraph long before I finish the book. A truly good book is one where the last paragraph doesn't make much sense when I do this throughout, but when I finally reach it, I end up on the verge of tears. This book had precisely that effect on me. I mean, I'll admit that I tend to be overly emotional and sentimental, but I found this book to be extremely emotionally intense.

Most of the time, it reads like poetry, with rich and heavy descriptions. Dialogue is inserted not so much to advance the plot but rather to paint a vivid picture of a character or a place. There are also repeated phrases that add a certain rhythm and emphasis.

In fact, Wolfe takes the repetition motif to such an extent that it becomes almost eerie. With a book this dense, you start to question whether certain phrases have already been stated or if you're constantly experiencing deja vu.

I'm not entirely sure how I felt about the surrealism that was introduced near the end. It was a bit jarring at first, but somehow, it managed to work at the same time.

I despised so many aspects of this book. There was the arrogant racism, the appalling sentimentality, and the outrageously flowery prose. At the same time, there were elements that I admired. The family was so dysfunctional, cruel, and hateful, yet Wolfe managed to capture how they cared for each other and how they lived together in a way that was incredibly fresh, modern, and captivating.

This book is nearly 700 pages long, and I would say that about 200 pages are of five-star quality, while 500 pages are one star or less. So, I'm giving the whole book two stars, which I think is quite generous.

One interesting thing about reading this book is that you can see all the influences on Wolfe and also observe how many writers he influenced. The only problem is that he's almost always the weakest link in the chain. Wolfe is worse than the people he learned from and the people he taught. Here's how I broke it down.

"This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a college novel that was published seven or eight years before "Look Homeward Angel." It's Fitzgerald's first novel and is rather dated and unattractive today. There is a lot of racism, snobbery, and anti-Semitic attitudes. If you take all the worst aspects of early Fitzgerald and amplify them, that's what the college chapters in this book are like. Unless it's intended to be some sort of parody. Consider this quote:

"But Eugene was untroubled by any thought of a goal. He was mad with such ecstasy as he had never known. He was a centaur, moon-eyed and wild of mane, torn apart with hunger for the golden world. He became at times almost incapable of coherent speech. While talking with people, he would whinny suddenly into their startled faces, and leap away, his face contorted with an idiot joy. He would hurl himself squealing through the streets and along the paths, touched with the ecstasy of a thousand unspoken desires. The world lay before him for his picking – full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, and lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die."

If you think that's great writing, then this book is for you. But it wasn't for me!

"Long Day's Journey into Night" by Eugene O'Neill is O'Neill's greatest play and was written about ten years after this book. However, everything that's good here is echoed in O'Neill's play. The relationship between Eugene and his brother Ben is practically the only honest thing in this book, and they are much like Edmund and Jamie. I loved when Eugene's mother told him he'd always be broke until he learned the value of a dollar. That's in O'Neill too!

"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. Many of the fierce attacks on property in this book prefigure Steinbeck, as does some of the family stuff. There's one brief paragraph about the two brothers walking down the road together, and it sounded just like Steinbeck writing about Tom and Al Joad. On the other hand, Steinbeck was much more restrained and focused than this author.

Now, there is a great deal of racism in this book, and it deeply offended me. The black people in Eugene's hometown all live in a slum called N-word town, and Wolfe writes out the N word with relish. It's as if he has to constantly remind you how much disdain he has for "those people." But what bothered me wasn't just the racism. It was the sleazy way it's juxtaposed with the fake innocence, the fake idealism, and the fake exuberance of Eugene Gant.

We keep hearing Eugene say things like, "all the ancient civilizations were in him and he was destined to be greater than a 1000 pharaohs and rule a hundred tribes for a thousand years." (I'm not kidding, this is how Wolfe writes. So cool!) But like, he can be into the Pharaohs, but "those people" have to be kept in their place. He keeps talking about their "jungle wails" and "sounds of Africa" as if they're not even human. And then he brags about teenage Eugene going down there at night and extorting sex from black women! I was so angry that I wanted to throw the book across the room – my eyes were actually popping out of my head.

See, when you read Faulkner, he has all the wrong answers on the race question, but at least he knows it's an important question. He has a sense of the tragic failure of the South. But this idiot has no sense of tragedy, no sense of reality, and no sense of humor. (Except very rarely when you sense the whole thing is one big put-on.) In "The Sound and the Fury," Quentin Compson makes it clear he's not comfortable with blacks who don't know their place. That's why he hates Harvard so much. But Quentin Compson never pretends he's a happy person or that he can find a reason to live. His suicide and his racism are both symptoms of the same disease. But with Eugene Gant, all you get is goofy sentimentality and infantile delusions of grandeur. He's innocent, a child of nature, and yet he's shaking down black women for sex while he's still a paper boy. But that doesn't mean he's a mean, petty little redneck. Oh no! He's destined to rule vast empires, make love to ten thousand Egyptian queens, build vast new cities on the dark side of the moon...

I could continue, but what's the point? You have to read this book to believe it. But I guarantee you won't believe it!

Every star writes everything that exists. Stars have always held a special allure and mystery for us. They twinkle in the night sky, making us wonder about the vastness of the universe. Each star is a unique entity, with its own story to tell. Some stars are bright and shining, while others are more dim and hidden. But regardless of their appearance, they all contribute to the beauty and wonder of the cosmos. We can look up at the stars and imagine the countless worlds and civilizations that may exist out there. The stars inspire us to dream big and reach for the impossible. They remind us that there is so much more to the universe than what we can see with our naked eyes.

Granted, I approached this book with a predisposition to like it. I had heard glowing remarks from Kurt Vonnegut, who claimed it transformed his life when he read it around the time of his college graduation, and from another writer who attested to its profound impact on him. However, I firmly believe that Thomas Wolfe's first novel is an extraordinary work and one of the finest coming-of-age stories for those who have a penchant for Bildungsroman novels and possess a fair degree of literary sensibility.

I'm not entirely convinced that someone who isn't an English major or a lover of long and in-depth literature would fully appreciate this book. As an English teacher, I found myself falling in love with at least 25 passages within its pages. Their power was so overwhelming that it felt as if they knocked me off my chair.

I would like to contend that this book is not as extravagantly "flowery and lyrical and poetic" as many people seem to portray it.诚然, the novel contains approximately a dozen paragraphs with the refrain of "O Lost!" and the Preface is essentially a prose poem. But once you move beyond all the initial elements, it reveals itself to be a very lively book, and at times, driven by dialogue. Most people's reviews seem to focus disproportionately on the first few pages. However, this is a substantial book that has much more to offer than just the beginning with "Which one of us has known our brother?" and so on.

A significant number of people also seem to assert that this book doesn't hold up well over time and that re-reading it later in life isn't as effective. I'm only 22 at present, but again, the only examples I've witnessed are from the preface and the first page of Chapter One. It is a vibrant book that isn't overly reliant on symbolism or even much subtext. Instead, it provides a close portrayal of what life is like, why it can be lonely, and how different individuals cope with it.

If you aren't captivated by the time Eugene Gant is born and the narrative undergoes a shift in tone and style, leaping off the page before page 100, then perhaps you shouldn't continue reading the rest of the book. But the odds are that you'll come to understand why Thomas Wolfe was so captivating to readers in the late 1920s and 1930s.