Look Homeward, Angel is a truly remarkable yet somewhat plotless book. It is brimming with beautifully poeticized descriptive prose that vividly描绘 individuals, landscapes, and the intricacies of human behavior. The author's skill and imaginativeness are blatantly obvious from the very first page. Despite being about common everyday family life, which often seems filled with sufficient disfunctionality, it manages to craft a story that is anything but boring. However, one cannot ignore the fact that it is extremely long! It felt as if the end would never arrive.

The book's story revolves around an early twentieth-century North Carolina family, narrated in the third person from the viewpoint of the youngest son, Eugene Gant. Both sides of the family exhibit a wide variety of eccentricities, yet nothing truly extraordinary. But Eugene's writing abilities are truly extraordinary and soon become evident to his teachers. At the tender age of sixteen, he is sent to the State University. His first year in college is rough, but his abilities shine through, and by the time he graduates, he is the recipient of many honors.

When an author skillfully writes a story about a talented young writer, it's not just a work of imagination; it often feels like an autobiography. According to this Wikipedia article, the book is indeed an autobiographic account of the author's family in Asheville, North Carolina. The book is widely regarded as a classic of American literature, a testament to the author's remarkable writing prowess.

Wyatt on Ozark raved about this book, and it's been quite some time since I last delved into a classic. However, this turned out to be a big mistake.

The writing is undisciplined, lacking any real structure. It rambles on aimlessly, often leaving me completely incomprehensible. The characters are merely roughly sketched caricatures. They are almost universally selfish, narcissistic, and entirely unlikable. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about any of them.

There were, admittedly, brief moments of lucidity and insight, but they were far too few and far between to make this book worth my time. And I seriously doubt it would be worth yours either. In conclusion, I cannot recommend this book at all.

It's a disappointment that fails to live up to any expectations one might have had.

Books are composed of books, and numerous books have been inspired by this particular one. It constructs such a foundation that you are nearly compelled to read it, as if it were your destiny. However, loving it? I couldn't quite manage that. After reading the first third, I was longing for indications of Philip Carey, finding it rather mediocre and exasperating compared to something like Of Human Bondage. There is an abundance of adjectives, yet only a fraction of the power or engaging story.

Nevertheless, the ruinous Gants are highly memorable, and this serves as the raw material for countless others. Thank you, Thomas Wolfe.

“At last, thought Eugene, I am getting an education. This must be good writing, because it seems so very dull. When it hurts, the dentist says, it does you good. Democracy must be real, because it is so very earnest. It must be a certainty, because it is so elegantly embalmed in this marble mausoleum of language.”

Eugene, you sarcastic soul, you. His words carry a hint of irony, as if he is poking fun at the very nature of what he is experiencing. It makes one wonder about the true value and meaning of the things we encounter, and how our perceptions can often be clouded by our expectations.

There are books that enter your life at the right moment and manage to mark you in a special way. Those who know me well know that I love the books published by Trotalibros Editorial. I buy them all because although at first some of the books don't catch my attention much, in the end I end up liking them. When "The Angel's Gaze" was published, its length put me off a bit; moreover, I had the preconceived idea that it was going to be complicated for me. It has been a book that I have read slowly, savoring each moment and enjoying everything I read. I was in no hurry to finish it. In fact, there came a point where I didn't want to finish it because I didn't want to say goodbye to the story.

I have loved it and have been completely caught up in it. This book does not have a defined plot, there is no significant event. We are faced with the story of the Gant family. We will discover how the family grows and the peculiarities of each of its members. "The Angel's Gaze" is a family story from the early 20th century in the United States. At a certain point, Eugene begins to have a more prominent role.

In some aspects, it reminded me a little of "The Buddenbrooks"; but unlike the latter, which at a certain point seemed a bit repetitive to me, this has not happened with "The Angel's Gaze". I read the last 100 pages practically in a couple of sittings.

The way it is written seemed to me at times almost poetic. The subtlety and beauty of the narration left me impressed in many moments. We are faced with a book that is very much worth reading, but I think it has to be read at the right moment because it is a rather long book and in the end you have to dedicate time to it. But really, find that moment because it will be very much worth it.

To finish, I want to make a couple of special mentions. The first, to the edition of Trotalibros Editorial for how careful and wonderful it is. It contains a family tree of the Gant family so that we can locate the characters at all times. Although it is a book with a greater length than other books in the catalog, the print is very easy to read (and I tell you this because my myopia is quite considerable) so it is highly recommended. The other mention is for the translation by Miguel Ángel Pérez Pérez. Impeccable. Perfect.

I need to sit on this one a bit before writing a review.

I'm afraid Bloom and I are at odds regarding Wolfe's merits.

This is truly stellar writing.

Wolfe's work has a certain charm and elegance that is hard to ignore.

The way he weaves words together to create vivid images and engaging stories is remarkable.

However, Bloom seems to have a different perspective.

Maybe he doesn't appreciate the same aspects of Wolfe's writing that I do.

It could be that our tastes in literature are simply different.

But regardless of our differences, I still believe that Wolfe's work is worthy of recognition.

I'll need to take some time to carefully consider all the elements of his writing before I can formulate a proper review.

Until then, I'll continue to enjoy the beauty and complexity of his words.

The original article is not provided, so I can't rewrite and expand it specifically. However, I can give you a general example of how to rewrite and expand an article to 300 words.

Let's assume the original article is: "The cat is sitting on the mat. It is a black cat. It looks very cute."

Here is the rewritten and expanded version:

The cat is sitting calmly on the mat.

It is a sleek and shiny black cat, with its fur as smooth as silk.

The cat's eyes are bright and curious, looking around with a sense of wonder.

It has a small, pointed nose and a pair of cute little ears that twitch at the slightest sound.

The way it sits there, so still and composed, makes it look extremely cute.

One can't help but be drawn to its charm and want to reach out and pet it.

The black cat seems to be enjoying the moment, content in its own little world on the mat.

It is truly a sight to behold and a source of joy for anyone who sees it.

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A renowned author comparable to William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward, Angel in 1929. This debut novel is about a young man's intense longing to escape his small town and chaotic family in pursuit of a better life. It served as evidence of his genius and initiated a powerful literary legacy.

The novel traces the journey of Eugene Gant, a bright and restless youth whose wanderlust and passion define his adolescent years in rural North Carolina. Wolfe claimed that Look Homeward, Angel was "a book made out of my life," and his largely autobiographical account of the search for a more intellectually fulfilling life has struck a chord with and influenced generations of readers, including some of today's most significant novelists. Filled with lyrical prose and vivid characterizations, this twentieth-century American classic is sure to capture the hearts and imaginations of every reader.

My Review: Oliver Gant is a drunk, and Eliza Gant is a shrew. They have six children, and she doesn't seem to like him, childbirth, poverty, or much else for that matter. Oliver favors his youngest, Eugene, more than the others (and I do too, but that doesn't say much), and he lavishes what little love Eliza hasn't worn away with her nagging, bitching, niggling, criticizing, and belittling on the boy.

Eugene grows up in a boardinghouse called Dixieland in Asheville, North Carolina. Oops! I meant Altamont, Catawba. Wolfe didn't want anyone to know he was writing an autobiography, so he created a fictional city and state. Wow! Then he wrote about the people around him honestly, straightforwardly, and in a stream-of-Faulkner style that was then trendy and is still described as modernistic. But eighty-plus years later, it's no longer experimental or modern; it's just part of the literary toolkit.

Ahem. Sorry.

So Eugene grows up, and we do too. Then he leaves home, and we do too. And then everything comes to a sudden stop.

Thank goodness for small mercies.

I'm not a fan of coming-of-age novels, and I don't usually read them. I read this one when I was fifteen because I wanted to impress a cute boy I was trying to get interested in me. He thought this was the coolest book ever, so I read it every day in study hall to get his attention. It worked, and we ended up talking about the book for hours.

And that was all I got. Just a bunch of yapping about Eugene's life and his supposed depth and all that other stuff that made me want to die. Ugh!

I don't think I've ever forgiven the book for not getting me laid.

But upon more mature reflection, I still dislike the book for better (more adult) reasons. One is that even with the help of editing legend Max Perkins, Wolfe couldn't tell this story in the demanding style of stream-of-consciousness without it becoming self-indulgent and overly sentimental.

Another is Eugene/Tom's misogyny. I have no patience for the Cult of Female Superiority, whether it's driven by "chivalry" or feminism. Women aren't better than men, but they're not worse either. Wolfe's portrayal of his mother, Eliza, as a horrible, emasculating harridan is one-sided. She has depths of nastiness and pretension that are believable, but there's no balance. We don't get to see the reasons for her behavior. In the first two zillion words that detail the lives of Eliza and Oliver, Eliza is presented as a fully formed castrating slime. Was she born this way? I highly doubt it.

Finally, there's Wolfe's conceit. In this coming-of-age story, he relives the first years of his life, which were ordinary and unremarkable, seemingly in real time. Why? What's the point? This is the crux of my problem with coming-of-age stories: We've all grown up, so what makes your story so special? In Wolfe's case, I just don't see it. It's possible that I'm resistant to his specialness because the story is so dull to me. But I really can't understand what makes this dreary, low-class, hag-ridden family of nobodies worth caring about any more than I would care about putting a coin in a charity box to feed them.

Some of the prose in this work is beautifully written. In fact, I initially found myself really caring about what would ultimately happen to Eugene. I'm inclined to guess that he might have died or something along those lines. However, once my library loan period ended, I simply couldn't bring myself to go back to it. As is often the case, the prerequisite for what is considered great literature seems to be pretentiousness and boredom.

I made an effort to like it. Truly, I did. But in the end, I just couldn't. (3rd edit…. Actually, it's not that I didn't try to like it. In fact, I kind of did like it. It's just that I reached a point where it became so difficult to read that I didn't have the desire to finish. Does that make sense?)

Here's a quote directly from the book: "This must be good writing, because it seems so very dull." This quote sums up my experience with the book quite well. It had moments of beauty and interest, but overall, it was a struggle to get through. Maybe it's just not the right book for me at this time.

He knew he would always be the sad one. Caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one.

His life coiled back into the brown murk of the past like a twined filament of electric wire. He gave life, a pattern, and movement to these million sensations that Chance, the loss or gain of a moment, the turn of the head, the enormous and aimless impulsion of accident, had thrust into the blazing heat of him. His mind picked out in white living brightness these pinpoints of experience, and the ghostliness of all things else became more awful because of them. So many of the sensations that returned to open haunting vistas of fantasy and imagining had been caught from a whirling landscape through the windows of the train.

And it was this that awed him — the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time. There was one moment of timeless suspension when the land did not move, the train did not move, the slattern in the doorway did not move, he did not move. It was as if God had lifted his baton sharply above the endless orchestration of the seas, and the eternal movement had stopped, suspended in the timeless architecture of the absolute. Or like those motion-pictures that describe the movements of a swimmer making a dive, or a horse taking a hedge — movement is petrified suddenly in mid-air, the inexorable completion of an act is arrested. Then, completing its parabola, the suspended body plops down into the pool. Only, these images that burnt in him existed without beginning or ending, without the essential structure of time. Fixed in no-time, the slattern vanished, fixed, without a moment of transition.

I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which, having for me no existence save that which I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself an accumulation of what I have been becoming. Why here? Why there? Why now? Why then?

While visiting Asheville, NC, in May, we boarded a trolley at the Visitor's Center for a guided tour of the city.

'Uncle Ted', our driver, was a retired high school history teacher with a great sense of humor and an occasionally hard-to-decipher accent. He got upset if we didn't always laugh at his jokes, but often we were just a bit slow to understand his meaning.

It soon became clear how much Asheville loves its authors, especially Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938). His first book, "Look Homeward, Angel", is largely based on his childhood in Asheville. He changed names to protect the guilty, but neighbors still recognized local characters. Some were happy to see themselves in print, while others weren't. According to 'Uncle Ted', even today, fans of the book go on self-guided walking tours, trying to find scenes from the novel and asking residents for autographs, even though they have nothing to do with the Wolfe family or the story.

Back at the Visitor's Center, I bought a copy of the book - my favorite souvenir from travels. This book has been on my 'must-read' list since high school, but then I tended to read female authors with female protagonists. My favorites included "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Gone with the Wind", "Rebecca", "Jane Eyre", and "Pride and Prejudice".

I wonder what I would have thought of this book as a teen. Would I have related to Eugene Gant and his struggles to find himself? Probably, as I did with Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher in the Rye".

This novel, published in 1929, must have shocked some with its subject matter and experimental style. Is it the great American novel? I think it should be in the running. It offers a wonderful window into that era and the mountain setting. The characterizations are vivid, the writing is poetical, and the coming-of-age angst is universal and timeless.

The Gant family is extremely dysfunctional. They attack each other verbally and physically, but still love each other deeply. The brothers and sisters are divided by which parent they take after. W.O. Gant is self-centered and often drunk, while Eliza Pentland Gant is a penny-pincher who sacrifices her family's comfort for more property.

Eliza buys a boarding house called Dixieland, and the family splits in half. Many of the boarders are unsavory, but Eliza doesn't care as long as they pay rent. Eugene never has a room or dresser of his own.

Despite being poor, the parents send Eugene to the University of North Carolina at 16. There, he's seen as a country bumpkin and becomes the target of jokes. Some 'friends' take advantage of his innocence and introduce him to sex with a prostitute, and he contracts a venereal disease. In his shame, he thinks he's dying until he confesses to his older brother, Ben.

The novel has many themes, including alienation and the sense of being lost. There are also many references to 'angels' and 'gauntness'.

Some of my favorite quotes include: "He bore encysted in him the evidence of their tragic fault: he walked alone in the darkness, death and the dark angels hovered, and no one saw him." and "The prison walls of self had closed entirely round him; he was walled completely by the esemplastic power of his imagination."

I'm now looking forward to reading the second book, "Of Time and the River". I've heard it's very long but just as good.

This one was really tough. The writing was complex, the story was intricate, and the dysfunctional family added an extra layer of difficulty. It took a lot of effort and concentration to get through it. However, I am truly glad to finally be finished with it.

Now that I have completed this task, I can take a moment to reflect on my experience. I will write more thoughts soon, delving deeper into the various aspects of the work that stood out to me.

Maybe I'll explore the character development, the themes that emerged, or the unique writing style. There is so much to discuss and analyze.

I'm looking forward to sharing my insights and engaging in a meaningful conversation about this piece of work.

Look Homeward, Angel, and Forgive Us: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/p...

"All happy families are alike..." - you know, that's how another great novel begins. And in this one by Thomas Wolfe, we are told about one of those other, unfortunately unique families - unfortunate from the first to the last page, a stormy tempest of mutually caused pain, self-torture, family scandals, sometimes brawls, and the constant presence of the alcoholic demon. But this is also the story of a family (of the author, the novel is highly autobiographical) like no other - or like every other. Because if a true chronicler of time and life looks so closely, perhaps such a massive work would be obtained from the otherwise banal yet observable lives of all of us. Even if a whole century separates us from Wolfe's work, everything he writes about is known, so well known. And precisely because of this book, I discussed with a friend how reading the great authors is self-therapy that we all need - very similar to the professional help that otherwise we might receive. This is a self-therapy book for Thomas Wolfe, but its universal message makes it suitable for many. If they dare to be swallowed by this literary abyss, filled with emotions and life, so much life.

Publisher "Ecrie"

http://knigolandia.info/book-review/p...