After Brodkey, I was on a quest for another book of similar magnitude to The Runaway Soul. In the summer of 2024, I was discussing Thomas Wolfe with a friend. We remained in contact, eagerly counting down the days to read this book. I would say that this may come as close as we can get to something that lies between Brodkey and Proust in terms of lexical grandeur.

This book was truly remarkable.

It is a coming-of-age novel that Wolfe claims is completely autobiographical. We journey through the lives of the Gant family, from before Gene (Wolfe) is born until the death of his brother (Ben) upon completing school.

The characters bear a resemblance to those in Steinbeck's works (and there is so much more that makes me suspect how much influence this might have had on East Of Eden). The visceral descriptions, such as the American south being referred to as “N**gertown” and other slurs, remind me of literally any book (including Ulysses) written in the early 1900s. However, it is the language that is the main reason to read Wolfe.

At least in my reading experience, I have never encountered the depth of introspection that Wolfe offers to the reader. While Brodkey seemed to not know where to stop, Wolfe exercises a certain restraint to keep the audience engaged. You are never truly out of his sphere of influence (perhaps Max Perkins is to blame, or perhaps not). You are floating in a prose abyss, not drowning.

Some examples that I have saved but could not share in my updates are as follows:

“And left alone to sleep within a shuttered room, with the thick sunlight printed in bars upon the floor, unfathomable loneliness and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and 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, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never.”

And:

“As they entered the room, they heard, like a faint expiring sigh, the final movement of breath. The rattling in the wasted body, which seemed for hours to have given over to death all of life that is worth saving, had now ceased. The body appeared to grow rigid before them. Slowly, after a moment, Eliza withdrew her hands. But suddenly, marvellously, as if his resurrection and rebirth had come upon him, Ben drew upon the air in a long and powerful respiration; his gray eyes opened. Filled with a terrible vision of all life in the one moment, he seemed to rise forward bodilessly from his pillows without support—a flame, a light, a glory-joined at length in death to the dark spirit who had brooded upon each footstep of his lonely adventure on earth; and, casting the fierce sword of his glance with utter and final comprehension upon the room haunted with its gray pageantry of cheap loves and dull consciences and on all those uncertain mummers of waste and confusion fading now from the bright window of his eyes, he passed instantly, scornful and unafraid, as he had lived, into the shades of death. We can believe in the nothingness of life, we can believe in the nothingness of death and of life after death-but who can believe in the nothingness of Ben? Like Apollo, who did his penance to the high god in the sad house of King Ádmetus, he came, a god with broken feet, into the gray hovel of this world. And he lived here a stranger, trying to recapture the music of the lost world, trying to recall the great forgotten language, the lost faces, the stone, the leaf, the door. O Artemidorus, farewell!”

Rather than sharing every page of the book, I will stop here.

If you appreciate how a book is written, with just enough plot and a great deal of character development and dynamics that allow you to relate to at least one character along the way, I highly recommend this book.

If you are feeling lost and lonely and consider yourself a ghost, take heart. Many before you have felt this way, and many will after. Wolfe is one of them.

Read it before the echo chamber discovers it.

O Lost.

There is a large rock near the road in Cades Cove of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Every time I pass it, I am reminded of the sunny afternoon in 1984 when I sat there and read Thomas Wolfe’s autobiographical “Look Homeward Angel.”

I didn't manage to finish the book there as it is far too hefty. However, it is the place that I mentally associate with the story of Eugene Gant, who is in fact Wolfe himself.

After completing the book, I drove to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Home in downtown Asheville. I just wanted to see the boarding house his mother operated, which is so prominently featured in the novel.

At that time, I was somewhat separating from my childhood nuclear family - a process that is both painful and liberating simultaneously. And Eugene’s narrative deeply resonated with me. It's a coming of age story.

Who are these people that call themselves my parents? And for that matter, who am I?

I adored Wolfe's poetic prose - a sharp contrast to the sparse modernist writers of his era. At times, it IS poetry: “a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of 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 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?

We are all in search of the same answers, but like Eugene, do we ever truly find them?

Despite its clever prose, this American classic of a turn-of-the-century boyhood left me cold.

I realize that this is the author’s own story, but his fascination with his own literary skills overwhelmed the story itself.

Maybe Wolfe was trying to convey the self-absorbed angst of adolescence, or perhaps the narrative ends before the author’s figure has begun to mature.

It could also be that the author had not emotionally grown into adulthood by the time he wrote this book.

However, Eugene, the stand-in for the author, struck me as a melodramatic, misunderstood, self-proclaimed genius.

I can’t believe that the original manuscript was three times as long.

“Shutter”.

I give Wolfe credit for drawing the collective attention to ordinary, dysfunctional families.

The members of his family and the character of his hometown had enough complexity that the reader felt as if they had met each of them and yet as if they never really knew them.

But, none of them seemed to grow.

Maybe that is realistic for alcoholic families, but it makes for less than satisfying reading.

Overall, while the book has its merits in terms of prose and character complexity, it fails to engage me on a deeper emotional level due to the issues I have mentioned.

I found myself more focused on the author’s literary tricks than on the story and its characters.

Perhaps a more mature and less self-absorbed approach would have made this a more enjoyable read for me.

Nonetheless, it remains an important work in American literature, and I can understand why some people may appreciate it more than I do.

I have just finished reading this work after spending a long time trying to reach the end. I have the feeling that I have read something brilliantly written, with outstanding passages and paragraphs that I couldn't help but underline. However, despite all of this, it has left me indifferent. At no point did I feel any interest or concern for what might happen to the characters, nor were their misfortunes able to move me. In numerous moments, the reading seemed boring and difficult to me, so advancing in the work was more of a challenge than a pleasure.

I think this might be because the story didn't manage to engage my emotions. Maybe the characters weren't developed enough for me to really care about them. Or perhaps the plot was too predictable, and I knew what was going to happen next. Whatever the reason, I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy this work more. I had high expectations, but unfortunately, they weren't met.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for this particular work, I still believe that reading is an important and rewarding activity. It allows us to explore different worlds, learn new things, and expand our perspectives. So, even though this experience wasn't as positive as I had hoped, I'm not going to give up on reading. I'll continue to search for those books that will truly capture my imagination and touch my heart.

Very rarely do I encounter a book that makes me feel as if I will never be able to finish it. This particular book has quite a history. I inherited it from my parents, who in turn received it from my Nana. It has been sitting on my nightstand for over half a year now. During this time, it has remained there while I turn to other reads for a break. Currently, it is in seven different pieces.

Last Sunday, as I was engrossed in reading it at my favorite breakfast spot, a page actually tore loose and landed right in the middle of my oatmeal. Pieces of the binding, which resemble dead moth parts, seem to magically litter my floor. "I thought," groaned my dad as he handed it over, "I would never finish this stupid book."

"Is it worth reading?"

"Yep."

In short, the book has become - to borrow a brilliant review on Goodreads that kept me going like a marathoner on the 23rd mile - the goddamn bane of my existence. It is also one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. As I finally set it down for good, I actually found myself sighing poignantly, and then looking around rather embarrassed.

The plot? Well, Thomas Wolfe doesn't seem to need a traditional plot. He just requires a good dysfunctional drunk North Carolina family, a misunderstood genius, southern whores, slightly crazed boarders, tobacco, and lots of racial epithets. He needs his hero to wander around a graveyard, spilling out gushes of morbid soliloquy, strewn with masses of descriptive mountain evenings and overtones of escapism. He needs to展现 the harsh realities of loving your family so passionately that you slowly kill them, in a way that manages to be both macabre and funny. Plot, pshaw. Thomas Wolfe is a poet, pure and simple.

For example:

"And left alone to sleep within a shuttered room, with the thick sunlight printed in bars upon the floor, unfathomable loneliness and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and 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, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never."

Yep, existentialism just had an orgasm. A self-indulgent one, but still.

I really have no desire to find out what happens to Eugene Gant after this novel. I mean, I could, since there is a sequel, but he's not a particularly likeable fella. I like the thought of him exiting stage left, looking back longingly at mistakes he would never have been able to correct. If he turns around - well, then the whole title stops making sense.

Keep it around. It grows on you. You'll never look at October leaves shaking on the trees the same.

Truth.

I became interested in reading this book after seeing the extremely creepy, yet well-done movie, Cape Fear, years ago. In the movie, the young daughter of a Southern family, Danielle, is assigned to read it for school. I wondered what made Look Homeward, Angel so integral to the story and Danielle's character. Now, I think I understand.

Wolfe's most famous novel is set in the idyllic, yet deeply prejudiced South of 100 years ago. The Great War breaks out in 1914, cities and towns are expanding, and motor cars appear. It's a coming-of-age story about Eugene Gant, the youngest of six children in the beleaguered, dysfunctional Gant family. The book begins with W.O. Gant, the sad, alcoholic father who comes to Altamont, Catawba (a fictional town based on Wolfe's hometown of Asheville, NC) to start a cemetery monument business. The angel of the title is one of his finest creations.

From there, the third-person narration describes the selfish Gant, his courtship and marriage to the equally selfish and miserly Eliza, who accumulates wealth through her obsession with real estate deals. Their neglected, downtrodden children suffer as a result. Eliza runs a boarding house for wayward transients and prostitutes called Dixieland, which consumes all her time and breeds resentment in her husband and children. It's clear early on that some of these kids are headed for a shiftless adulthood, inheriting their father's love of alcohol and lacking direction. Eugene, however, is the best of the bunch: funny, intellectual, yet eccentric and a loner. He escapes the chaos at home by attending an advanced school run by a lovely couple who encourage his education and spark his imagination. At 16, his stingy father sends him to the University of NC, where he is too young for his freshman class. Gene struggles to fit in both at school and at home (which he despises), seeking acceptance and ultimately, his place in the world.

The story is somewhat engaging, delving into the South and our nation's history and distant past. However, I grew tired of the frequent angst-ridden fights that pepper the novel. These people are trapped in a never-ending cycle of hostility and resentment, with no one willing to apologize or change. Only when someone dies does anything seem to shift for these individuals imprisoned in their own personal hells.

As for the writing, the novel was lauded as modern and experimental in its day, and it's also brutally autobiographical. To me, the language is overly flowery at the beginning but improves as the story progresses. Wolfe has a penchant for using elaborate words, so it's advisable to have a dictionary on hand when tackling this hefty novel. Given its Southern setting, the n* word and other racial slurs and stereotypes are unfortunately common. There's also an interesting passage where the outcome of the Civil War on the South is discussed, and one character remarks, \\"Defeated, sir, but never beaten.\\" This attitude, I suppose, still lingers in the hearts of many Southerners today.

A humorous aside: I actually found the words \\"bigly\\" and \\"dotage\\" stated twice!

Finally, as a takeaway from this novel, which I perceive as having an existentialist theme, I can't help but recall a quote from Livia Soprano in The Sopranos that I think both the Gants and Thomas Wolfe might resonate with: \\"In the end, you die in your own arms. It's all a big nothing.\\"

Let me be completely honest with you.

I didn't manage to finish the book. In fact, I only got as far as page 68. And to be frank, I started to have doubts about whether I could ever finish it around page 20.

Let me also make one thing clear. I have never given up on a book before. I usually keep persevering, always hoping that the story will eventually take a turn for the better. But this time, it's truly astonishing to me that I gave myself such leniency and did so very early on.

Perhaps I will return to it in a few years and give it another try, but it's more likely that I won't. In those 68 pages, there was very little actual story. There was a lot of backstory and exposition, and unfortunately, there was also misogyny and racism. Yes, there were a few beautiful and amazing lines scattered here and there. But I'm sorry to say that there simply weren't enough of them to keep me engaged. It's like getting just ten sprinkles on a cone of bad-tasting ice cream - it's not enough to change the overall unappetizing flavor.

DNF.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to complete reading this particular book.

To be fair, I can clearly see that it does possess certain good aspects.

However, in a world where there are numerous other books vying for my attention, this one simply failed to hold my interest firmly.

There are so many other captivating reads out there that seem to have a stronger allure and the ability to keep me engaged from start to finish.

Perhaps if the circumstances were different or if I had more time to dedicate solely to this book, my perception might change.

But as it stands now, with the vast array of literary options available, I have chosen to move on and explore other books that I believe will offer a more fulfilling reading experience.

The story of Thomas Wolfe (1900 - 1938) carries, even from the sound of it, a special weight of almost mythical dimensions. It is the sensitive and enigmatic title, it is the thickness of the book, but mainly the reputation of the author as an idiosyncratic, prematurely lost American talent. Wolfe was recognized from his very first appearance, with "Look Homeward, Angel" (he wrote three other novels, as well as collections of short stories and plays), as a new driving force capable of leaving its mark on American literature. He was famous during his lifetime, but died just before his 38th birthday from tuberculosis.

Although often characterized as a coming-of-age novel, the author takes up the thread of the narrative several years before the birth of the protagonist and his alter ego, Eugene Gant, vividly and wittily describing the acquaintance of his parents, who remain on stage throughout the book, as well as their other five children. In fact, such is the plethora and vividness of the characters, such is the dedication and the ingenuity on the part of the author for the unforgettably vivid portrayal of their passions and weaknesses, that the characterization of the novel as coming-of-age seems for a large part of the book to be misleading. Undoubtedly, at the center of the novel is placed Eugene Gant, growing up stormy and helpless in a world that constantly appears inadequate in front of his naive eyes. However, this is more evident as the narrative time progresses, as from the beginning to the end, with all these selectively illuminated angles and the staged family skirmishes or reconciliations, the book often takes on the dimensions of a family epic.

The events that unfold in the novel are not all fabricated; many would say they are even banal or at least not capable of disturbing the peace of a composed person. However, the weight of all of them is magnified through the unbridled psychological makeup of the characters and is hypertonic through the often poetic, lyrical, and impressionistic prose of the author, resulting in the depiction of elements of the previous, and not only, century's American life: the importance of the family, property as a priority but also as a burden, simplicity, the hopes placed in education. It also chronologically covers a significant part of World War I, where mainly the impact of the war on the psychology of the average American of the time is revealed, with the author presenting it in some places even positively and upliftingly far from the face of horror, in a way that for the modern reader ends up rather ironic.

The drunken father, the simple mother, a family a tangle of passions and weaknesses, a fresco of daily and continuous human tragedies, big and small, which are intertwined by an innate tendency towards exaggeration and a constantly present communication gap. All boiled over with excitement, approaching almost madness, they address the world and God like the actors of an opera just before falling with a thud onto the stage with a knife stuck in their back, unashamed and Spartan, with a flavor that one would really say is most often that of tragicomedy, or of a delightful, comically depicted catastrophe.

The language is rich, juicy, overwrought, and impressionistic when the author wants to convey the tense strings of the psychological makeup of the heroes and the polychromy of their emotions, more down-to-earth and descriptive when he wants to describe daily activities in the city. Everything in the novel is of bookish dimensions, from the desire for a prepared dinner to the agony for the impending death, filtered through the romantic prism that makes life seem like a paradisiacal, painfully unexplored place. The members of the Gant family dramatize even the most commonplace daily misfortunes, with an intensity almost equal to their grief for an illness that plagues them and inexorably hastens death. These traits, often on the verge of caricature, are full of vitality and humor.

I feel that I must write a review. I haven't done one since I was hospitalized in January.

The Look of the Angel is undoubtedly one of my favorite books of all time. I have had a connection with the Gant family that I can't explain in words.

"Can't we ever live alone, think alone, live in a house alone? Ah! But I will! I will! Alone, alone, and far away, under the rain."

Thomas Wolfe poured everything into this book. He talks to us about the family, but without those romanticizations that are often made, about death, the passage of time, that feeling of detachment, of not belonging, of being lost, but above all about trying to find oneself. All this while depicting the South of the United States at that time, with racism, job insecurity, the situation of women, as well as the effects of the First World War. All this with characters so alive, so real that I will never forget.

Moreover, Wolfe's narrative style cannot be missing, sentimental and evocative, impetuous and beautifully descriptive.

I have been fascinated by the author. Thanks to Trotalibros and Miguel Ángel Pérez Pérez for this wonderful edition and translation. Now I will look for the other works of the author.

If you despised Ulysses, chances are you might also loathe this book as well. Ulysses is a complex and often challenging work, and if it failed to resonate with you, it's likely that this particular book will meet a similar fate. The two might share certain characteristics or writing styles that could rub you the wrong way. Perhaps the convoluted plotlines, the dense language, or the unconventional narrative structure of Ulysses left you frustrated and uninterested. In that case, it's reasonable to assume that this other book, with its own set of idiosyncrasies, will also fail to capture your attention and leave you with a sense of dissatisfaction.

Este libro marcó un antes y un después en mí.

Es una de las lecturas más extraordinarias que he leído en mi vida y seguramente, junto a Cien años de soledad, mi libro favorito.

¡Cuánta verdad hay en sus páginas! A través de la historia de una numerosa familia de un pueblo de Carolina del Norte y la formación del hijo más pequeño, Thomas Wolfe escribió una novela inmortal, alcanzando una genialidad literaria que roza lo divino. Es sencillamente increíble.

Publicar la nueva traducción de Miguel Ángel Pérez Pérez ha sido mágico, una de esas experiencias a las que se refiere Shakespeare en Cuento de invierno cuando dice que «no hay sensatez que pueda compararse al placer de esta locura».

Esta obra no solo cuenta una historia, sino que también transmite una profunda reflexión sobre la vida, la familia y el amor.

La escritura de Wolfe es tan vívida y emotiva que te hace sentir como si estuvieras presente en cada escena.

Y la traducción de Pérez Pérez ha logrado capturar todo el espíritu y la belleza del original.

Es un libro que merece ser leído y releído, un clásico que seguirá inspirando a generaciones futuras.