Wolfe is truly one of the most brilliant authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

His sentences are not just beautiful; they are works of art. The way he chooses his words is simply amazing, creating a vivid and engaging world on the page.

Sometimes, I find myself having to read a sentence several times just to fully savor its meaning and beauty.

This particular collection of stories is a long one, clocking in at 621 pages. But don't let the length deter you; it is an absolute gem.

I was so captivated by the stories that I have already decided to read this book again.

Each story is unique and offers a different perspective on life, love, and everything in between.

If you are a fan of great literature, then you simply must give this book a try. You won't be disappointed.

Shamefully, I have to admit that I've never managed to read Look Homeward Angel from start to finish. However, I have an intense love for Wolfe's short stories.

It is truly a pity that he has fallen out of fashion in recent times. This is a great loss because in the realm of short stories, he very much rivals Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

Wolfe's short stories are a treasure trove of vivid characters, rich emotions, and powerful narratives. His writing style is unique, with a lyrical quality that draws the reader in and keeps them engaged until the very end.

Despite his lack of popularity today, Wolfe's short stories continue to stand the test of time. They are a testament to his talent as a writer and his ability to capture the essence of the human experience.

It is my hope that more people will discover and appreciate Wolfe's short stories, and that he will once again receive the recognition and acclaim that he so richly deserves.

I firmly believe that Thomas Wolfe's works are always captivating, and discussing him is truly a precious and delightful experience. When a friend inquired if I had read the novella "The Lost Boy", I was overjoyed as it presented an opportunity for me to seek it out. Lacking a copy of "The Web and the Rock" and not having read it, I scoured the surroundings and discovered this hefty volume filled with numerous stories I had yet to encounter. I then wondered if I should once again take the plunge into the complex world of Wolfeland. It was a brief internal debate that I inevitably won.

As it happened, this book was edited by my undergraduate American literature professor at Miami, the remarkable and inspiring Dr. Francis Skipp. He imparted a wealth of knowledge to me, such as the correct pronunciation of "Thoreau", and also inspired me to read and write about life. Naturally, I purchased a used copy, which curiously originated from another library. I cringe at the thought that this wonderful piece of literature was removed and replaced by some inferior drivel in popularity.

Regrettably, the story for which I bought this book is incomplete. The editor utilized what he deemed the best available information, but "The Lost Boy" is divided into 4 parts, and in this book, it is severely edited, almost completely lacking one part as it was directly sourced from a magazine publication. This is significant for several reasons, primarily because Wolfe was experimenting with techniques towards the end of his life, and I firmly believe that this is among the finest examples of the finished product. Without the fourth part, the story, so to speak, feels somewhat unfinished.

I have extensively contemplated the technique Wolfe effectively employed towards the end of his life. One may either attribute magic to it or scoff at it as one deems fit, but I wholeheartedly believe that it is more than just a literary device. Much of Wolfe's writing is a kind of quantum portrayal of life, and I greatly prefer this way of thinking to the overused "stream of consciousness" terminology that lumps him in with individuals who are incapable of constructing coherent sentences.

In fact, during a time when literary heavyweights like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald dominated, Wolfe's pure description of activity paled in comparison. For instance, Hemingway was constantly getting drunk in and out of bars, volunteering for foreign wars, and flaunting his virility in countless ghastly ways that bordered on the brink of death, making Wolfe seem rather meek in contrast. I think Hemingway was not sparing in his words when he called him "Little Abner" after his death, essentially denigrating his writing. Faulkner initially offered some praise, but later seemed to retract it for some reason. The point is not about literature's penchant for testosterone-fueled excess or even if some of it is blatantly silly. The greater issue is that Wolfe appeared to be a fully functioning individual, albeit somewhat broken in some respects, exploring subtler aspects of the world that it was not yet quite ready to embrace. The more profound question is whether one needs to travel extensively around the world, trying to impress others, in order to possess an incredibly敏锐的 understanding of the human condition.

By using the example of "The Lost Boy", I can illustrate a technique I have named "Recovering Unexperienced Memories". Imagine a young child, the third child of a couple, who has been regaled with tales of his older brother who died at a very young age when the family visited the St Louis World's Fair in 1904. This young boy was only 3 or 4 (while his older brother was 12) at the time, so all the things he "remembers" are actually stories that have been told to him, first by his father, then his mother, and finally his much older sister. The genius lies in piecing it all together as if it were a genuine memory. However, the fourth part of the story is about the now grown-up young boy returning to St Louis, retracing the family's steps, finding the house, and attempting to relive those memories.

Now, one might wonder why anyone would want to revisit this tragic event in which their own brother died. But then, he has had to listen to his mother constantly talk about the boy and how he was the best of all her children. Perhaps there is no one who does not know or understand someone who has had to bear the burden of such a loss for a lifetime and thus seek some form of relief. Upon finding the house, he is able to sit with the occupant and talk for a while, but for the most part, they sit in silent sympathy with each other. In my opinion, Wolfe is revealing to us that this is not a contrived form of sympathy but a kind of universal, quiet empathy, an acknowledgement of each other's pain and a willingness to endure as best as possible.

Indeed, one could interpret this story as a broader allegory for life, but I leave the meaning open to others. It is the technique that I find truly astonishing here, with Wolfe compelling the character to unearth the clues to that life. It is not so much about piecing together the past as it is about weighing its significance in our own lives. In the end, I suggest that it takes a greater person to be able to live with the weight of their sins rather than succumbing to them because they are too heavy a burden. Whether this makes Thomas Wolfe a better writer than others, he has undeniably crafted some exceptional short stories in this collection.

It took me years to get through this book.

Frankly speaking, a little bit of Thomas Wolfe can have a profound impact.

However, I really enjoyed it and kept persevering.

I would read a story here and a story there, in between my other readings.

Finally, I managed to finish it.

This book is truly well worth the read.

It offers a unique and engaging experience that makes it a valuable addition to any bookshelf.

The writing style of Thomas Wolfe is captivating, and the stories he tells are both thought-provoking and entertaining.

Although it may have taken me a long time to complete, the journey was well worth it.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good literature and is willing to invest the time and effort to fully appreciate it.

The title here is something of a misnomer.

This collection of masterpieces and misfires (the former outweighs the latter) would be better styled THE THOMAS WOLFE READER.

For much of the sketches and essays-cum-stories were culled from THE OCTOBER FAIR, that mighty and massive book which was later carved out into three posthumous works.

Postwar critics, such as humorless husks like Stanley Edgar Hyman, James Wood, and Harold Bloom, have been too quick to write off Wolfe's clear poetic talent on the page.

Yes, it is true that Wolfe needed to be managed by editors.

Yes, it is true that Wolfe wrote too much for his own good.

But he was not merely some hopped up literary man with a word-streaming firehose, as these works demonstrate.

If "Death the Proud Mother" represents Wolfe at his most prolix (although, even here, there are great moments of beauty), then "The Dark Messiah" represents one of the best short stories ever written about the allure of fascism.

"The Return of the Prodigal" (taken from OCTOBER) reveals the direction he was heading in with the Gant chronicles: a leaner and less modifier-heavy voice that was tragically cut short at the age of thirty-seven.

I also feel obliged to stump for "The Bums of Sunset," in which Wolfe follows a number of downtrodden types, and "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn," an impressionistic tale on what was then considered a lowlife borough.

While Wolfe's "fiction" works better in third person than first person, the sheer range and breadth he had as a writer has been well represented by Francis E. Skipp.

Thomas Wolfe was a genius and deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

He captured life like no other writer in the 20th century.

The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe

In my view, Thomas Wolfe's short stories haven't endured as well as one might have hoped. With a few exceptions, they don't quite measure up to the caliber of, say, Hemingway's short stories. This is somewhat disappointing considering that "Look Homeward Angel" by Thomas Wolfe is still regarded as one of the greatest American novels of all time.

That being said, there are three short stories that stand out above the rest.

1. "An Angel on the Porch" - This is a semi-autobiographical tale about a woman who desires to buy an extremely expensive headstone.

2. "Chickamagua" - Here, an elderly Confederate veteran recalls the famous Civil War battle, which was the second bloodiest after Gettysburg.

3. "The Plumed Knight" - In this story, a man, driven partly by jealousy and disdain, attempts to correct his brother. The brother is a delusional Confederate veteran who, as each year passes, seems to transform into the very embodiment of a hero from "The Lost Cause," despite his cowardice and incompetence in battle.

Short stories that are wonderful and have a very distinctive style in narration.

It relies on emphasizing and repeating events as if it is talking to one of its friends.

And all the stories are real and you feel that it is telling about the same person.

But in different stages of life.

This is the first time I have read this author, but I was very impressed!

"The Lost Boy" and "Circus At Dawn" are truly remarkable works that possess a unique and captivating beauty. The titles alone evoke a sense of mystery and wonder, piquing the reader's curiosity. "The Lost Boy" might suggest a tale of a child adrift in a strange world, seeking his way home. The concept of a lost boy is both poignant and enchanting, drawing the reader in and making them eager to discover his fate.

Similarly, "Circus At Dawn" conjures up images of a magical and colorful place, emerging from the darkness of night. The idea of a circus at dawn adds an element of rarity and excitement, as if this is a moment that only occurs once in a blue moon. The combination of the circus and the dawn creates a vivid and unforgettable scene in the reader's mind.

Both of these works have the power to transport the reader to another world, filled with beauty, mystery, and adventure. Whether it's following the journey of the lost boy or experiencing the magic of the circus at dawn, these stories are sure to leave a lasting impression.

Segunda lectura (2024)

In this round, I have read (or re-read) the following six stories:

“An Angel on the Porch” (Scribner’s Magazine, August 1929)

“Death the Proud Brother” (Scribner’s Magazine, June 1933)

“Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” (The New Yorker, June 1935 and From Death to Morning, 1935)

“The Child by Tiger” (The Saturday Evening Post, September 1937)

“Chickamauga” (Yale Review, Winter 1938 and posth. The Hills Beyond, 1941)

“A Prologue to America” (Vogue, February 1938).

Primera lectura

Four short stories by Thomas Wolfe: 1. “The Lost Boy”; 2. “An Angel on the Porch”; 3. “No Door”; and 4. “The House of the Far and the Lost”.

Read in English in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, critical edition by Francis Skipp, Scribner 1987

Some available in Spanish in editorial Periférica; all in the volume Cuentos, Páginas de Espuma, 2020. The short story “An Angel on the Porch” can be read in Spanish, although somewhat adapted, in chapter 19 of La mirada del ángel, Trotalibros, 2022.

Author: Thomas Wolfe (1900 - 1938)

Overall rating: 5/5

Translations by Periférica: 4/5

Translation by Trotalibros: 3/5

Translation by Páginas de Espuma: 2/5

These four stories, ranging from the short story to the novella, are actually episodes of a single narrative, that of Thomas Wolfe in his Whitmanian attempt to tell us about America through the sagas of the Gant and Pentland families. They also demonstrate that when Wolfe cultivated the novella, he was perfectly capable of keeping his narrative under control, making it revolve around a focal point and unifying it through a series of recurrent leitmotifs.

The reading of these four stories in the order I propose follows a temporal progression in the narrative action. The recurrent themes, in my opinion, are two: time and the inability to express what one wants to say due to the lack of the precise word or to reach the desired place because one cannot open that last door. Wolfe's often cultish and slightly archaic English has the virtue of caressing the ears of the reader. It is a lyrical prose, sometimes poetry in continuous lines. It requires the reader to constantly consult the dictionary. All of this is largely lost in translation.

I. “The Lost Boy”

I have heard that this is a text that was discarded during the editing of Look Homeward, Angel in 1929, but that is not correct. In fact, it is not in the original version of that novel (published in the year 2000) which was titled O Lost.

This is an episode about the short life and death of Grove Gant, the fictional brother of Eugene Gant, the alter ego of Wolfe, when he was almost a baby. Wolfe plays here with his three ideas of time: there is a time that is proper to each of us: the present time; another that is controlled by those who knew us as children: it is the time of the past; and finally there is the time of things, which is eternal and ungraspable, in which we are small figures.

It can be read in Spanish in: Periférica 2016

II. “An Angel on the Porch”

This is the first text published by Wolfe. It was in Scribner's Magazine in August 1929, a few months before the publication of his first novel Look Homeward, Angel in the fall of that year. It is a short story that was later incorporated, somewhat modified, in chapter 19 of that novel. I found it moving.

It can be read in Spanish, although somewhat modified, in chapter 19 of La mirada del ángel, Trotalibros, 2022 or in the volume Cuentos, by Páginas de Espuma, although the translation in the latter case is not very good.

III. “No Door”

One of the most important novellas by Wolfe, completed in January 1933. The passage that describes the month of October in the second part of the novella is pure poetry. Contrary to what is believed, all these short stories and novellas published between 1930 and 1934 are not the leftovers from the editorial pruning of Wolfe's long novels, but on the contrary, fully worked narrative units that were later incorporated into his second novel Of Time and the River.

It can be read in Spanish in: Periférica 2012

IV. “The House of the Far and the Lost”

Initially, it was a segment of the third part of “No Door” that Scribner decided to publish separately in 1934. It is a story about exclusion that shows Wolfe in all his fullness as an excellent narrator. Unfortunately, Periférica did not include it in its edition of “No Door”.

It can be read in: Cuentos, Páginas de Espuma, 2020.

First review (right after finishing the reading)

Of the fifty-eight stories that make up the canon of Wolfe and are collected in this critical edition, I have read four that a good part of the criticism considers the most important:

- “No Door” (in Spanish “Una puerta que nunca encontré”, Periférica): a wonderful story, an example of lyrical prose.

- “The House of the Far and Lost”: originally an episode of “No Door”

- “The Lost Boy” (in Spanish “El niño perdido”, published by Periférica). According to Faulkner, it should be read before the others as it is their prequel.

- “Boom Town” (in Spanish “Especulación”, Periférica): this is the second time I have read it; the first time was in 2015 in Spanish. This re-reading in English with the context of the reading of the other stories has revealed to me aspects that I had missed (the use of language, the repetition of frequent motifs in Wolfe), but the general impression is still that of a compact and powerful story, a metaphor about collective hysteria in search of wealth.

In addition, I have read the first story, only six and a half pages long, that opens the Scribner volume and that not only seemed to me a small masterpiece of the short story, but also representative of Wolfe's best style:

- “An Angel on the Porch” (Scribner’s Magazine, August 1929).

I'm vividly reminded of Emitt Rhodes, that remarkable pop singer-songwriter. He was truly a gem, yet he never quite received the recognition that was rightfully his. The reason being that his style was so uncannily similar to McCartney's, which unfortunately led to him being overshadowed.

Wolfe, on the other hand, is a different story. His brilliance is palpable from the very start. At its peak, his prose is not only lyrical and evocative but also tightly-wound and precise. One can sense both his supreme natural talent and the fine craftsmanship that goes into his work. However, I feel that his biggest misfortune was being born too close in time to the titanic and more talented Faulkner. They shared so many similarities in technique, style, and subject matter, which perhaps made it difficult for Wolfe to fully shine on his own.

Nevertheless, both Rhodes and Wolfe have left their marks in their respective fields, and their works continue to be appreciated by those who are willing to look beyond the surface and discover their unique qualities.

First off, Wolfe is extremely racist, particularly in the early stories. There are rather crude descriptions of minorities. But beyond that, stories such as "The Child by Tiger" convey the message that no minority can be trusted and that they are all dangerous. This is truly deplorable.

However, the good aspect that I took away from the author's works is his vivid description of everyday life. I understand why he is compared to Walt Whitman. He manages to capture and appreciate the common beauty that surrounds us, the beauty of human activity. I really enjoyed the fact that he mentioned Cobb, Gehrig, and Einstein.

Overall, it's not something that I would highly recommend. But still, it felt just worth my time as the sum of the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Among his works, "The Sun and the Rain" and "Oktoberfest" were my favorites. They had a certain charm and appeal that made them stand out.

Despite the flaws in his writing, there were also some redeeming qualities that made the reading experience somewhat worthwhile.

Thomas Wolfe is truly a remarkable gem.

He presents an unfathomable universe filled with a plethora of experiences, a rich tapestry of feelings and thoughts that range from the most delicate nuances to the profound depths of melancholy.

His works are also imbued with a vibrant energy and countless sparks of pure life that seem to leap off the page.

When I read his writings, he constantly reminds me of Marcel Proust.

This is not only due to the similarities in their writing styles, which both possess a certain elegance and sophistication.

But also because of their shared trait of overflowing sincerity and their profound love for life and the people within it.

Reading Thomas Wolfe is an incredible experience that I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.

It is like embarking on a journey through a world that is both familiar and yet full of unexpected surprises, a world that will touch your heart and expand your mind.