This is excellent, and moving. Any further commentary will fall woefully short of this piece. It made me, to invoke a cliché but fuck it, feel a lot less alone.
What a beautiful reminder of Wolfe, another of our forgotten greats. One little literary anecdote that I count among my favorites is how badly Wolfe got on with F. Scott Fitzgerald and how personally Wolfe took this. I seem to remember a letter from Wolfe to Fitzgerald (maybe sent through Perkins) where Wolfe claimed that Scott spent too much time taking things out of his writing with Wolfe believing that he, like Shakespeare, were masters at leaving things in and that the reader was better off for it.
I always forget that my FIRST favorite writer was Thomas Wolfe. For some reason, I was totally captivated by "the stone, the leaf, the unopened door." I discovered him in high school and wrote a paper about him; it was my first experience of reading about and investigating a famous person from the past who I could totally relate to. Good Stuff. Thanks for writing this.
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull..."
If spare prose is the modernist ideal and one aims to overthrow the current literary regime, then perhaps overwrought is the way to go. Don't kill the cringe, kill the part of you that cringes.
I was lucky to have been long, close friends with the greatest Thomas Wolfe collector who ever lived. His amassment of papers, books & materials weighed over two tons and was hauled down to a North Carolina university library by truck. He was nearly 100 when he died, a WWII vet from another time, who lived with his sisters in a rickety old century home and smoked a half-cigarette a day. And he was one of the few people I ever knew who understood and felt the uncanny power, rush, and magic of Wolfe—the stone, the leaf, the unfound door; the wind-grieved ghost and all the forgotten places. It's the true prose voice of America, I have always known that and I believe that still, and in a coarsely braided line—after which in time came Kerouac and then the deluge, and eventually here we are. But Wolfe, he will always be one of the greatest gifts. Here, have an old haiku:
Thank you for this essay - on literary but also personal terms (which Wolfe definitely made it his mission to conflate in his work). It’s gorgeous but not as swooning as Wolfe’s prose.
I don’t think I can reread “Look Homeward, Angel” - maybe to preserve that crystalline first time but maybe also because it kept making me think of Joyce in a way that’d make me more unforgiving a second time. I read it as worthy Southern modernism for Asheville, but maybe I couldn’t again?
As to NC tributes to Wolfe: the RDU sample only matches the other sad ones by the baggage claim, honestly. The greened bronze angel’s wing on UNC’s campus is halfhearted but maybe more suitable to his work. Will it always suit a young impassioned setting like that, given that he died young as he did?
Wow. That was really good. I started Look Homeward, Angel several years ago and I stalled out about 40% of the way through. I just got up and checked them, yes, my bookmark is still in there. And I opened it and read a couple of pages, and now I’m thinking I need to start it again. So thank you for that.
Wow. That was really good. I started Look Homeward, Angel several years ago and I stalled out about 40% of the way through. I just got up and checked and, yes, my bookmark is still in there. And I opened it and read a couple of pages, and now I’m thinking I need to start it again. So thank you for that.
As a native New Yorker, I read both You Can’t Go Home Again and Look Homeward, Angel in my late 20's. Like Smith, I consider them sacred reading experiences in my life. They led me to Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who Perkins also edited, and then to Kerouac's early work. Who knows if I'd consider Wolff's prose overwrought now. Doesn't matter. He's still one of the greats. He captured youthful exuberance, and it inspired many. So, very glad for Smith's piece.
Perhaps we readers could have been spared the snide references to other masters ("That’s Thomas Wolfe... not Tom Wolfe, later-century dandy of The Hamptons." or "Like Thoreau and his mom’s house nearby."), but I suppose Smith has to give the discerning reader something to disagree with, too.
The best I can say about this is that I'm going to read Wolfe in the next year. I think I'd like it.
It might be relevant but last night I was reading one Flannery O'Connor's letters where she complains about having to attend a conference of Southern writers. By the early 60s she felt it had become played out and interfered with an honest appraisal of the South as it was.
I also read Look Homeward, Angel as a young man. I had (and still have) family in Asheville. They did not appreciate my enthusiasm for the book. If the book must be renamed, I say borrow from the other Wolfe and call it: "A Town in Full."
This is excellent, and moving. Any further commentary will fall woefully short of this piece. It made me, to invoke a cliché but fuck it, feel a lot less alone.
What a beautiful reminder of Wolfe, another of our forgotten greats. One little literary anecdote that I count among my favorites is how badly Wolfe got on with F. Scott Fitzgerald and how personally Wolfe took this. I seem to remember a letter from Wolfe to Fitzgerald (maybe sent through Perkins) where Wolfe claimed that Scott spent too much time taking things out of his writing with Wolfe believing that he, like Shakespeare, were masters at leaving things in and that the reader was better off for it.
I always forget that my FIRST favorite writer was Thomas Wolfe. For some reason, I was totally captivated by "the stone, the leaf, the unopened door." I discovered him in high school and wrote a paper about him; it was my first experience of reading about and investigating a famous person from the past who I could totally relate to. Good Stuff. Thanks for writing this.
This is a wonderfully written and informative piece.
really enjoyed this
I don't know, I kind of hear it in this:
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull..."
If spare prose is the modernist ideal and one aims to overthrow the current literary regime, then perhaps overwrought is the way to go. Don't kill the cringe, kill the part of you that cringes.
What a fantastic piece! Inspired me to read Thomas Wolfe forthwith! Thank you!
I was lucky to have been long, close friends with the greatest Thomas Wolfe collector who ever lived. His amassment of papers, books & materials weighed over two tons and was hauled down to a North Carolina university library by truck. He was nearly 100 when he died, a WWII vet from another time, who lived with his sisters in a rickety old century home and smoked a half-cigarette a day. And he was one of the few people I ever knew who understood and felt the uncanny power, rush, and magic of Wolfe—the stone, the leaf, the unfound door; the wind-grieved ghost and all the forgotten places. It's the true prose voice of America, I have always known that and I believe that still, and in a coarsely braided line—after which in time came Kerouac and then the deluge, and eventually here we are. But Wolfe, he will always be one of the greatest gifts. Here, have an old haiku:
Can't sleep—on my knees
in the American night,
the Thomas Wolfe darkness
Thank you for this essay - on literary but also personal terms (which Wolfe definitely made it his mission to conflate in his work). It’s gorgeous but not as swooning as Wolfe’s prose.
I don’t think I can reread “Look Homeward, Angel” - maybe to preserve that crystalline first time but maybe also because it kept making me think of Joyce in a way that’d make me more unforgiving a second time. I read it as worthy Southern modernism for Asheville, but maybe I couldn’t again?
As to NC tributes to Wolfe: the RDU sample only matches the other sad ones by the baggage claim, honestly. The greened bronze angel’s wing on UNC’s campus is halfhearted but maybe more suitable to his work. Will it always suit a young impassioned setting like that, given that he died young as he did?
Thank you for the note, Kevin! I had no idea about the UNC statue, thank you for making me aware of it.
Wow. That was really good. I started Look Homeward, Angel several years ago and I stalled out about 40% of the way through. I just got up and checked them, yes, my bookmark is still in there. And I opened it and read a couple of pages, and now I’m thinking I need to start it again. So thank you for that.
Wow. That was really good. I started Look Homeward, Angel several years ago and I stalled out about 40% of the way through. I just got up and checked and, yes, my bookmark is still in there. And I opened it and read a couple of pages, and now I’m thinking I need to start it again. So thank you for that.
🙏🏼
As a native New Yorker, I read both You Can’t Go Home Again and Look Homeward, Angel in my late 20's. Like Smith, I consider them sacred reading experiences in my life. They led me to Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who Perkins also edited, and then to Kerouac's early work. Who knows if I'd consider Wolff's prose overwrought now. Doesn't matter. He's still one of the greats. He captured youthful exuberance, and it inspired many. So, very glad for Smith's piece.
Perhaps we readers could have been spared the snide references to other masters ("That’s Thomas Wolfe... not Tom Wolfe, later-century dandy of The Hamptons." or "Like Thoreau and his mom’s house nearby."), but I suppose Smith has to give the discerning reader something to disagree with, too.
Wolfe, not Wolff. (Although Tobias and Geoffrey are great writers too!) 🙂
The best I can say about this is that I'm going to read Wolfe in the next year. I think I'd like it.
It might be relevant but last night I was reading one Flannery O'Connor's letters where she complains about having to attend a conference of Southern writers. By the early 60s she felt it had become played out and interfered with an honest appraisal of the South as it was.
Great essay and thanks for introducing me to the writing of Aaron Lake Smith!
I also read Look Homeward, Angel as a young man. I had (and still have) family in Asheville. They did not appreciate my enthusiasm for the book. If the book must be renamed, I say borrow from the other Wolfe and call it: "A Town in Full."
nice piece.