“I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. . .. I think that the true discovery of America is before us. I think the true fulfillment of our spirit, of our people, of our mighty and immortal land, is yet to come. I think the true discovery of our democracy is still before us. And I think that all these things are certain as the morning, as inevitable as noon. I think I speak for most men living when I say that our America is Here, is Now, and beckons on before us, and this glorious assurance is not only our living hope, but our dream to be accomplished.”—Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again (1940)
Last week, nearly 35 years after I read Thomas Wolfe’s last, posthumous novel, I finally had a chance to visit the house in which he grew up, Old Kentucky Home, in his hometown of Asheville, N.C. I’ll have more to say about that in a future “Travel Journal” entry on this blog, but a comment from a guide at the house--about why the author has declined in critical favor over the years--made me want to revisit my old opinion of this book that made such an impression on me in my teens.
It is true, of course, that Wolfe could be wildly verbose--a tendency not only at variance with later generations that have looked to Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver for models of concision and even minimalism, but also with shorter attention spans bred by TV and video games.
And yet, the allure of Wolfe--including in this novel that, as I have remarked previously, was probably stitched together far more than the norm by his last editor, Edward Aswell--endures.
It’s not just the extraordinarily vivid word portraits of alcoholic literary lion “Lloyd McHarg” (modeled on Sinclair Lewis) or editor Foxhall Edwards (Maxwell Perkins) but also the lyrically Whitmanesque passages about America, such as the one above.
These passages, let it be said, are not empty exercises in flagwaving, but hard-won assessments of a country still mired in desperate straits because of the Depression. (Indeed, reading the passages about how Wolfe’s hometown had succumbed to real-estate fever in the 1920s brings an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu.)
Last week, nearly 35 years after I read Thomas Wolfe’s last, posthumous novel, I finally had a chance to visit the house in which he grew up, Old Kentucky Home, in his hometown of Asheville, N.C. I’ll have more to say about that in a future “Travel Journal” entry on this blog, but a comment from a guide at the house--about why the author has declined in critical favor over the years--made me want to revisit my old opinion of this book that made such an impression on me in my teens.
It is true, of course, that Wolfe could be wildly verbose--a tendency not only at variance with later generations that have looked to Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver for models of concision and even minimalism, but also with shorter attention spans bred by TV and video games.
And yet, the allure of Wolfe--including in this novel that, as I have remarked previously, was probably stitched together far more than the norm by his last editor, Edward Aswell--endures.
It’s not just the extraordinarily vivid word portraits of alcoholic literary lion “Lloyd McHarg” (modeled on Sinclair Lewis) or editor Foxhall Edwards (Maxwell Perkins) but also the lyrically Whitmanesque passages about America, such as the one above.
These passages, let it be said, are not empty exercises in flagwaving, but hard-won assessments of a country still mired in desperate straits because of the Depression. (Indeed, reading the passages about how Wolfe’s hometown had succumbed to real-estate fever in the 1920s brings an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu.)
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