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Look Homeward, Angel
Look Homeward, Angel
Look Homeward, Angel
Audiobook26 hours

Look Homeward, Angel

Written by Thomas Wolfe

Narrated by Scott Sowers

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

The works of Thomas Wolfe cemented his legacy as one of the very best of the American Southern writers. Wolfe's largely autobiographical novel features Eugene Gant, who pines for a more expansive life after being born to a father whose bouts of maniacal raving are fueled by a prodigious appetite for drink. "... rich and ambitious and intensely American."-Charles Frazier
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 31, 2008
ISBN9781436183703
Author

Thomas Wolfe

One of the most important American writers of his generation, Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) was born in Asheville, North Carolina. His other novels include Of Time and the River and Look Homeward, Angel.

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Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The writing of Thomas Wolfe places him high in the pantheon.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I would rate this book a 5 for lyrical and magical prose, but 3 for storytelling. In the end I'll just average it at a 4. It was a slog, but somehow I feel enriched for the reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Six-word review: We are made of lost things.Extended review:It's easy to see why this opus won passionate admiration and a place among the most influential novels of the early twentieth century. It's also easy to see why admiring imitators would have done better to choose some other sort of sincere flattery. Like any other distinctive stylist--Van Gogh comes to mind--only Wolfe is Wolfe, and it's best that others not try to be him.I feel remiss in having failed to read this novel for more than half a century beyond the time when it was first recommended to me. If I had come to it sooner, I might have recognized traces of its unique character in other readings that I can only now reflect on in retrospect. I might also have had enough time by now to come to a full recognition of what the author did in these many pages.On the one hand, there are beautiful, moving, lyrical passages, such as his paean to the lost young love (page 372), and insights of notable psychological reach: "Unknowingly, he had begun to build up in himself a vast mythology for which he cared all the more deeply because he realized its untruth. Brokenly, obscurely, he was beginning to feel that it was not truth that men live for--the creative men--but for falsehood." (page 183)And, as if to counterbalance numerous prolix outflowings of overwrought prose, there is on occasion marvelous economy of phrase: "elegant young ensigns out of college, with something blonde and fluffy at their sides" (page 418). And: "As that spring ripened he felt entirely, for the first time, the full delight of loneliness." Some of those, however, are cloyingly sugar-coated, as with all the instances of "lilac darkness" and the abundance of pearl and nacreous light.On the other hand, there are numerous instances of questionable use of showoff words such as "phthisic" and "inchoate" (nine of the latter, including the absurd "a wild inchoate scream," page 227). When Wolfe springs words such as "gabular" and "ptotic" and "adyts" into the text, I seldom feel, as I do, for instance, with Oscar Wilde, that they belong to his peculiarly erudite vocabulary and flow naturally from his thought; but rather that he has gone to some little trouble to acquire them and that they are there more to impress than to honor precision.Also noted: frequent suffocating passages swamped in bobbing, floating adverbs: these, for instance, gathered from two almost randomly chosen facing pages (135 and 136): stiffly, desperately, richly, moistly, sparsely, slightly, fiercely, beautifully, brightly, leafily, softly, musically, lazily, swinishly, cleanly, cynically (twice), belligerently, silently, contemptuously, toughly, thinly, pugnaciously, quietly. Nonetheless, the novel drew me on; I didn't choose to abandon it. I found depths and revelations in this protracted coming-of-age tale, with its permeating theme of loss, that rewarded my attention. I also noticed that it made me write a little oddly for a while afterward, in much the same way that I start to talk a little funny after I've been bingeing on BBC costume dramas. My note immediately upon finishing it says this: "Style is at once lyrical and juvenile, erudite and ostentatious. Characters never seem to be, but constantly becoming. Does not draw conclusions or look for a simple answer anywhere. At times seems breathless and at times breathes wordlessly."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I know that this is a classic, but it just didn't do it for me. There were spots of brilliance, but there were pages of rambling that I just couldn't stay focused on. It is summer and I was on a time schedule because it was for book club so maybe that affected my focus.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just the best. I still think USA is the great American novel, but this comes damned close. Gorgeous haunting writing you can submerge yourself in.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A long masterpiece which I am glad I have now read be cannot enthusiastically recommend to others. Thomas Wolfe is clearly a master at narration and description and likely a great writer overall, but this autobiographical novel meanders through his life (including an egoistical recounting of his birth - so inflated I laughed), describing and developing fabulous characters, and you start to understand why this book generated some criticism in Wolfe's hometown. Overall, Thomas Wolfe was a masterly writer, making this book easier to read than I anticipated, but I still can't jump on the bandwagon to praise him without pause.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thomas Wolfe schildert in seinem autobiographischen Roman die Geschichte der Familie Gant. Der Vater ist ein zügelloser, aber auch charmanter Steinmetz und Alkoholiker, die Mutter ist eine kluge Frau mit stark kapitalistischen Neigungen. Zusammengepasst haben die beiden nicht, aber dann irgendwie auch schon, wie ihre all die Jahre dauernde gegenseitige Abhängigkeit zeigt. Im Nachwort werden sie als die zwei Extreme des amerikanischen Nationalcharakters verstanden, alter Pioniergeist versus modernem Kapitalismus.Porträtiert werden zudem die Geschwister, Steve, Daisy, Helen, Ben, Luke, die trotz verschiedener guter Anlagen dem elterlichen Lebensentwurf nur bedingt entkommen können. So liegt es an Eugene, dem Alter Ego des Autors, diesen Kreis zu durchbrechen, er geht zur Schule, später zur Universität, ist enorm gebildet und doch ein Kleinstadtjunge und Kind dieser Familie.Trotz der Stringenz, die Eugenes Lebensgeschichte der Handlung eigentlich aufzwingt, ist das Buch nicht wirklich geradlinig, sondern assoziativ, voll literarischer und politischer Anspielungen (die von der Herausgeberin in Endnoten bis ins Kleinste erklärt werden), überbordend und prall. Ich habe gerade erst "Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit" von Proust gelesen, daran könnte man denken: Zeit nicht als lineare Abfolge immer gleichlanger Minuten und Stunden, sondern als sich verdichtendes und sich erweiterndes mäanderndes Konstrukt. Manche Szenen sind minutiös ausgebreitet und dadurch sehr interessant und dominant (Eugenes Liebe zu Laura, die Sterbeszene am Ende).Völlig ungeschminkt verarbeitet der Autor auch die politischen Ressentiments der Zeit und des amerikanischen Südens, hier wertet er nicht und seine alltagsrassistischen Bemerkungen stoßen mir mitunter sauer auf. Allerdings gibt es eine Stelle, als er noch in der Schule ist, an der er sehr deutlich reflektiert, dass das Mobbing, das hier einem jüdischen Mitschüler galt, genausogut ihm hätte gelten können und wie sehr er sich schämt, dabei mitgemacht zu haben, wahrscheinlich v.a. um nicht selbst zum Opfer zu werden.Interessant ist das Buch auch als Zeitporträit. Geschildert wird z.B, die Zeit der Prohibition, in der der Vater, trotz eigener Alkoholsucht, seine Stimme für das Alkoholverbot gibt oder die Zeit des ersten Weltkriegs. Es ist einfach immer was los in dieser Familie: Helen zieht vor ihrer Heirat als Sängerin durchs Land, die Mutter eröffnet eine Pension, solche und weitere Anekdoten bilden das Gerüst dieses überbordenden Buches.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Alone. This is a difficult concept to consider when thinking about the greatness both in size and content of Thomas Wolfe's first novel, Look Homeward Angel. The inclusion of so much of the world and so many other voices almost drowns out the voice of Eugene Gant, the narrator of this immense and impressive novel. But perhaps we should begin a consideration of this novel with the question of destiny. This is what we read in the first paragraph:"A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world."Is this destiny that of Eugene as well? And is it mere chance or will Eugene have a will to make his way in this world? This shows the direction of the story and, as it expands to take in the Gant family of Father, Mother, and siblings in Altamont, I was impressed with the translation of a country's manifest destiny into a town's and into a family's and beyond that the personal story and destiny of one Eugene Gant.This translation of destiny is a story of coming of age told in what we today might call a "mash-up" of styles that leave the reader looking for structure among the historical commentaries, classical allusions, family rows, and soaring beauty of many more lyrical passages. The last of these alone made the book worth reading. Yes, it is worth persevering the Whitmanesque size of the narrative for some further passages of the beauty in the world that destiny had bequeathed to young Eugene Gant. While he is young and pursuing an education that seems unconventional, in spite of his attendance at the traditional schools, he is living a life of isolation from most of the world around him. There are exceptions, his relationship with his brother Ben is particularly poignant; yet there is a yearning for escape, from family and from Altamont to a world where Eugene may not feel quite so alone. His estrangement from his own family is both exacerbated and caused by unlikable qualities from his father's boorish drunkenness to Steve's abusive behavior to his mother Eliza's self-centeredness. She is focused on a miserliness that builds a material fortune but does nothing for Eugene. With all his struggles Eugene remains detached from family and home; he seeks some solace with another family, the Leonards, and finds an "angel" in Margaret Leonard. But the stone angels outside his home remain a symbol that has warmth only in an ironical sense.Wolfe writes near the end of the book that Eugene "stood for the last time by the angels of his father's porch . . . like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he has left, yet does not say 'The town is near,' but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges" (p 508). This is where his true destiny lies. This, perhaps, is a place where he will no longer feel the pangs of isolation or, perhaps, it is merely a dream of a destiny denied as yet. For this reader it is not unlike the statement of another young man, Stephen Dedalus, who at the end of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man says, "I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am not sure why I waited so long to pick up Thomas Wolfe. I had seen it on various lists to read, its importance. And so I got to experience something I had not encountered much before. I don't think I have come across someone who could pack as much thought and feeling into a sentence as this man.The criticisms I have come across about Wolfe's work is that is mostly autobiographical. Maybe so, but it is quite a story in that. The book really to me was about life and death in all its gore and glory. The Gant family, the living portrait of every dysfunctional family past and present. Often reading like poetry it captivated me pretty much from start to finish. I would recommend it to everyone to complete their education on great American literature.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Started reading this book on June 2, 1948, on which date I said: "It is smashy and heavy." On June 3 I said: "Look Homeward, Angelis realistic, but more than realistic in its orgy of introspection, its detailed youngness." On June 5 I said: "look Homeward is spotty--great in spots, although at times not good. The boy, Eugene, was surely quit a guy." When I finished the book I copied some of the stirring language therefrom since I didnot own the bookI read.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Why did I read this book? Well, I read “You Can’t Go Home Again” when I was about sixteen, and was impressed by Wolfe’s lavish prose. So I decided to read this, and almost instantly regretted it. But I slogged through the whole thing.

    The hardest thing was the level of racism and sexism. It’s totally understandable for a book written by a Southern white man in the 20s. In this autobiographical novel, he was describing the environment he lived in, and the way he thought about it. But it just really grates on modern sensibilities.

    And yes, sometimes his writing is gorgeous, rich, and amazing. But most of the time it just feels way, way overwritten. His adjective-heavy sentences can feel over-stuffed. So I’m not recommending that anybody else read this, even though there are about a dozen pages that are transcendent. It just wasn’t enough for me. Maybe books like this aren’t supposed to be read out of their time.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Contradictory word vomit.
    Whole passages with no point or relevance.
    Don't know what he's talking about when he goes on a tangent from the story. He assumes the reader can follow his train of thought.
    "This must be good writing, because it seems so very dull." I assume this is Wolfe's take on why he thought he wrote a classic?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It was a major struggle to get through the incredibly dense writing, but worth it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Rating: 2.5* of fiveThe Book Report: Oliver Cole's a drunk, Eliza Cole's a shrew, they have six kids and she doesn't like him, or childbirth, or poverty, or much of anything else that I can see. Oliver likes his youngest, Eugene, better than any of them (so do I, but that's not sayin' a lot), and spends what tiny about of love Eliza hasn't nagged and bitched and niggled and criticized and belittled out of him on the kid.Eugene grows up in a boardinghouse called Dixieland in Asheville, North Carolina. OOOPSIE! I mean Altamont, Catawba. Wolfe didn't want anyone to know he was writing autobiography, see, so he invented a city and a state! Wow! And then he wrote about the people around him honestly, forthrightly, and in a stream-of-Faulkner style that was then très chic and is even now described as modernistic. EIGHTY PLUS YEARS LATER IT'S NOT EXPERIMENTAL OR MODERN ANYMORE, BOYS AND GIRLS, IT'S PART OF THE TOOLKIT.Ahem. Sorry.So Eugene grows up, and we do too, and then leaves home, and we do too, and then everything comes to a screeching halt. Thank GAWD for small mercies.My Review: I am no fan of the coming-of-age novel, and I don't often read them. I read this one when I was fifteen, because I wanted to impress a hot boy I was trying to get into my bed, and he thought this was the coolest book ever. I read it every damn day in study hall so he'd notice me, which he did, and we ended up talking about the book for hours.And that was ALL I got. Yip-yap-yop about Eugene's life and his deepness and ohdeargawdpleasekillmenow stuff about the damn BOOK!!I don't think I've ever forgiven the book for not getting me laid.But upon mature reflection, I still dislike the book, for better (more adult, anyway) reasons. One is that even editing legend Max Perkins couldn't give Wolfe a deft enough hand to tell this story in so demanding a style as stream-of-consciousness without it spilling over into self-indulgence and sloppy, untidy, unnecessary sentimentality.Another is Eugene/Tom's misogyny. I yield to no one in my distaste for the Cult of Female Superiority, whether motivated by “chivalry” or by feminism. Women ain't better than men, but likewise they ain't worse either. Wolfe's woman, mama Eliza, is a horrible gorgon of a vicious emasculating harridan. She has depths to her nastiness and pretension that are entirely credible. What she lacks is the balancing of REASONS for these things. In the first two zillion words, which detail the lives of Eliza and Oliver, Eliza emerges fully formed as a castrating slime. She was born this way? I doubt me much this is true.Lastly comes Wolfe's conceit. In this Bildungs-barely-roman, he relives the first years of his life...an ordinary, unremarkable one...seemingly in real time. Why? What for? Here is the nub of my objection to coming-of-age stories: We've all come of age, so what makes your story special? In Wolfe's case, I do not see the special. It is entirely possible that I am resistant to his specialness because the story is so boring to me. But I quite simply can not fathom what makes this dreary, low-class, hag-ridden tribe of ciphers anything I should care enough about to do more than put a coin in the charity box to help feed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a nearly impossible book to review. It is at once a classic, an experimental masterpiece, a resounding mess, and a beautiful failure. When I talk about which books inspired me to become a writer I often cite LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN by James Agee. LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL would, I suspect, have had the same sort of effect on me had I read it when I was a teenager, which is the age at which I read FAMOUS MEN. At such an age, and with the wild, passionate temperament of youth, I thrilled to the elevated (faintly purple) prose, the long passages of meandering, if somewhat superfluous beauty, the self-consciousness, the insistence by the author to include EVERYTHING. But re-reading FAMOUS MEN, and now reading ANGEL as a middle-aged woman I am impatient with the self-indulgence, which in Agee I put down to too much whiskey, but for which I have no such excuse in Wolfe. I find myself skipping passages, which is never a good sign. There is no denying Wolfe's stunning capacity for character depth. The question is, does the story require quite this much depth? If passages were trimmed, if details were pared down to only the very best, would anything have been lost? I suspect not. Faulkner and Kerouac both cited Wolfe as an influence, and I can see that -- the high poetics, the stream-of-consciousness, the young man's unbridled, undisciplined approach to art is obvious. And there is certainly a value in that. I just wish Wolfe had made more choices, instead of flinging everything at the page and then keeping everything. There's something to be said for Oscar Wilde, who "spent the morning putting in a comma, and spent the afternoon taking it out again."I would definitely recommend ANGEL to my fourteen-year-old self. It would have, I think, enhanced my writer's education, and I will recommend it to anyone under the age of 25 who either wants to be a writer or who loves literature. But for those of us who have lived a while, and who have less patience for pyrotechnics, ANGEL is a bit of a slog, albeit a mightily poetic one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Look Homeward Angel" is fictional, but believed semi-autobiographical story of Wolfe's life to the tiime he was a young adult. It's sweeping scope and like a lot of great art, ahead of its time. Have a look below at the quotes and see if you agree. Wolfe speaks from his southern roots and while I liked this book better than any I've read from Faulkner, beware there is overt racism sprinkled throughout which is very painful to read; I'll spare you the details.Quotes:On the arbitray nature of life:"Suddenly, he saw that his life had been channelled by a series of accidents: a mad Rebel singing of Armageddon, the sound of a bugle on the road, the mule-hoofs of the army, the silly white face of an angel in a dusty shop, a slut's pert wiggle of her hams as she passed by. He had reeled out of warmth and plenty into this barren land....""The enormous tragedy of accident hung like a gray cloud over his life. He saw more clearly than ever that he was a stranger in a strange land among people who would always be alien to him. Strangest of all, he thought, was this union, by which he had begotten children, created a life dependent on him, with a woman so remote from all he understood."On ego:"Eugene wanted the two things all men want: he wanted to be loved, and he wanted to be famous."On heroes:"Eugene looked with passionate devotions at the grand old head, calm, wise and comforting. In a moment of vision, he saw that, for him, here was the last of the heroes, the last of those giants to whom we give the faith of our youth, believing like children that the riddle of our lives might be solved by their quiet judgment."On life:"He believed in the infinite rich variety of all the towns and faces: behind any of a million shabby houses he believed there was strange buried life, subtle and shattered romance, something dark and unknown. At the moment of passing any house, he thought, some one therein might be at the gate of death, lovers might lie twisted in hot embrace, murder might be doing."On loneliness:"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.""He was closer to a feeling of brotherhood than he had ever been, and more alone."On lust:"But even more often, the shell of his morality broken to fragments by his desire, he would enact the bawdy fable of schoolboys, and picture himself in hot romance with a handsome teacher. In the fourth grade his teacher was a young, inexperienced, but well-built woman, with carrot-colored hair, and full of reckless laughter.""Before they came to the house, crossing a field, it would be necessary to go over a stile; he would go over first, helping her down, looking ardently at the graceful curve of her long, deliberately exposed, silk-clad leg.""Gant was incapable of resignation. He had the most burning of all lusts - the lust of memory, the ravenous hunger of the will which tries to waken what is dead.""On the third floor of the First National Bank building on the right hand corner, Fergus Paston, fifty-six, a thin lecherous mouth between iron-gray dundrearies, leaned his cocked leg upon his open window, and followed the movements of Miss Bernie Powers, twenty-two, crossing the street. Even in our ashes live their wonted fires."And finally this one; I love it because it was 'forbidden lust' between races, but also because the edition I have is original, and the previous owner had dog-eared this page presumable as a 'good part':"What yo' want?' She whispered, facing him.Far off, he listened to the ghost of his own voice.'Take off your clothes.'Her skirt fell in a ring about her feet. She took off her starched waist. In a moment, save for her hose, she stood naked before him.Her breath came quickly, her full tongue licked across her mouth.'Dance!' he cried. 'Dance!'She began to moan softly, while an undulant tremor flowed through her great yellow body; her hips and her round heavy breasts writhed slowly in a sensual rhythm.Her straight oiled hair fell across her neck in a thick shock. She exteneded her arms for balance, the lids closed over her large yellow eyeballs. She came near him. He felt her hot breath on his face, the smoldering flood of her breasts. He was whirled like a chip in the wild torrent of her passion...."On meaninglessness:"...she was sorry for all who had lived, were living, or would live, fanning with their prayers the useless altar flames, suppliant with their hopes to an unwitting spirit, casting the tiny rockets of their belief against remote eternity, and hoping for grace, guidance, and delivery upon the spinning and forgotten cinder of this earth. O lost.""A man must live, mustn't he?' said Coker with a grin.'That's what I'm asking you, Coker. Why must he?''Why,' said Coker, 'in order to work nine hours a day in a newspaper office, sleep nine hours, and enjoy the other six in washing, shaving, dressing, eating at the Greasy Spoon, loafing in front of Wood's, and occasionally taking the Merry Widow to see Francis X. Bushman. Isn't that reason enough for any man? If a man's hardworking and decent, and invests his money in the Building and Loan every week, instead of squandering it on cigarettes, coca-cola, and Kuppenheimer clothes, he may own a little home some day.' Coker's voice sank to a hush of reverence. 'He may even have his own car, Ben. Think of that!""He was washed in the great river of night, in the Ganges tides of redemption. His bitter wound was for the moment healed in him: he turned his face upward to the proud and tender stars, which made him a god and a grain of dust, the brother of eternal beauty and the son of death - alone, alone."On perservering:"To hell with them, 'Gene. To hell with them all. Don't let them worry you. Get all that you can. Don't give a damn for anything. Nothing gives a damn for you. To hell with it all! To hell with it! There are a lot of bad days. There are a lot of good ones. You'll forget. There are a lot of days. Let it go."On reading:"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."On transience:"My dear, dear girl,' he said gently as she tried to speak, 'we can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire - a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three-cents-worth of lime and iron - which we cannot get back.""...the conviction had grown on him that men do not escape from life because life is dull, but that life escapes from men because men are little. He felt that the passions of the play were greater than the actors. It seemed to him that he had never had a great moment of living in which he had measured up to its fulness."On war:"By Christmas, with fair luck, he might be eligible for service in khaki: by Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench-lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene, might be his. .... He longed for that subtle distinction, that air of having lived and suffered that could only be attained by a wooden leg, a rebuilt nose, or the seared scar of a bullet across his temple.""Where have they got you stationed now, Luke?' said Harry Tugman, peering up snoutily from a mug of coffee.'At the p-p-p-present time in Norfolk at the Navy Base,' Luke answered, 'm-m-making the world safe for hypocrisy."On talking to the younger generation, funny with variation, it's the same generation after generation:"When I was your age, I had milked four cows, done all the chores, and walked eight miles through the snow by this time."Indeed, when described his early schooling, he furnished a landscape that was constantly three feet deep in snow, and frozen hard. He seemed never to have attended school save under polar conditions."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've read this one twice, and you would think since I have done so, it must rank up there with the literary gods of Danielle Steele and Mary Higgins Clark (LOL). Seriously, I read it first in a southern lit course and then last year I read it again.Overall, Wolfe is a good writer (Faulkner even praise him); there's great description and the redundant "O Lost!" which gradually begins to impinge on one's nerves. I gather a great sense, Wolfe was attempting too much to establish himself as a great writer.There are of course a great deal of scholarly criticism which pretty much equates the main character, Eugene Gant (mind note: I hope I got that right)own coming of age, and Wolfe's own troublesome upbringing.Wolfe's own life was quiet interesting. Some of his novels actually contain the same passages from this work. I heard he wrote his books on the top of a refrigerator.There were times as I read this one I found myself struggling through it, but because I'm from the South, and lived in North Carolina during a portion of my life, I finished it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am usually in favor of more stark prose, but this ornate story captured my imagination. The actual plot dragged quite a bit...the protaganist, Eugene Gant, isn't even born until quite a ways into the book. But each little section of the book can almost be taken as a story in itself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the sort of book you have to read twice. The text is too rich to take it all in the first time you read it. More than a coming of age story, it's the story of an entire family, with all the ugliness that most families hide, exposed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Everyone has a big fat book in their life. This is mine.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wolfe's first and greatest novel. A heartfelt and well done telling of his unusually intense youth in the mountains of North Carolina. Great American prose writing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brilliant decsriptions and flights of wordy fancy, have red it many times, most thrilling read of my life.