Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was an American writer.[1] The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction states that "Wolfe was a major American novelist of the first half of the twentieth century, whose longterm reputation rests largely on the impact of his first novel, Look Homeward Angel (1929), and on the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life."[2] Along with William Faulkner, he is considered one of the two most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon.[3] He remains an important writer in modern American literature, as one of the first masters of autobiographical fiction, and is considered North Carolina's most famous writer.[4]
Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels as well as many short stories, dramatic works, and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written and published from the 1920s to the 1940s, vividly reflect on American culture and the mores of that period, filtered through Wolfe's sensitive, sophisticated, and hyper-analytical perspective.
After Wolfe's death, contemporary author Faulkner said that Wolfe might have been the greatest talent of their generation for aiming higher than any other writer.[1][5] Faulker's endorsement, however, failed to win over mid to late 20th century literary critics and for a time Wolfe's place in the literary canon was questioned. However, 21st century academics have largely rejected this negative assessment, and both a greater appreciation of his experimentation with literary forms and a renewed interest in Wolfe's works, in particular his short fiction, has secured Wolfe's place in the literary canon with a more positive and balanced assessment.[2] Wolfe's influence extends to the writings of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, and of authors Ray Bradbury and Philip Roth, among others.[6]
Early life
Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children of William Oliver Wolfe (1851–1922) and Julia Elizabeth Westall (1860–1945). Six of the children lived to adulthood.[7] His father, of Pennsylvania Dutch descent,[8] was a successful stone carver and ran a gravestone business.
W. O. Wolfe's business used an angel in the window to attract customers. Thomas Wolfe "described the angel in great detail" in a short story and in Look Homeward, Angel. The angel was sold and, while there was controversy over which one was the actual angel, the location of the "Thomas Wolfe angel" was determined in 1949 to be Oakdale Cemetery in Hendersonville, North Carolina.[9]
Wolfe's mother took in boarders and was active in acquiring real estate. In 1904, she opened a boarding house in St. Louis, Missouri, for the World's Fair. While the family was in St. Louis, Wolfe's 12-year-old brother, Grover, died of typhoid fever.
Thomas Wolfe House, 48 Spruce Street in Asheville
In 1906, Julia Wolfe bought a boarding house named "Old Kentucky Home" at nearby 48 Spruce Street in Asheville, taking up residence there with her youngest son while the rest of the family remained at the Woodfin Street residence. Wolfe lived in the boarding house on Spruce Street until he went to college in 1916. It is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial.[10] Wolfe was closest to his brother Ben, whose early death at age 26 is chronicled in Look Homeward, Angel.[7] Julia Wolfe bought and sold many properties, eventually becoming a successful real estate speculator.[7]
Wolfe began to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) when he was 15 years old. A member of the Dialectic Society and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, he predicted that his portrait would one day hang in New West near that of celebrated North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance, which it does today.[11] Aspiring to be a playwright, in 1919 Wolfe enrolled in a playwriting course.[1] His one-act play, The Return of Buck Gavin, was performed by the newly formed Carolina Playmakers, then composed of classmates in Frederick Koch's playwriting class, with Wolfe acting the title role. He edited UNC's student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel[7] and won the Worth Prize for Philosophy for an essay titled "The Crisis in Industry". Another of his plays, The Third Night, was performed by the Playmakers in December 1919. Wolfe was inducted into the Golden Fleece honor society.[11]
Wolfe graduated from UNC with a bachelor of arts in June 1920, and in September, entered Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker. Two versions of his play The Mountains were performed by Baker's 47 Workshop in 1921. While taking Baker's 47 Workshop course he befriended the playwright Kenneth Raisbeck who was Baker's graduate assistant. Wolfe later based the character of Francis Starwick in his semi-autobiographical novel Of Time and the River (1935) on Raisbeck.[12]
In 1922, Wolfe received his master's degree from Harvard. His father died in Asheville in June of that year. Wolfe studied another year with Baker, and the 47 Workshop produced his 10-scene play Welcome to Our City in May 1923.
Wolfe visited New York City again in November 1923 and solicited funds for UNC, while trying to sell his plays to Broadway. In February 1924, he began teaching English as an instructor at New York University (NYU), a position he occupied periodically for almost seven years.
Career
Wolfe was unable to sell any of his plays after three years because of their great length.[11] The Theatre Guild came close to producing Welcome to Our City before ultimately rejecting it, and Wolfe found his writing style more suited to fiction than the stage.[1] He sailed to Europe in October 1924 to continue writing. From England he traveled to France, Italy and Switzerland.
On his return voyage in 1925, he met Aline Bernstein (1880–1955), a scene designer for the Theatre Guild. Twenty years his senior, she was married to a successful stockbroker with whom she had two children. In October 1925, she and Wolfe became lovers and remained so for five years.[11] Their affair was turbulent and sometimes combative, but she exerted a powerful influence, encouraging and funding his writing.[11]
Wolfe returned to Europe in the summer of 1926 and began writing the first version of an autobiographical novel titled O Lost. The narrative, which evolved into Look Homeward, Angel, fictionalized his early experiences in Asheville, and chronicled family, friends, and the boarders at his mother's establishment on Spruce Street. In the book, he renamed the town Altamont and called the boarding house "Dixieland". His family's surname became Gant, and Wolfe called himself Eugene, his father Oliver, and his mother Eliza. The original manuscript of O Lost was over 1,100 pages (333,000 words) long,[13][14] and considerably more experimental in style than the final version of Look Homeward, Angel. It was submitted to Scribner's, where the editing was done by Maxwell Perkins, the most prominent book editor of the time, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. He cut the book to focus more on the character of Eugene, a stand-in for Wolfe. Wolfe initially expressed gratitude to Perkins for his disciplined editing, but he had misgivings later. It has been said that Wolfe found a father figure in Perkins, and that Perkins, who had five daughters, found a sort of foster son in Wolfe.[15]
The novel, which had been dedicated to Bernstein, was published 11 days before the stock market crash of 1929.[11][16] Soon afterward, Wolfe returned to Europe and ended his affair with Bernstein.[15] The novel caused a stir in Asheville, with its over 200 thinly disguised local characters.[11][17][18] Wolfe chose to stay away from Asheville for eight years because of the uproar; he traveled to Europe for a year on a Guggenheim Fellowship.[11][19][20] Look Homeward, Angel was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and Germany.[16] Some members of Wolfe's family were upset with their portrayal in the book, but his sister Mabel wrote to him that she was sure he had the best of intentions.[21]
After four more years writing in Brooklyn,[20] the second novel Wolfe submitted to Scribner's was The October Fair, a multi-volume epic roughly the length of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. After considering the commercial possibilities of publishing the book in full, Perkins opted to cut it significantly and create a single volume. Titled Of Time and the River, it was more commercially successful than Look Homeward, Angel.[11] In an ironic twist, the citizens of Asheville were more upset this time because they had not been included.[22] The character of Esther Jack was based on Bernstein.[15] In 1934, Maxim Lieber served as his literary agent.
Wolfe was persuaded by Edward Aswell to leave Scribner's and sign with Harper & Brothers.[23] By some accounts, Perkins' severe editing of Wolfe's work is what prompted him to leave.[24] Others describe his growing resentment that some people attributed his success to Perkins' work as editor.[15] In 1936, Bernard DeVoto, reviewing The Story of a Novel for Saturday Review, wrote that Look Homeward, Angel was "hacked and shaped and compressed into something resembling a novel by Mr. Perkins and the assembly-line at Scribners".[25][26]
Wolfe spent much time in Europe and was especially popular and at ease in Germany, where he made many friends. However, in 1936 he witnessed incidents of discrimination against Jews, which upset him and changed his mind about the political developments in the country.[26] He returned to America and published a story based on his observations ("I Have a Thing to Tell You") in The New Republic.[26] Following its publication, Wolfe's books were banned by the German government, and he was prohibited from traveling there.[26]
In 1937, "Chickamauga", his short story set during the American Civil War battle of the same name, was published.[27] Wolfe returned to Asheville in early 1937 for the first time since publication of his first book.