Look Homeward

Thomas Wolfe, one of the giants of twentieth-century American fiction, is also one of the most misunderstood of our major novelists. A man massive in his size, his passions, and his gifts, Wolfe has long been considered something of an unconscious genius, whose undisciplined flow of prose was shaped into novels by his editor, the celebrated Maxwell Perkins.

In this definitive and compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Herbert Donald dismantles that myth and demonstrates that Wolfe was a boldly aware experimental artist who, like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and John Dos Passos, deliberately pushed at the boundaries of the modern novel. Donald takes a new measure of this complex, tormented man as he reveals Wolfe's difficult childhood, when he was buffeted between an alcoholic father and a resentful mother; his "magical" years at the University of North Carolina, where his writing talent first flourished; his rise to literary fame after repeated rejection; and the full story of Wolfe's passionate affair with Aline Bernstein, including their intimate letters.

Thomas Wolfe, one of the giants of twentieth-century American fiction, is also one of the most misunderstood of our major novelists. A man massive in his size, his passions, and his gifts, Wolfe has long been considered something of an unconscious genius, whose undisciplined flow of prose was shaped into novels by his editor, the celebrated Maxwell Perkins.

In this definitive and compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Herbert Donald dismantles that myth and demonstrates that Wolfe was a boldly aware experimental artist who, like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and John Dos Passos, deliberately pushed at the boundaries of the modern novel. Donald takes a new measure of this complex, tormented man as he reveals Wolfe's difficult childhood, when he was buffeted between an alcoholic father and a resentful mother; his "magical" years at the University of North Carolina, where his writing talent first flourished; his rise to literary fame after repeated rejection; and the full story of Wolfe's passionate affair with Aline Bernstein, including their intimate letters.

Publishers Weekly

More fully than any previous biographer, Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Donald traces the life and career of the much misunderstood Thomas Wolfe. Interweaving narrative and interpretation, imposing neither moral judgments nor psychoanalytical diagnoses, he presents the novelist as a man of ambiguities and contradictions. Based on seven years' study of Wolfe's papersthe first scholar to be given access to the entire archivehe discusses Wolfe's family background, his passionate yet callous treatment of Aline Bernstein, his ambivalent relationships with colleagues, his drunken brawls and sordid liaisons with prostitutes and female admirers, his bigotry and anti-Semitism. But, since the book is primarily a study of the creative process and of Wolfe's evolution as a writer, Donald is equally open about the novelist's literary deficiencies and accomplishments. Acknowledging that his books are remarkably uneven, and that he ``wrote more bad prose than any other major writer,'' Donald deduces that Wolfe was a self-conscious writer, who thought much about his themes and symbols, drew up detailed outlines of his books and was concerned about their structure. Donald also offers a view of the publishing world and of Wolfe's unusual dealings with his literary agent Elizabeth Nowell and his editors Maxwell Perkins and Edward Aswell, who had to wrest his interminable manuscripts from him and try to turn them into publishable stories and novels. The biographer's opinion of Aswell's ``unacceptable'' editorial work on the later novels may shock some readers and scholars: ``Greatly exceeding the professional responsibility of an editor, Aswell took impermissible liberties with Wolfe's manuscripts, and his interference seriously eroded the integrity of Wolfe's text.'' Donald is likely to win another major prize for this biography. Photos not seen by PW. (February 4)

One of the nation's most venerated Presidential scholars, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Herbert Donald has illuminated great minds of history from Thomas Wolfe to Abraham Lincoln.