about Thomas Wolfe
My friend Steve, one of my UofM pals, is one of the best known Canadian Thomas Wolfe scholars. Now, is that because he’s such an outstanding scholar, or because there are so few Thomas Wolfe scholars that he sticks out as a lone enthusiast? I, knowing him personally, would vouch for the former but, truth be told, there are indeed very few people working on Thomas Wolfe. And by Thomas Wolfe I don’t mean Tom Wolfe, the author of The Bonfires of Vanity. Thomas Wolfe is a modernist who was born in 1900 and died about 38 years later. His work is little known even in academic circles. He doesn’t tend to be comprised in “the canon,” which means that we haven’t read him in school. Exclusion from the canon does not mean that a work or an author isn’t noteworthy. It does make them less readily available, and for students who read so many books that they seldom get to read the books they feel like reading, there’s just no time to invest in them. That would explain why after having known Steve for four years I had found time to buy two of Thomas Wolfe’s books from second-hand shops, but not read them. Two weeks ago while looking through my bookshelves for something to read (why buy a new book when I already have so many to chose from?), my eyes fell upon my Thomas Wolfe books. Seeing Steve in my mind’s eye complain that none of us (our small circle of UofM buddies) have ever even read the author who made him want to study literature, I picked out one of those.
Since then, I’ve found a job. This is great news. The underlying message is that my reading time has suddenly been drastically reduced. And I, unfortunately, am not a patient reader. Not even for short stories! I am half way through The Hills Beyond and my desire for it has started to wane. There are parts of it that are truly beautiful. Some passages are very poetic. Sometimes it is a delight to read. But my general feeling is that he is too self-absorbed. He is one of those writers whose topic is pretty much always himself. Auto-fiction, as they call it. Unlike Anais Nin whose modernist effort not to come to a book’s end was to write diaries incessantly and publish them all, Wolfe writes about himself in a fictionalized manner. This wouldn’t be so disturbing if it were not only the practice than the importance he accords to it. What I mean is, he does not only fictionalize his life as closed circuit stories, he permits himself as an author to step inside the fiction he writes and criticize, and comment, and mention himself one time too many. Why Modernists found that writing about oneself is the ultimate topic, I don’t know. Why Wolfe’s self-absorption is so bothersome to me, I’m not sure. I feel there is an element of self-importance to it that I find snooty and daunting and has me dare the author with the impulse of questioning him: “Why would I be interested in you? Why should I read you and your spleen? What interest lies in it for me?” Is it, in a way, self-critique? Is that the question I ask myself about others’ possible interest in reading me?
If Wolfe were alive today, he would be a blogger. One of my sorts. I’ve felt for a while that an author who can’t manipulate a story, and by story I don’t mean a biography, is not much of an author. Of course, that’s a harsh opinion. More self-critique? Let’s stop asking questions. Besides, the alarm just rang and I must get ready for work. Wolfe will remain on my bedside table but I think I’ll pick up a new book today. I feel like reading Dumas’ Three Muskateers. I hear it’s a story you can sink your teeth into.
Since then, I’ve found a job. This is great news. The underlying message is that my reading time has suddenly been drastically reduced. And I, unfortunately, am not a patient reader. Not even for short stories! I am half way through The Hills Beyond and my desire for it has started to wane. There are parts of it that are truly beautiful. Some passages are very poetic. Sometimes it is a delight to read. But my general feeling is that he is too self-absorbed. He is one of those writers whose topic is pretty much always himself. Auto-fiction, as they call it. Unlike Anais Nin whose modernist effort not to come to a book’s end was to write diaries incessantly and publish them all, Wolfe writes about himself in a fictionalized manner. This wouldn’t be so disturbing if it were not only the practice than the importance he accords to it. What I mean is, he does not only fictionalize his life as closed circuit stories, he permits himself as an author to step inside the fiction he writes and criticize, and comment, and mention himself one time too many. Why Modernists found that writing about oneself is the ultimate topic, I don’t know. Why Wolfe’s self-absorption is so bothersome to me, I’m not sure. I feel there is an element of self-importance to it that I find snooty and daunting and has me dare the author with the impulse of questioning him: “Why would I be interested in you? Why should I read you and your spleen? What interest lies in it for me?” Is it, in a way, self-critique? Is that the question I ask myself about others’ possible interest in reading me?
If Wolfe were alive today, he would be a blogger. One of my sorts. I’ve felt for a while that an author who can’t manipulate a story, and by story I don’t mean a biography, is not much of an author. Of course, that’s a harsh opinion. More self-critique? Let’s stop asking questions. Besides, the alarm just rang and I must get ready for work. Wolfe will remain on my bedside table but I think I’ll pick up a new book today. I feel like reading Dumas’ Three Muskateers. I hear it’s a story you can sink your teeth into.
posted by julie at
7:55 a.m.
1 Comments:
So I thought I'd check out Julie's blog. I hadn't done so for a few weeks. And what do I find, to my great surprise: a whole entry on the Wolfe man! What an honor! So much so that I can hardly refrain from leaving a few comments behind.
Indeed Julie, you did buy the books, and you did give the man a shot. It's more than most of my friends have done. I am grateful for it, and I'm sorry I ever doubted you ever would.
You ask very serious questions of Wolfe. Perhaps you ask the only important question: Why should we bother to read him at all? Every Wolfean will have his own answer, and everyone else as well, as you did. So I can only answer for myself.
Your criticism is to the point: he did focus on his own experience to the point of redundancy. I guess it won't help your opinion of him if I tell you the glimpse you got from the Hills Beyond is pretty much all you can expect from the rest of his oeuvre. the writing is, among other things, conceited, rambling, exagerated, over-stated, indeed hyperbolic almost to the point of ridiculousness. It is also very lyrical, sometimes in a cheesy way. It is, yes, self-absorbed, self-conscious, sometimes self-deprecating (he knew how to laugh at himself, a rare and contradictory quality for a writer of his generation, and of his character). It is emotional. It is unstructured. It is poetic, but in an old-fashioned and adolescent way. It is redundant and sometimes derivative (he did suffer from the Bloomian anxiety of influence). It is autobiographical in the worst kind of egocentric way. It is fictional in a most delightful way. In fact, his writing can be described in so many ways (positive and negative)--for that was just a glimpse--that it becomes, at some point, quite impossible to describe, and quite impossible to fathom. I think this is precisely what most Wolfeans find spellbinding in his work, the incommensurable aspect of it.
Somehow, for me, Wolfe defines literature with a big L at its most flamboyant. It is literature utterly full of itself. Not careful, not respectful, not limited, but impulsive, passionate, grandiose...no, gargantuesque!!! A literature that is more than one can digest. A most succesful failure, as Faulkner once said of Wolfe, for whom he had the greatest respect and admiration.
Your approach to Wolfe was the right one Julie. You read him and took from it what you wanted, noticing the inherent beauty of some passages and enjoying it for a while. Then, when you had enough you put it back on its shelf, and took up something else. I believe, in today's fast paced and quick gratification world, this is one good way to read and appreciate Wolfe, not the way he did, that is, devouring huge chunks of hundreds of thousands of words at a time, but rather slowly and within measure, taking the time to taste the poetry of his prose, and to immerse oneself in the romantic atmosphere of his universe, and then stopping before its too late, before that sweet moment of drunkenness passes and one starts to feel sick and dizy instead. Knowing when one has had enough of a good thing, and letting it rest till next time.
Wolfe'll be there next time your palate requests a kind of writing that attempts to fit the whole of the universe on a pin (that too is Faulkner's opinion) from a man who had read too much, lived too much, drank too much, and ulitmately written too much. He is to a certain extent my nemesis, and that's why, I guess, I can't seem to shake him off.
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