LOOK HOMEWARD: A Life of Thomas Wolfe

by David Herbert Donald ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1986

It would be hard to write a dull biography of Wolfe, and Donald has, for the most part, settled on a neutral prose that allows Wolfe to shape himself in the reader's eye. So, while we don't get a great, vital, brawling biography, we do get an acceptably cleareyed picture of the great author that does him a kind of justice rarely given to any biographical subject. Not that we ever warm to Wolfe's foibles as his paranoia rises, as his egoism becomes overbearing, as he rails against the Jews, as he writes in total disorganization, or is swallowed up in Jekyll-Hyde alcoholism. All of that welter is dramatically on hand herein. But somehow the reader's forgiveness is always there--perhaps because biographer Donald (Pulitzer Prize winner for biography in 1961 for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War) is such a healthy, wise fellow himself, who never writes an academic word and is always warm and just. He is also just about Wolfe's work, being neither pedant nor full of gush, and allows Wolfe his palette. The story is the same as in Andrew Turnbull's and Elizabeth Nowell's biographies: a Southern literary genius is brought to flower by a wealthy New York Jewess (Aline Bernstein), his mistress 18 years his senior, and is boxed and trimmed for publication by his famous editor (Maxwell Perkins of Scribner's), then defends his autonomy by splitting and going to another publishing house; he dies early leaving a mountain of manuscript, and has three final novels excavated from his notes by a new editor (Edward C. Aswell of Harper). What's new in all this is Donald's harsh view of the Wolfe family, and his convincing depiction of the heavy Napoleonic hand of Perkins on Of Time and the River (Wolfe was so profoundly dispirited by their work together that he abandoned the novel to Perkins and never even corrected his galleys) and of Aswell's mishandling of Wolfe's style in The Web and the Rock and his gutting of Wolfe's style in You Can't Go Home Again, which made Wolfe seem burned out. Donald offers synoptic texts to make his points. Definitive on the life and acceptable critically until some major reediting of Wolfe is undertaken.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION