Lush and fascinating: an essential reference for Wolfe fans and scholars.
Impressive array of primary documents, photographs, commentary and miscellany relating to the novelist’s short life and controversial career.
Mitchell, who works at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville, N.C., is no disinterested bystander. He characterizes as “myth” the notion that the author of Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again was an undisciplined genius whose literary sequoias were shaped into artful (though still sizeable) bonsai by Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins. The biographer defends, too, the autobiographical character of Wolfe’s fiction, arguing that “the roots of all creation in writing are fastened in autobiography.” The text begins with the writer’s birth, in 1900, proceeds chronologically to his death, in 1938, then considers his uncertain reputation today. Mitchell laments Wolfe’s absence from the contemporary academic canon, speculating that his novels’ enormous length may be somewhat to blame. The wide array of illustrations includes photographs of the author at all stages of his life (an amusing one shows him at age eight with Byronic curls), as well as images of his family, friends, literary acquaintances. A sad one captures his brother beside the bed where Wolfe lay dying of tuberculosis. Photocopies abound of all sorts of documents: undergraduate transcript, Master of Arts diploma from Harvard, contracts with Scribner’s, a sweet telegram from F. Scott Fitzgerald congratulating Wolfe on Angel, death certificate. Also reproduced are newspaper and magazine articles and reviews of Wolfe’s work, including a generous selection of reactions from the newspapers in Asheville, his hometown. Mitchell reprints long, informative passages from Wolfe’s correspondence, notebooks, stories, novels and poems. His bitter exchanges with Perkins just before Wolfe left Scribner’s for Harper & Bros. make painful reading. A brief, brisk narrative stitches it all together.
Lush and fascinating: an essential reference for Wolfe fans and scholars.Pub Date: May 7, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-933648-10-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.
The chief White House and Washington correspondent for ABC provides a ringside seat to a disaster-ridden Oval Office.
It is Karl to whom we owe the current popularity of a learned Latin term. Questioning chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, he followed up a perhaps inadvertently honest response on the matter of Ukrainian intervention in the electoral campaign by saying, “What you just described is a quid pro quo.” Mulvaney’s reply: “Get over it.” Karl, who has been covering Trump for decades and knows which buttons to push and which to avoid, is not inclined to get over it: He rightly points out that a reporter today “faces a president who seems to have no appreciation or understanding of the First Amendment and the role of a free press in American democracy.” Yet even against a bellicose, untruthful leader, he adds, the press “is not the opposition party.” The author, who keeps his eye on the subject and not in the mirror, writes of Trump’s ability to stage situations, as when he once called Trump out, at an event, for misrepresenting poll results and Trump waited until the camera was off before exploding, “Fucking nasty guy!”—then finished up the interview as if nothing had happened. Trump and his inner circle are also, by Karl’s account, masters of timing, matching negative news such as the revelation that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election with distractions away from Trump—in this case, by pushing hard on the WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic campaign, news of which arrived at the same time. That isn’t to say that they manage people or the nation well; one of the more damning stories in a book full of them concerns former Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, cut off at the knees even while trying to do Trump’s bidding.
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4562-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
