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O LOST

Name: O LOST
Author: Thomas Wolfe
ISBN: 1-57003-369-2

A STORY OF THE BURIED LIFE

by Thomas Wolfe & edited by Arlyn Bruccoli & Matthew J. Bruccoli ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2000

Perhaps you can go home again. A strange and lovely return indeed, for which much thanks to the enterprising Bruccolis.

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The famous first version of Look Homeward, Angel (1929), Wolfe’s titanic debut novel that had been whipped into publishable shape by Scribner editor Maxwell Perkins.

At least that’s the standard version—now challenged by the Bruccolis, who have “established” this “new” text (published to commemorate Wolfe’s centenary) and restored 60,00 words Perkins cut from the original manuscript. It’s a commonplace that anyone who encounters Wolfe’s soaring, rhapsodic autobiographical tale in adolescence can’t possibly reread it in adulthood. Well, yes and no. The story of authorial surrogate Eugene Gant’s struggle to emerge from the inhibiting shadows of his grandiose alcoholic father and puritanical mother, as well as from the roughhewn provincialism of his North Carolina origins, should still strike responsive chords even in readers understandably put off by Wolfe’s efforts to elevate even his characters’ pettiness and bawdry to heroic, if not mythic, proportions. As Matthew Bruccoli’s (slightly defensive) introduction justly observes, the more generous expanse of O Lost offers richly detailed background information that makes Eugene’s “artistic” temperament more credible, and its comparative sexual frankness goes a long way toward explaining the Gants’ luridly heightened passions. This most Wordsworthian of all American novels is a very literary book as well, and the restoration of Wolfe’s numerous allusions and imitations (to and of Eliot, Conrad, and Joyce, among others) is at best a mixed blessing. Perkins was neither butcher nor prude: perhaps it’s fair to say he saw Wolfe as a brilliant regional autobiographical writer, not as a cosmopolitan intellectual attempting a truly encyclopedic “novel of inclusion.” This unabridged version is lumbering and ungainly. It’s also filled with gorgeous incidental visionary writing (“Spring was coming on again across the earth like a light sparkle of water spray: all the men who had died were making their strange and lovely return in blossom and flower”).

Perhaps you can go home again. A strange and lovely return indeed, for which much thanks to the enterprising Bruccolis.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2000

ISBN: 1-57003-369-2

Page Count: 736

Publisher: Univ. of South Carolina

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PARTY AT JACK'S
by Thomas Wolfe

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LOST BOY
by Thomas Wolfe

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GOOD CHILD'S RIVER
by Thomas Wolfe

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.