"The Four Lost Men," a short story by Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe is best known for his long, autobiographical novels, but he also wrote many short stories. Wolfe often later incorporated material from his short stories into his novels. The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, edited by Francis E. Skipp and published in 1987, collects all 58 of Wolfe’s short stories.  

I recently read Wolfe’s 1934 short story “The Four Lost Men.” In the story, Wolfe recalls when he was sixteen years old, and the United States was about to enter World War I in 1917. The story becomes a jumping off point for an extended flight of fancy about Presidents James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes: the four lost men. These four U.S. Presidents have become more lost to the mists of time than they were in Wolfe’s boyhood. Even as a devotee of American history, I can’t tell you very much about these four men. 

In the story, the narrator’s father goes on a monologue about American history, mentioning the different presidents, and when he mentions these four men together, that sets the narrator off on a journey. He imagines what their Civil War service was like—each of the four became a general during the war.  

Wolfe writes: “Had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes been young? Or had they been born with flowing whiskers, sideburns, and wing-collars, speaking gravely from the cradle of their mother’s arms the noble vacant sonorities of far-seeing statesmanship?” (p.113) I love those sentences, it’s impossible for me to think of men from that era as having ever been young. But of course, they must have been.  

Wolfe goes on to query: “Did they not, as we, when young, prowl softly up and down past brothels in the dark hours of the night, seeing the gas lamps flare and flutter on the corner, falling with livid light upon the corners of old cobbled streets of brownstone houses?” (p.113) Wolfe paints such a vivid picture of this scene—we can easily imagine young Chester A. Arthur pacing up and down the street, steeling his nerve to enter the dimly lit brothel, with faded purple fabric covering the walls, and in a trembling voice ask for Louisa, the short, dark-haired girl that sets his soul aflame. Or we can imagine young James A. Garfield, walking past the Italian restaurant again and again, getting up the tense courage to enter and order an entire lasagna, the better to satisfy his craving for this rare ethnic dish. Once seated, he gobbles the whole pan, grabbing the lasagna with his hands, disdaining silverware, barely pausing before his ravenous hunger is satiated. Upon finishing the lasagna, Garfield lets out a wail that seems to come from some animal instinct deep within his soul. Oh, wait, I’m thinking of another Garfield.  

One of my favorite sentences in the story is this one: “Had they not, as we, then turned their eyes up and seen the huge starred visage of the night, the immense and lilac darkness of America in April?” (p.114) I love the phrase “lilac darkness,” it’s just so beautiful and evocative of the springtime.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald referenced the story in a letter to Wolfe. Wolfe had written to Fitzgerald, praising his new novel Tender Is the Night, and Fitzgerald addressed his reply to Wolfe, “Dear Arthur, Garfield, Harrison, and Hayes.” He signed the letter “F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur, Garfield, Harrison and Hayes,” a fun example of Fitzgerald’s playfulness, which was often expressed in his letters. 

“The Four Lost Men” was originally published in Scribner’s magazine in February, 1934. That same issue of the magazine also featured the second installment of Tender Is the Night, which was serialized in Scribner’s before being published in book form in April. Fitzgerald wrote to a friend, asking “did you notice that in the second issue of Scribner’s that really great story by Tom Wolfe,” which was “The Four Lost Men.” (Correspondence of FSF, p.323) 

Fitzgerald also expressed his enthusiasm for “The Four Lost Men” in a letter to Maxwell Perkins, who edited Fitzgerald and Wolfe—and Ernest Hemingway! Fitzgerald wrote: “I like ‘Only the Dead’ {Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, another Wolfe short story} and ‘Arthur, Garfield, etc.’ {The Four Lost Men} right up with the tops.” (Letters of FSF, p.316) Obviously, the story made an impression on Fitzgerald.  

Like so much of Wolfe’s writing “The Four Lost Men” becomes poetry, an incantation, an invocation of the spirits of the four lost men. A meditation on the very nature of America, with the four presidents finding four women to represent the four regions of the country, North, South, East, and West. There’s a wry humor in imagining these colorless men as passionate, vibrant beings with rich and complicated inner lives. The story is an excellent example of Wolfe’s skill as a writer, his ability to paint a rich and vibrant portrait from the most unlikely of sources.  

Album Review: Samantha Mae, Reverie (2025)

The album cover of Reverie, by Samantha Mae, 2025.

Singer and songwriter Samantha Mae

Samantha Mae is a Vermont-based singer/songwriter who just released Reverie, her first full-length album earlier this year. Reverie gathers 8 original songs written by Samantha Mae. She’s a strong songwriter, and Reverie takes the listener through many different musical moods. Samantha Mae also has a fantastic, flexible voice that has elements of country, folk, and pop within it.  

The title song is a beautiful meditation on the loss of a loved one. Samantha Mae sings, “I’ve spent too many years/Chasing the ghost of you/And all I have to show is your old perfume.” That’s such a fantastic line, and Samantha’s voice gets the emotion of the song across.  

“My, My Baby Goodbye” is a catchy, up-tempo song about starting over in a new city. “Thinkin’ I might stay in this town just for fun/Just to see what my life could be,” Samantha sings, as she leaves an old relationship behind.  

“She’ll Know” is a fantastic break up song that details a toxic relationship. One of my favorite lines in this song is “You were a temporary high/and I’ve broken the bridge leading back to you.” Samantha’s voice has such power on this track.  

“Through with It” is a rollicking song that has a strong country flavor, and it features an excellent teasing, taunting vocal. Samantha makes it clear that she is tired of the toxic masculinity this guy has to offer, as she sings on the chorus, “Get out, get over it/You can’t even call this quits/Cause we weren’t even something worth a mention/And I’m through with it.”  

“Porch Light” shows off the lower range of Samantha’s voice nicely. It’s another excellent song, about finding love and sticking with it. Samantha Mae’s lyrics are thoughtful and heartfelt, and free from cliches. “Through all the years of my mistakes/I never made it easy for us to make it/But darlin’ we made it/The best damn story that we’ll tell to our children/Under that porch light.”  

“Keep You Happy” is a song about loss and saying goodbye. It has a bittersweet flavor, and the music still has a bounce to it, even though the lyrics are melancholy.  

“Time” is a lovely song, a slow ballad that finds the narrator worried that she’s “runnin’ outta time...pullin’ rope every day with the Devil/Nothin’ heard and nothin’ said.”  

“Mosaic” has a harder rock sound than the other songs on the album. Samantha sings about “Tension, tension builds and choir sounds/Conducting a catastrophic blow/To fuel my rage as I explode.” It’s a fantastic song, and a really strong song to end the album with.  

Reverie is an album with no weak songs. The production on Reverie is superb, with each song having a distinct sound and feel, and yet there’s a cohesion to the album as well. The variety of songs that Samantha Mae has written is really amazing. I’m impressed with her range as a songwriter, especially for a debut album. Samantha Mae is also a superb singer, and it’s easy to imagine her interpreting songs from many different genres. Reverie is an outstanding piece of work, and I’m looking forward to what Samantha Mae does next.  

Some Reflections on The Great Gatsby at 100

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published on April 10, 1925.

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. I re-read Gatsby last week in preparation for this occasion—I think it’s the fourth time I’ve read the novel. (Five if you count reading Trimalchio, the galley version of the novel.) Yesterday there was a live reading in Saint Paul of the entire novel, which took about six hours. There were about 65 different people who read the novel—everyone had a passage of about two pages. I was lucky enough to read the last two pages of the novel, featuring those last seven paragraphs, as perfect a passage of prose as you’ll ever find, in my opinion.  

Hearing the novel read aloud, there are inevitably different things that struck me yesterday. It’s a wonderful communal experience to have, reading a novel out loud. You get to hear what people react to, what makes people laugh, what moves them. It’s striking how much humor there is in The Great Gatsby. It’s not a comedy by any means, but Nick Carraway’s narration has a fair share of sarcastic lines.  

I usually say about Fitzgerald’s work is that even in his weakest short stories, there are still two or three sentences that will take your breath away. It’s rare for a writer to have that gift. In Gatsby there is one sentence on every page that will take your breath away. It’s just astonishing how brilliant and beautiful his writing was.  

Fitzgerald’s decision to write The Great Gatsby in the first person, and to make Nick Carraway a partially involved narrator was a brilliant stroke. Fitzgerald channels Nick so perfectly, and first person narration makes the novel more interesting than if it had been written in third person with an omniscient narrator. I’d be fascinated to know exactly how and why Fitzgerald made the switch (there is a scrap of an early draft of Gatsby that is written in the third person) but I’d suspect that Joseph Conrad’s novels Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim were an inspiration. 

Something that struck me in the last week is how hard it is for Daisy Buchanan to say what she means. Daisy might not always know what she wants to say, as she is torn between her husband Tom and her old boyfriend Jay Gatsby. There’s always something beneath the surface of what Daisy is saying. For example, when she says to Gatsby, “You always look so cool,” Nick narrates “She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.” (p.125) In a similar vein, when Daisy starts crying over Gatsby’s shirts, there’s more she’s crying about than just some pretty shirts. I think Daisy’s comparing Nick to a rose at the beginning is another example of this. She’s saying something to Nick, maybe even something deep like “It’s so wonderful to see you again, I’ve missed you, Nick,” but she puts it in this simile of comparing Nick to a rose. Daisy is a fascinating character, and she gets deeper for me each time I read the novel. It’s easy to just paint her as a shallow, empty-headed beauty, but I think there’s more going on underneath the surface, and her use of language is perhaps a clue to this hidden depth.  

It struck me yesterday that Nick’s famous declaration “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known” is contradicted by what he has told us in the preceding paragraph about the girl back home that he’s sort of in a relationship with. He’s certainly not telling this girl back home the whole truth about his deepening feelings for Jordan Baker. But a key to Nick’s statement about being honest is what he says just before that: “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” (p.64) Nick isn’t just saying “I’m an honest person,” he is saying that he suspects himself of being honest, which might be slightly different than actually being honest.  

Yesterday I noticed for the first time in Nick’s list of Gatsby’s party guests, he mentions “Newton Orchid who controlled Films Par Excellence”. (p.66) The mention of orchid reminded me of the party that Daisy and Tom attend, where they see “a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree.” (p.111) Gatsby adds, “The man bending over her is her director.” Is the director meant to be Newton Orchid? Yet another tidbit to ponder in the richly constructed world of this novel.  

Fitzgerald’s writing is so tightly controlled here—I noticed how many times in the novel he will mention something but not tell us the specifics. “I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.” (p.21) Nick and Fitzgerald don’t tell us what these sedative questions were—ultimately, they are not important to the story of the novel.  

The themes of The Great Gatsby still resonate deeply today. Fitzgerald was interested in class, money, status, and love—topics that will never be out of date. Gatsby is the striver, pulling himself upwards from nothing, a symbol of what we call “the American Dream,” the idea that we live in a meritocracy, where the best people rise to the top. What do we think about Tom Buchanan, who is clearly on the top by virtue of his inherited wealth but is also clearly the most rotten character in the novel. Should we blindly idolize Gatsby because he has reached the pinnacle, or should we condemn him because of the means by which he got there? Fitzgerald wrote often about the corrupting effects of wealth—it’s also one of the main themes of his novels The Beautiful and Damned and Tender Is the Night.  

I wish Fitzgerald could have seen the reading yesterday. He would have been so delighted and amazed by seeing a crowd of people reading his words aloud. His brilliant masterpiece, largely ignored during his lifetime, is now rightly acclaimed as a classic. I like to think that somehow, somewhere in the universe, Fitzgerald knows how much people love his writing, and how people are still reading his gorgeous prose, a century later.