Book Review: The Table Talk of Thomas Wolfe, by William B. Wisdom (1988)

The Table Talk of Thomas Wolfe is a slim volume, written by William B. Wisdom and published by the Thomas Wolfe Society in 1988. Among Thomas Wolfe fans, William B. Wisdom is an exalted figure. It was Wisdom who bought Wolfe's manuscripts and papers and donated them to Harvard University, where they currently reside in the Houghton Library. 

Wisdom met Thomas Wolfe when he was living in New Orleans, and Wolfe visited the city in January of 1937. Wisdom already thought that Wolfe was the greatest American author of his generation, and he was ecstatic when he learned that Wolfe was in town. Wisdom then contrived to spend as much time as possible with Wolfe. 

Wolfe comes out of the book very well, as he is polite, kind, and indulgent of Wisdom's desire to hang out with him. Wisdom is completely star-struck by Wolfe, which he admits, and he comes off as a bit of a pest and a weirdo. Not dangerous or anything, mind you, but just a bit too intense. 

It's tricky. Wisdom has one shot, or actually more than one, since Wolfe keeps hanging out with him, to tell his hero that he thinks he is the most important writer in America today. But every time Wisdom tries to draw Wolfe out about his own writing, Wolfe clams up, or deflects the line of questioning. I can't really blame either man for acting the way they do. If I had one opportunity to tell F. Scott Fitzgerald what his writing has meant to me, I'd probably turn into the same obsessive fan that Wisdom comes off as. But that being said, what is Wolfe supposed to say when Wisdom tells him he's the most important American writer? That's a bit of a conversation stopper. 

In my limited conversations with notable people, I've found it's better to under praise than over praise. Honestly, they've probably heard so many people tell them how great they are that it doesn't mean anything anymore. The first time I met Robyn Hitchcock, way back in 2009, I earnestly told him that I thought he was one of the greatest songwriters of our time. He laughed and said, "Well, I'm certainly one of the oldest." I had made a statement that gave him no real way to react. I had made a huge blanket statement declaring my true fandom. And what was Robyn Hitchcock supposed to say back to me? So, he deflected it with a joke. I've never had the opportunity to have an extended conversation with Robyn Hitchcock, but the times I’ve met him since then I've tried to just be a little more relaxed, a little more normal. After a show while he's signing autographs I'll say, "I've seen you a bunch of times and always enjoyed it," or tell him I was glad he played a specific song. And that works. He can say “Thank you very much,” and we can both go on our way, neither one embarrassed. 

Wisdom’s story about how he met Wolfe is fascinating. Wisdom had learned from a friend that Wolfe was in town, and shortly after learning that fact, Wisdom saw Wolfe walking down the street. Their eyes locked, and they started a conversation. Connection made. Wisdom later had lunch with Wolfe and another writer, E.P. “Pat” O’Donnell, who had recently published a novel titled Green Margins that was quite successful. 

Wisdom writes about having lunch with Wolfe: “I tried several times, without avail, to get Tom to talk about himself. It was no go. Nor would he discuss his books.” (p.28) 

One of the interesting tidbits about Thomas Wolfe was this one: “He said that one of his favorite books and undoubtedly the most interesting, was the World Almanac, that it contained more things of interest than anybody he knew.” (p.30) I found that quite interesting and could perhaps help to explain Wolfe’s love of lists in his writing. 

Wisdom asked Wolfe what he thought of several contemporary writers. About F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wolfe said only “Poor Scott.” (p.49) Scott was going through a pretty terrible period in his life in early 1937, so Wolfe’s comment was quite accurate. 

Wisdom even admits to the reader that he opened a note that Wolfe wanted him to deliver, then Wisdom re-copied the note so he could keep the original note in his collection! I’m not quite sure what the ethics on that are, but Wolfe never learned of Wisdom’s deception. 

The Table Talk of Thomas Wolfe is an interesting little volume for fans of Wolfe. 

Book Review: Thomas Wolfe, by C. Hugh Holman, University of Minnesota pamphlets on American Writers

American author Thomas Wolfe's status in American literature was at a high level in 1960. That year, when Wolfe was profiled for the University of Minnesota's "Pamphlets on American Writers" series, the pamphlet about his life and work was number 6. The first 5 writers had huge reputations in 1960, and still do today: Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, William Faulkner, Henry James, and Mark Twain. While the numbering of the pamphlets is not meant to suggest a strict numerical ranking, the fact that Thomas Wolfe was number 6, as opposed to number 60, tells us something about the fine standing he enjoyed in 1960.  

Wolfe's critical standing has slipped since then. None of his novels were chosen for the 1998 Modern Library list of the 100 Best Novels written in English during the 20th century. The UK newspaper The Guardian made a splash recently with their list of the 100 Best Novels of all-time, and not only was Wolfe not on the list, none of his 4 novels received any votes from any of the 172 experts surveyed. Those of us who know and love Wolfe’s writing can appreciate his unique voice—he was an American original. To put it simply, I read Thomas Wolfe because there’s something in his writing that I can’t find anywhere else in literature.  

I attended, and spoke at, the annual meeting of the Thomas Wolfe Society last week in Wolfe's hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, and it was a pleasure to chat with so many fellow Wolfeans. There will always be an audience for Wolfe's style, even if it has gone out of critical favor. 

The author of the pamphlet on Thomas Wolfe was C. Hugh Holman, who edited The Short Novels of Thomas Wolfe and The Thomas Wolfe Reader. As much as Holman obviously admired Wolfe's work, he also critiqued Wolfe as well. At the end of the pamphlet, Holman writes that Wolfe's work had "an intensity and a beauty of language unsurpassed by any other American prose writer," but he also adds that Wolfe's novels contain "passages of very bad writing and of irrelevant action." (p.43)  

Holman does an excellent job outlining Wolfe's life and fiction in only 45 pages. One of the quotes that struck me the most was in a letter Wolfe wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins in 1930: "I believe I am at last beginning to have a proper use of a writer's material: for it seems to me he ought to see in what has happened to him the elements of the universal experience." (p.25) I think Wolfe hit the nail on the head—what a writer chooses to write about will invariably be colored by their own autobiographical experience, but in order to craft something successful, they must be able to connect it to a larger whole.  

Holman writes about how in Wolfe's work "this vision of man possessed of tragic grandeur—essentially the vision of the nineteenth-century Romantic—is presented with great intensity." (p.41) I read that and nodded my head in agreement. And the quote made me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both Wolfe and Fitzgerald were Romantics, with a capital R. The idea of tragic grandeur reminded me of this quote from a letter Fitzgerald wrote: "I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective quality of my talent, and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur." Leading Fitzgerald and Wolfe scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli titled his biography of Fitzgerald Some Sort of Epic Grandeur. Both Wolfe and Fitzgerald saw the individual in heroic terms. Both men had little use for most of the institutions of modern society: government, the military, business, organized religion, but they did not allow their dismissal of these institutions to turn into a bitter cynicism. There was still a Romantic optimism that the individual might be able to transcend this sordid plane of existence, if only for a brief, fleeting moment.  

Holman's pamphlet on Thomas Wolfe is an insightful study into this great American author. 

Bob Horner 1958-2026

A week ago, I started reading Robert Whiting's book You Gotta Have Wa. Published in 1989, the book is an examination of baseball in Japan, and how American players adjusted to playing in Japan. The first chapter of the book focuses on Bob Horner, a star player for the Atlanta Braves during the 1980's who signed a large contract to play for the Yakult Swallows in 1987. Because of the book, I was thinking of Bob Horner for the first time in many years. And then yesterday I read that Bob Horner died. The universe is so strange sometimes.  

Horner was treated like a deity when he first arrived in Japan, and his every move was documented by the Japanese press with a fervency usually reserved for pop stars or heads of state. Inevitably, Horner fever cooled, as he fell short of the 50 home runs that the Swallows wanted him to hit—they even issued him uniform number 50, to drill the point home. Horner played in 93 games for Yakult, hitting 31 home runs and batting .327. Excellent numbers, but not 50 home runs. After the 1987 season, Horner returned stateside, signing a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals.  

Bob Horner had an unusual career in baseball. A college standout at Arizona State, he went directly from college to the major leagues. It worked out well for both Horner and the Atlanta Braves. In 1978, his first season in the major leagues, Horner smashed 23 home runs in only 89 games and won the NL Rookie of the Year award. Horner would go on to rack up 3 seasons of 30 or more home runs, with a high of 35 homers in 1980. In 1986, Horner became one of a select group of players to hit 4 home runs in a single game.  

After the 1986 season, Horner seemed to be on top of the baseball world. He had just completed his 9th major league season, and he had hit 215 home runs in his career. He wasn’t even 30 years old yet. Horner was looking for a deal that would pay him $2 million a year. He had been making about $1.5 million per year in his previous contract with the Braves. But the owners of major league baseball had decided to illegally collude with each other and not sign any big free agent deals. Future Hall of Famers like Tim Raines and Andre Dawson hit the free agent market and expected an abundance of offers. They got crickets. Dawson famously handed the Chicago Cubs a blank check and told them to pay him whatever they thought he was worth. Dawson took a 50% pay cut, as he went from making over $1 million dollars in 1986 to a salary of $500,000 in 1987. It fueled his competitive fire, as Dawson slugged 49 home runs and drove in 137 RBIs, both figures leading the league, and he won the MVP award.  

No one was making a move on Horner, so he signed with the Yakult Swallows, novelist Haruki Murakami's favorite baseball team. Murakami has famously said that the idea of becoming a novelist occurred to him at a Swallows baseball game, when he saw Dave Hilton smack a beautiful double into the outfield. I'm not sure what Murakami thought of Bob Horner, but I'm sure he could write a short story about a chunky, blonde American third baseman coming over to Japan to play for the Yakult Swallows and igniting a fever throughout Japan.  

Horner didn't always practice before he played baseball. Shoot, when it got hot down in Atlanta during the summer, ol' Bob would just roll up to the stadium in his t-roof Camaro, pound a Budweiser in the clubhouse, put his uniform on, and just start to playin'. No batting practice, no fielding practice, no nuthin. He reckoned, why tire yourself out like a fool practicin' before the game even got goin'? They don't call it Hotlanta fur nuthin, ya know. This was anathema to the Japanese, who revered tough, brutal practice sessions that often left players on the verge of keeling over. Suffice it to say, Horner's way and the Swallows way were not always compatible.  

When Horner returned to the United States in 1988, he appeared in 60 games for the Cardinals, hitting a paltry 3 home runs, before injuries wiped out the rest of his season. In the spring of 1989, Bob Horner retired from baseball at the age of 31. His career stands as something of a "what might have been," those first 9 seasons being the summit of what he could achieve in the game, which was substantial. And then that gap year of 1987 in Japan, followed by just a feeble return.  

Bob Horner did not become a Hall of Famer. Few players do. It is rude to criticize a man for what he is not. Better instead to celebrate him for what he was. And for 9 years, Bob Horner was a hitter who struck fear into the hearts of pitchers in the National League.