"Return" an essay by Thomas Wolfe

The cover of "Return," by Thomas Wolfe. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The 1929 publication of Thomas Wolfe’s first novel Look Homeward, Angel shocked the citizens of his hometown, Asheville, North Carolina. Wolfe didn’t reveal anything that terrible about Asheville, named Altamont in the novel, but apparently his portraits of the townspeople were readily identifiable to anyone who lived in the city.  

Wolfe stayed away from Asheville until 1937. It wasn’t too difficult for Wolfe—he was a wanderer, eager to see as much of the world as possible, to drink down the sweet pap and juices of life from all the corners of the earth. Wolfe spent much of the intervening years writing his second novel, which continued the story of Eugene Gant, the main character in Look Homeward, Angel. When Of Time and the River was published in 1935, it became a best-seller, silencing the critics who had tabbed Wolfe as just a one book author.  

Upon Wolfe’s return to Asheville in the spring of 1937, he was greeted as a local celebrity, and the hard feelings of the residents of Asheville had mellowed. Wolfe wrote a short essay for the Asheville Citizen-Times about his time in Asheville. Titled “Return,” it was published in the newspaper on May 16, 1937. “Return” is now available to purchase as a pamphlet at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville.  

In “Return” Wolfe makes clear his dissatisfaction with those who merely saw his novels as being strictly autobiographical. Wolfe has the townspeople critique his version of events, and they chide him for getting details wrong in the telling of stories. He has one of his friends say to him, “Why, hell, I only said she wasn’t forty-four, the way HE said, but forty-eight, and that instead of two gold teeth the way HE had it, she had three. And two of them were on the side, with a great big bright one in the middle—not one above and one below, the way HE told about it. And it wasn’t popcorn that I bought her, but a bag of peanuts. I just wanted him to get it straight, that’s all.”  

While Wolfe’s friend is annoyed that Wolfe didn’t “get things straight,” Wolfe knows that writers of fiction are not merely transcribers of reality. In his book The Story of a Novel, Wolfe wrote: “It is literally impossible for a man who has the stuff of creation in him to make a literal transcription of his own experience. Everything in a work of art is changed and transfigured by the personality of the artist.” (p.20) Wolfe knew that the process of selection, of choosing what to write about, what to include and what to exclude, inevitably changes and transforms reality into fiction.  

Philip Roth was another writer who often struggled with critics assuming that everything he wrote was autobiographical. Roth’s fictional alter ego Nathan Zuckerman says in The Anatomy Lesson, “That writing is an act of the imagination seems to perplex and infuriate everyone.” I suspect that Thomas Wolfe would agree with Zuckerman’s statement. It certainly infuriates Wolfe’s friend in “Return” that Wolfe has not stated the facts, but Wolfe has instead bent those facts for his own purpose.  

“Return” is a beautiful little essay, and it shows Wolfe’s affection for his hometown. One of my favorite passages is this one: “And all of it is as it has always been: again, again, I turn, and find again the things that I have always known: the cool sweet magic of starred mountain night, the huge attentiveness of dark, the slope, the street, the trees, the living silence of the houses waiting, and the fact that April has come back again.”  

Book Review: Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (1929)

The beautiful first edition cover of Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe, 1929.

A stone, a leaf, a door. In Thomas Wolfe’s remarkable first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, these three images appear again and again. Wolfe was a prose writer, but his writing was also intensely poetic, as he repeatedly circled back to thoughts and images and sentences. A stone, a leaf, a door became a sort of Holy Trinity, an incantation for Wolfe to return to throughout this novel. A stone, a leaf, a door: something heavy, something light, and a way out, an escape.  

I first started reading Look Homeward, Angel more than a year ago, as I was preparing to travel to Thomas Wolfe’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. It was slow going at first. Wolfe’s writing style can be dense and thick, like rich chocolate cake being shoved in your mouth, and it was hard to get through more than a few pages at a time. I had hoped to finish reading the novel before I went to Asheville, but I realized I should have started it sooner. Visiting Asheville gave me a better understanding of Wolfe and his family, and seeing the places he was describing gave the novel a lift. That being said, I still put the novel down for several months, after reading about 150 pages. About three weeks ago, I decided to pick it up again, reading it in big gulps, 50 pages on an airplane flight, inhaling the last 40 pages at a coffee shop.  

Look Homeward, Angel is a beautiful, messy, sprawling novel, bursting with life on every page. The characters are vivid, the prose is rich with energy and vitality. I have to give the book 5 stars, not because it is perfect, but because it is such a wonderful showcase for Wolfe’s talents. I would suspect that Thomas Wolfe’s writing inspires “love it or hate it” feelings in most readers—much like (no relation) Tom Wolfe’s writing. Both Thomas and Tom Wolfe were maximalists: put it all in there! Give me every detail, for I’ve got to know it all! There was so much throbbing, fast-moving, undulating world for them to see, they simply had to pour it all out and set it down quick on that page!  

The main character in Look Homeward, Angel is Eugene Gant, the youngest child of W.O. and Eliza Gant. Eugene’s parents in the novel have the same occupations as Wolfe’s parents: W.O. is a stone mason who specializes in tombstones, and Eliza runs a boardinghouse. Eliza’s boardinghouse is called “Dixieland” in the novel, in real life Julia Wolfe’s boardinghouse was called “The Old Kentucky Home.” The house is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, and an essential site for anyone interested in Wolfe. When I visited the house, I was puzzled that the site director hadn't pointed out Tom’s bedroom to me. As we were about to leave the second floor I asked, “Which bedroom was Tom’s?” She said “Tom didn’t have one. He moved around from room to room depending on which rooms weren’t being rented.” It struck me immediately that this was a key fact about Thomas Wolfe.   

Wolfe’s writing is a master class in detail. The mention of smells sets him off on a page and a half list of perhaps one hundred different smells: “of wood smoke and burnt leaves in October...of peaches stuck with cloves and pickled in brandy...of butter and cinnamon melting on hot candied yams...the exquisite smell of the South, clean but funky, like a big woman; of soaking trees and the earth after heavy rain.” (p.69) The list is marvelous, sure it’s too much, too long, but it’s also in the accumulation of all these sense memory details that the passage gains its hypnotic, rhythmic power.  

Here’s just one paragraph, chosen roughly at random, that displays Wolfe’s skill: “Or, returning from some country walk in late autumn, he would come back from Cove or Valley with dewy nose, clotted boots, the smell of a mashed persimmon on his knee, and the odor of wet earth and grass on the palms of his hands, and with a stubborn dislike and suspicion of the scene he had visited, and fear of the people who lived there.” (p.168)  

Eugene longs for escape from the town of Altamont, as Asheville is known in the novel. He has to deal with a father who is a dramatic narcissist, and a mother who is obsessed with making money and owning property. Some critics have said that Eugene is not a fully drawn character, but I’d argue that’s partly the point. Eugene has two overbearing parents; he is struggling throughout the novel to find his own identity.  

Thomas Wolfe would be highly amused to know how much Asheville has accepted the moniker of Altamont—when I was there, I visited the Altamont Vintage antique store, and drank Altamont bottled water. I did not have need of the services of Altamont Auto Specialists, however.  

Chapter 24 features a bravura performance, as Wolfe walks us through the streets of Altamont, describing many townspeople along the way. It’s a masterpiece of many portraits drawn in miniature, with a cameo from William Jennings Bryan.  

There are many wonderful passages and lines from Look Homeward, Angel, and one of my favorites is this one: “It is the union of the ordinary and the miraculous that makes wonder.” (p.397) How beautiful.  

The United States entered World War I in April of 1917, when Eugene was 16 years old—the same age as Wolfe. Wolfe vividly describes America at that time: “War is not death to young men; war is life. The earth had never worn raiment of such color as it did that year. The war seemed to unearth pockets of ore that had never been known in the nation: there was a vast unfolding and exposure of wealth and power. And somehow—this imperial wealth, this display of power in men and money, was blended into a lyrical music. In Eugene’s mind, wealth and love and glory melted into a symphonic noise: the age of myth and miracle had come upon the world again. All things were possible.” (p.424-5)  

In the words of Wolfe’s biographer David Herbert Donald, “Wolfe’s manuscript had such difficulty finding a publisher because it was startingly idiosyncratic.” (Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, p.179) In late 1928, Wolfe was in Europe when he heard from his literary agent that the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons was interested in his novel. Wolfe excitedly wrote of this prospect to his lover Aline Bernstein “However many millions {of} things and books and people there may be in the world, no one has exactly the same picture of life as I have, no one can make the same kind of picture as I can—whether it be bad or good.” (Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, p.195)  

At Scribner’s, Wolfe found a sympathetic editor in Maxwell Perkins. Perkins’ acceptance of Look Homeward, Angel mirrored his support a decade earlier on behalf of another young author’s bildungsroman first novel: This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Just as This Side of Paradise launched Fitzgerald’s career as one of the most promising young American authors, Look Homeward, Angel launched Thomas Wolfe’s career in a similar way. Look Homeward, Angel was published on October 18, 1929—two weeks after Wolfe’s 29th birthday, and just before the stock market crash that heralded the beginning of the Great Depression.  

In May of 1938, Wolfe gave a speech at Purdue University, which proved to be his last public appearance before his tragic death that September. Wolfe’s speech was later published under the title “Writing and Living.” Wolfe said of Look Homeward, Angel: “It is what is called an autobiographical novel—a definition with which I have never agreed, simply because it seems to me every novel, every piece of creative writing that anyone can do, is autobiographical.” (The Autobiography of an American Novelist, p.120) In his 1936 book The Story of a Novel, Wolfe wrote: “It is literally impossible for a man who has the stuff of creation in him to make a literal transcription of his own experience. Everything in a work of art is changed and transfigured by the personality of the artist.” (The Autobiography of an American Novelist, p.20) 

I like these two ideas of Wolfe’s: that creative writing may draw its spark or inspiration from real life, but that it is inevitably changed and altered by the artist through the creative process. The process of selection, of choosing what to write about, what to include and what to exclude, changes and transforms reality. And whatever you choose to write about is in some way autobiographical because it inevitably reveals something about your personality. Your choice of material reveals what is important to you.  

Look Homeward, Angel is a striking and original debut novel, and it retains its power today, almost 100 years after it was first published.