"Oktoberfest," a short story by Thomas Wolfe (1937)

Germany held a special place in Thomas Wolfe’s heart. His first visit in the fall of 1928 was the inspiration behind the short story “Oktoberfest,” published in 1937. Wolfe’s later visits to Germany in 1935 and 1936, after Hitler and the Nazis had taken power, transformed his view of the country, and when he left in 1936, he knew he would never return to Germany. Wolfe chronicled his disillusionment with Germany under fascism in the powerful short novel “I Have a Thing to Tell You,” and the excellent short story “The Dark Messiah.”  

“Oktoberfest” is a portrait of the Germany that Wolfe fell in love with. The story was later incorporated into Wolfe’s posthumous novel The Web and the Rock. It’s not a typical short story with rising action, dramatic tension, and a climax. Rather, “Oktoberfest” is a sketch of a time and place. The story becomes a vehicle for Wolfe’s powerful talent for observation and description. Wolfe is especially good as describing food and drink: “an enormous hunger woke in me, a hunger for flesh such as I had never known: I wanted not only to see the Roasted Ox, I wanted to devour great pieces of it.” (The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, p.310)  

Wolfe and his German friend Heinrich make friends with the locals as they sit in the beer tent, drinking and eating. “We went our way, and they went theirs...The fumes of the heady and powerful beer, and more than that the fumes of fellowship and affection, of friendship and of human warmth, had mounted to our brains and hearts. We knew it was a rare and precious thing, a moment’s spell of wonder and of joy, that it must end, and we were loath to see it go.” (p.315) 

Heinrich says to Wolfe, “A poet, ja. These people did not know you, and they said you were a poet. And you are.”  

This sets up the final paragraph of the story, which is one of my favorite pieces of Wolfe’s writing. 

“And in the moonlight, his lonely scarred and pitted face was transfigured by a look of happiness. And we walked the streets, we walked the streets. We felt the sense of something priceless and unutterable, a world invisible that we must see, a world intangible that we must touch, a world of warmth, of joy, of imminent and impending happiness, of impossible delight, that was almost ours. And we walked the streets, we walked the streets. The moon blazed blank and cold out of the whited brilliance of the sky. And the streets were silent. All the doors were closed. And from the distance came the last and muted murmurs of the fair. And we went home.” (p.315) 

It’s such a beautiful paragraph, capturing the fleeting joy of a memorable evening. Wolfe was such a great writer of joy—his exuberant prose nearly leaps off the page. And there’s such lovely poetry in his repeating the line, “And we walked the streets, we walked the streets.”  

Over just eight pages, “Oktoberfest” gives the reader a sense of why Thomas Wolfe was such a talented writer.