Book Review: The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, by Thomas Wolfe, Edited by Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli (2008)

James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes.

Thomas Wolfe’s 1934 short story “The Four Lost Men” is a meditation on storytelling, the American past, and four obscure U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, I read the version of “The Four Lost Men” that appears in the 1987 book The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe. I just finished reading an expanded version of the short story in the book The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, published in 2008, and edited by Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli.  

The long version of “The Four Lost Men” is considerably longer than the version of the story that appears in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, as it’s expanded from 7,000 words to 21,000 words. The long version adds a lot of material, but is it actually better than the short version? I like the focus that the shorter version has, and I think the longer version ventures into some detours that don’t necessarily add much to the main story.  

The story begins with the narrator’s father spinning a tale on the porch of the family’s boardinghouse in 1917. Wolfe’s fiction often had a strong autobiographical flavor, and his mother ran a boardinghouse, which is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site in Asheville, North Carolina.  

The narrator’s father proclaims that he is a proud Republican, which makes him something of an oddity in the then “Solid South,” where nearly every politician was a Democrat. This was in large part due to the Civil War, and the South’s animosity towards the Republican party, which persisted until the 1960’s when the South flipped from Democratic to Republican, due to civil rights.  

The narrator’s father then recounts all of the presidents he has seen come and go, including “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes.” Wolfe writes: “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes—time of my father’s time, earth of his earth, blood of his blood, life of his life—living, real, and actual people in all the passion, power, and feeling of my father’s youth. And for me, the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea-depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis. 

And they were lost.” (p.38-9) 

Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison are not exactly household names, and even a dedicated student of American history would have trouble telling you much about these men.  

It’s no wonder these presidents seemed lost to Wolfe. Only Benjamin Harrison was still alive when Wolfe was born in 1900, and Harrison died the next year. To Wolfe, they were long gone, ancient. No one was penning odes to Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes. They were not inspiring sonnets, odes, poems, lyric dramas, great novels, or popular songs. Jazz Age underclassmen wearing racoon coats were not serenading sweethearts on their ukuleles with tunes about the Civil War heroism of these four forgotten men.  

The core of the story is the flights of fancy that the narrator’s mind goes on as he is pondering the lives of these four presidents. He imagines what their Civil War service was like—all four men became generals 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.42) 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 originally wrote of the four presidents frequenting brothels, but when his editor Maxwell Perkins objected, Wolfe cut the references for the original publication of the story in Scribner’s magazine. In the version of the story included in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, the reference was put back in: “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) 

Curiously, the reference is changed in The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, as it reads “prowl softly up and down the doorless avenues of night.” (p.42) I’m not quite sure why the Bruccolis made this change to the text. Wolfe did take the word “brothel” out, but it seems clear that he had originally intended to use the word brothel and then changed it at Perkins’ request. I prefer the Complete Short Stories version, as it paints a more interesting portrait of the presidents as brothel visitors. And it seems in keeping with Wolfe’s idea of making these remote historical figures into real, flesh and blood humans.  

The flights of fancy that Wolfe embarks upon in the story are fantastic. He has the four presidents proclaiming the virtues of American women from the different regions of the country, like a Greek chorus. “’And there are women in the North,’ cried Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes, ‘who wait for us with Viking eyes, the deep breast and the great limbs of the Amazons. There are powerful and lovely women in the North,’ they said, ‘whose eyes are blue and depthless as a mountain lake.’” (p.47)  

“The Four Lost Men” was cut by quite a bit when it appeared in Wolfe’s 1935 collection of short stories, From Death to Morning, and this version, also included in the book, is inferior to the original magazine version, and the long version.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an admirer of “The Four Lost Men.” 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, written after Wolfe’s death. 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. 

I don’t envy the task that the Bruccolis faced in putting together the long version of “The Four Lost Men.” Basically, they found all kinds of additional material in Wolfe’s archives that seemed to belong to the story “The Four Lost Men” and so they included it. But because Wolfe’s authorial intent is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, it’s very hard to say, “This is how Thomas Wolfe wanted this story.” But for fans of Wolfe’s powerful writing, The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version highlights one of his great short stories.  

"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.