Look Homeward, Angel (Paperback)

by Thomas Wolfe (Author) "A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills..." (more)
Key Phrases: mountain grills, poor old papa, wind grieved, George Graves, Jim Trivett, Horse Hines (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children of William Oliver Wolfe and Julia Elizabeth Westall. In 1906, Julia Wolfe bought a boarding house named- at nearby Spruce Street. She took up residence there with her youngest son, while the rest of the family remained at the Woodfin Street residence.

Wolfe studied at the University of North Carolina (UNC), where he was a member of the Dialectic Society and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. In the fall of 1919, he enrolled in a playwriting course. His one-act play, The Return of Buck Gavin, was performed by the Carolina Playmakers with Wolfe acting in the title role. In 1922, Wolfe received his Master's from Harvard. His father died in June of that year, in Asheville, an event that would influence his writing.

Unable to sell any of his plays, Wolfe found his writing style more suited to fiction than the stage. He sailed to Europe in October 1924, to continue writing. From England he traveled to France, Italy and Switzerland. On his return voyage in 1925, he met Aline Bernstein (1882-1955), a scene designer for the Theatre Guild. Bernstein, 18 years his senior, was married to a successful stock broker by whom she had two children.

In October 1925, Wolfe and Aline became lovers. Their affair was turbulent and sometimes combative, but she was a powerful influence. He returned to Europe in the summer of 1926 and began writing the first version of a novel,-which eventually evolved into Look Homeward, Angel. It was an autobiographical novel that fictionalized his early experiences in Asheville, the narrative chronicling family, friends and the boarders at his mother's establishment on Spruce Street. Also available from Download eBooks: You can't go home again (Wolfe).

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
"Language as rich and ambitious and intensely American as any of our novelists has ever accomplished."-- Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons

"Look Homeward, Angel is one of the most important novels of my life. . . . It's a wonderful story for any young person burning with literary ambition, but it also speaks to the longings of our whole lives; I'm still moved by Wolfe's ability to convey the human appetite for understanding and experience."-- Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian

"Wolfe made it possible to believe that the stuff of life, with all its awe and mystery and magic, could by some strange alchemy be transmuted to the page."-- William Gay, author of The Long Home

"As so many other American boys had before and have since, I discovered a version of myself in Look Homeward, Angel, and I became intoxicated with the elevated, poetic prose." -- Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction edition (October 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684804433
• ISBN-13: 978-0684804439
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #425,590 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Straight from the heart - the truest "American" novel, February 17, 2000

By	Mark Shanks (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I feel sorry for anyone who can't find echoes of their own youth in Wolfe's undeniably Romantic writing. You won't find clipped Hemingway-esque sentences, nor the pages-long obscure wanderings of fellow Southerner Faulkner, but Wolfe recreates his world so perfectly that filming it would be redundant. "Self-absorbed"? Yes, how else could anyone produce a literary translation of a life's experience? Cliched? Not when it was written, although as a "coming of age" novel it has many predecessors, none were so ambitious in scope or detail. Achingly, achingly nostalgic, beautifully written, TRUE to itself, sparing nothing of the author or his vision. Pretentious? Hardly, especially when set next to the Oprah-fied books on the best-seller lists today. This and its immediate succesor "Of Time and the River" are, to me, arguably the finest books ever written describing not just life in America but more importantly the sense of loss through time and distance of love, family, and home and the emotional maturation that follows.

No, I couldn't recommend this to EVERYbody, but if you haven't become too sophisticated to remember what it was really like to be young, lonely, in love, or homesick, or to see though a child's eyes the wonder in a leaf, a stone, a door; to cry "Oh, lost!" over a memory, you will find much to cherish in this book.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A prose poem, March 23, 2000

By	C. Colt "It Just Doesn't Matter" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Look Homeward Angel" is undeniably a young man's story and as such, I wonder if it appeals to men more than it does to women. It's hard to imagine how the novel's countless aches and awkward blunders would fail to resonate with any man's youthful recollections. When readers in Woolfe's hometown castigated him for his venial characterization of the people he grew up with, Woolfe pointed out that none of his characters represented any one particular person. Instead, their qualities were so real and so vivid that readers felt they instantly recognized them. And so it was with me, although I was born decades after Woolfe's death and raised in a different part of the country. The dialog, drama, and emotional undercurrents of "Look Homeward Angel" were strangely and overwhelmingly recognizable. This is the genius of Woolfe.

My favorite parts of the novel vary considerably. I love the prose poem in the very beginning of the book. I also love the protagonist's descriptions of seemingly ordinary activities such as walking through a pasture on a fall evening. Such passages have the unnerving quality of being accessible yet somehow ineffable. A part of you is walking through the field with Eugene Gant taking in the cold wind, the smells of smoke and cow manure under the grim sky. Another part of you is asking why that experience feels so real and immediate even though you've never had it before.

Woolfe took a microscope to ordinary people and somehow rendered them great. He did not accord them the stature of epoch heroes or contemporary celebrities. Instead, he rendered their feelings and actions as immediate as their surroundings. You probably would not want to be any of the people in "Look Homeward Angel" and you might not even like them that much. But you will come away from the book with the sense of knowing those people intimately. For this reason, it is impossible to finish "Look Homeward Angel" without a having profound emotional response.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An in depth look into American life and a young man's heart, November 21, 1999

By	"bigalbigal" (Phoenix, Arizona) - See all my reviews

Wolfe is definitely a master of prose and words, at times hisdescriptions and observations of life are captivating and inspiring.However, the book did move very slowly at times, as his level of detail and character development was almost unparalled compared to others authors I have read. This was good and bad, at times it was really boring, no matter how intellectual I wanted to be, and it was difficult to keep going, however you really do get a sense of the characters. For a true look at small town American life at this point in history, there is no equivalent that I have come across. The last half of the book is especially poignant, and the most interesting development of the book for me was to witness Gene's transformation from child to a wanderlust stricken youth. There are no happy endings here, there are no unbelievable revelations, only a family and its tumultuous journey through this strange travel that we call life. You will either love this book, or you will hate it, but if you have the patience to persevere through Wolfe's long-winded prose, it is well worth the time.