Customer Reviews

O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life

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As Pat Conroy writes on the rear jacket panel of this book, "'O Lost' is the greatest news for Thomas Wolfe lovers since the publication of 'Look Homeward, Angel.'" The statement is not hyperbole. This is it---the original manuscript that Wolfe delivered to the offices of Scribners, the version around which have swirled controversies and questions ever since and yet which has remained unseen by the public until now. Was Thomas Wolfe a sort of idiot savant, a wildly impulsive and uncontrolled writer who desperately needed the firm professional hand of a Maxwell Perkins to bring form and control to his inspired ramblings? Or was he simply a genius, so far ahead of his time that even the likes of Perkins could not comprehend what he had in the innovative and unconventional manuscript of "O Lost"? On the basis of this new edition, it might be said that he was a bit of both.

For the lover of "Look Homeward, Angel," the tired phrase "essential reading" is an understatement. There is magnificent new material here (this version is 66,000 words longer than LHA). For me, the most notable appears at the beginning--a long section detailing the early life of W.O. Gant, lovingly rendered, heartbreakingly real, writing so vivid that it must be admitted that Perkins made a terrible mistake in cutting it; it is as good as anything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote. Too, the famous kaleidoscopic scene in which we see dozens of Altamont residents waking one morning in 1908 as newspapers are delivered is here much longer, much more inclusive, with far more wonderful character sketches--writing so pure that it seems to capture for all time what a certain time and place was.

Now, in all fairness, it must be admitted that some of the new material is substandard. There are any number of self-referential jokey asides that Perkins was well-advised to eliminate; they are always mistakes. The material is also sometimes annoyingly disorganized, as in the beginning of Chapter 8, when Wolfe writes: "We believe, reader, we told you some time ago that Julia had meanwhile begun to think of Dixieland, but we have perhaps forgotten to mention that the foregoing conversation, as well as a number of the preceding events, took place in Dixieland, and that Julia had altogether ceased to live with Gant." Well, gee! Thanks for telling us, Tom! This kind of thing is amateurish, and showed clearly that Wolfe did in fact benefit from editing.

But how much? Alas, as a Thomas Wolfe devotee of many years, I cannot state that "O Lost" represents, for me, the definitive form of the manuscript. It is certainly the longest! But is it, as this edition's editors claim, a "greater work" than LHA? I think that will be up to the individual reader. For me, there is a point at which "much" becomes "too much"; certainly a lot of the new sections in Part III are rather tedious (or perhaps only seem so because we're used to the faster conclusion of LHA?). Despite the editors' claims, for instance, I do not feel that the final, indelible scene between Eugene Gant and Ben's ghost was "butchered" by Maxwell Perkins; indeed, I find the longer version presented here to be bloated and aimless, unlike the sharp and unforgettable version in LHA.

In the end, the duel between "O Lost" and LHA should probably be called a draw. (The next time I read this novel, I suspect I will utilize the standard LHA edition--but with frequent consultations to "O Lost.") Remember, Wolfe worked closely with Perkins and accepted his edits, so LHA should in no way be considered a bastardized or incorrect version of the author's intentions. But the joy here is that readers can, at last, decide for themselves. Thank you, Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli, for preparing this new edition. Every lover of Thomas Wolfe is in your debt.

What a wonderful book. It's too bad so many readers today know only Tom Wolfe, not Thomas Wolfe. Even though it has been at least 10 years since reading Look Homewood Angel, I knew almost immediately when I came to the new sections. They add a depth to the novel, bringing in the whole town and relatives, rather being only about Eugene Gant. My favorite Wolfe readings involve trains; the experience about time stopping for a moment when you look into the eyes of someone looking directly at you into the train, is exactly as I remember my earlier train rides.What are they doing now, that the train has passed? Other 800 page books might be dull, but not this one. Having been given it as a present recently, I am very surprised and disappointed that it is already 'out of print." More people should know about O Lost!

Like so many others, "Look Homeward Angel" provided one of those pivotal experiences in college. I remember reading it twice - consecutively! - and then hastening on to Wolfe's other books. Well now here is the full work and for me it provided a long, leisurely read that not only had the nostalgia inherent in the story and the leftovers from my life during my first reading, it had more of the things that make Wolfe such an important literary figure in the 20th Century. O LOST ( a phrase oft repeated in this long and rambling coming of age story) is full of the unfinished sentences, fragments, stream of consciousness admixing of past/present/future that Wolfe gradually polished during his brief career. This is a work of poetry that nestles in with Whitman, Dickinson, Agee, Faulkner in its ability to create characters who step off the page and take up permanent residence in your psyche.

Yes, some of the previously edited portions give credence to the need for the Editor's role in shaping a novel. But being able to slowly drift along with Wolfe's imagery and imagination, his acute visualization of life and death, fear and orgasm, rage and gullability...this original piece gives so much back to the reader that finishing the book is painful.

In a time when most novels hover around the 300 page mark it is a complete joy to meander through a tome of nearly 800 pages that takes concentration, patience, and a lot of time to consume. But the journey is overwhelmingly justified. Do your mind - and your heart - a favor: read "O Lost" next.

Thomas Wolfe is undoubtedly one of the, if not THE, greatest writers of the Twentieth Century. He is so underappreciated. O Lost is the correct title (finally) to his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. It was always intended to bear this title, and rightfully so, for if you read it you will understand how lost he was as a child, an adolescent, and a man. His story of the Gants is incredibly gripping and touching...hang in there the speed picks up once you get into it. It will give you so much insight on the South and the trials of a young man torn between his city, his family, and his ambitions. Thank God for Thomas Wolfe.

I have Ray Bradbury to thank for meeting with Thomas Wolfe early in my life - when I probably would have never heard about him otherwise. He never was (still isn't) a part of school literature programme in Russia.

Bradbury's magnificent short story "Forever and the Earth" in a remarkably good Russian translation was the reason why as soon as I saw a Wolfe's novel in a bookshop in 1983, I bought it immediately. It was "You Can't Go Home Again". Ever since I keep reading him and re-reading again and again. It is a slow read but so intoxicating. Being a fast reader, I have to do it by 10 or 15 pages at a a time - otherwise I get rather tipsy on his words.

"He was a wirlwind. He lifted up mountains and collected winds...
Tom Wolfe's the man, the necessary man, to write of space, of time, of huge things like nebulae and galactic war, meteors and planets, all the dakr things that he loved and put on paper were like this.He was born out of his time. He needed really big things to play with and never found them on Earth." (Ray Bradbury "Forever and the Earth". )
I still think there is nothing written about Thomas Wolfe's work that is better than Bradbury's short story.

This is absolutely stunning -- both as a novel and as an act of scholarly work by the Bruccolis. It is also an act of faith and love on their part to have worked so hard to give us, for the first time, Wolfe's own version. I am heartsick because it is unavailable to others as the publishers either did not publish enough copies and will not publish again or... their distribution is horribly off. This book barely had time to share the incredible news that the Bruccolis were giving us. Please, please, print more so that others may have the joy that those of us here have. Viva the Bruccolis!

O Lost is Thomas Wolfe's original version of his masterpiece Look Homeward Angel. I'd read the original novel and loved it, but this version is pure redemption, bringing justice to the hack job done on the original. The characters are more fully developed and plot holes are completely repaired. This used copy from a library was in near-perfect condition, the dust jacket protected in a plastic cover and the pages crisp and unmarked (perhaps due to the fact that hardly anybody checked it out!). The $9.99 price was completely fair. In all I had a great experience with this seller. Please read this book if you want the best of southern American literature from a pure genius.

What do we want to read: the author's achievement or the author's and editor's achievement. I read this 50 years ago in the latter form and look forward to the former. Excellent service from bookseller.

Look Homeward Angel has for decades been a standard coming of age book read devotedly by people in their late teens and early twenties. Over the years, stories developed concerning the amount of cutting that editor Maxwell Perkins (who also edited Hemingway and Fitzgerald) did on the book. The accepted wisdom was that Perkins pulled a masterpiece out of a huge, unpublishable manuscript. This edition, which is based on Wolfe's orginial manuscript and uses his chosen title, shows that while Perkins did help to shape the book, the text that he began with was not the monstrosity it was later believed to be. Some of the cuts Perkins made, such as W.O. Gant's memories of Gettysburg, would appear in Of Time and the River, and Perkins later admitted that he was wrong to cut it. Other material that one reads for the first time seems less important. Overall, I did not find the book to be that different from Look Homeward Angel. It shows both Wolfe's strengts and weaknesses, his abiliy to create Whitmanesque passages, and to engage in self-indulgent prose. I agree with the other reviewers that it is unfortunate that this book so quickly was allowed to go out of print. Whichever version you read, this is a book best read before you are 30.

I first re read Look Homeward Angel,( which I had not read for almost 50 years) then O Lost. I think that the original manuscript is far superior to the edited version, that was originally published. Certainly the introduction is excellant and sets the stage for W.O.Gant's odessey. Admittedly, some editing would be helpful, to make a smoother transition from one chapter to another, but only minor ones, not the radical surgery that was actually done.

I think that Wolfe realized this, and that was why he changed publishers. I look forward to the unedited manuscripts of the Web and the Rock, and You can't go home again.

My only problem is that during the period when I first read these novels, I have had medical and particularly psychiatric training. It is obvious that W.O. suffered from severe bipolar or manic depressive psychosis. With modern treatment, he would have been a happier man, or at least those around him would have had better lives. But then perhaps Thomas Wolfe would not have been the writer that he was to become.