Thomas Wolfe -- Look Homeward, Angel

It's not often that I have to take a break from a book, but I needed three days off from page after page of purple prose about people neither pleasant nor entertaining nor interesting.

Wolfe's 1929 Bildungsroman, a coming of age in North Carolina novel, was once thought to put Wolfe on a level with Hemingway or Faulkner.

Not many critics would hold him in such esteem today; I believe this revaluation is well deserved. Wolfe never used one word when he could cram in ten, preferably with much "poetic" diction and overuse of alliteration. Not every writer has to write the stripped down prose of Hemingway, not every darling has to be murdered, but an editorial slaughter would have been welcome here.* Wolfe also lacks the insight and imagination exercised by Faulkner with regard to race in the South.

Getting to the last of the 500 plus pages of wordy self indulgence this afternoon felt like the end of an ordeal.

Am I being unfair? Wolfe is sometimes described as an author best appreciated by young men. I admit that I might well have been impressed had I read him as an adolescent; I'm glad I did not, as the book might have done irreparable damage to my prose style.

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