Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.
The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our times are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.
The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our times are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.
That passage is not Jeff Minick--Good Lord, I wish!--but from the beginning of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel.
This evening I was flipping through Pat Conroy's A Writing Life, which I read a good while back and still enjoy. I came to the chapter on Wolfe, and the above quotation, and thought: I should post something about Thomas Wolfe.
Like many writers, I fell in love with Wolfe's writing when I was young, when he works best, because he describes and sympathizes with young protagonists like Eugene Gant of Look Homeward. I am saddened that Wolfe is read so little these days, denigrated for his verbosity and his enthusiasm, even for his zest for life as he perceived it.
So anyway, I came inside my apartment intending to post a few words here about Wolfe and found an email from a reader who will remain anonymous. This lovely woman had written earlier in the day to say that she had appreciated a review I wrote of the movie Genius, a film about Wolfe and his editor Maxwell Perkins, and the bond between them. She had recently read Wolfe, loved Look Homeward, Angel, and rued the day this North Carolina author had been neglected.
I love when these things happen. I love when the universe clicks, when the pair of dice on the green table finally roll an eleven or seven, when coincidence holds sway.
I'll keep this piece short, but let me go back to Conroy and Wolfe, an author who influenced an entire generation of writers ranging from Ray Bradbury to Norman Mailer. Here is one declaration by Conroy regarding Wolfe in his tribute:
What the critics loathed most, I loved with all the clumsiness I brought to the task of being a boy. "He's not writing, idiots," I wanted to scream at them all. "Thomas Wolfe's not writing. Don't you see? Don't you understand? He's praying, you dumb sons of bitches. He's praying."
Agreed, Mr. Conroy. He's praying. And may you and Mr. Wolfe enjoy together the great eternal library.
This evening I was flipping through Pat Conroy's A Writing Life, which I read a good while back and still enjoy. I came to the chapter on Wolfe, and the above quotation, and thought: I should post something about Thomas Wolfe.
Like many writers, I fell in love with Wolfe's writing when I was young, when he works best, because he describes and sympathizes with young protagonists like Eugene Gant of Look Homeward. I am saddened that Wolfe is read so little these days, denigrated for his verbosity and his enthusiasm, even for his zest for life as he perceived it.
So anyway, I came inside my apartment intending to post a few words here about Wolfe and found an email from a reader who will remain anonymous. This lovely woman had written earlier in the day to say that she had appreciated a review I wrote of the movie Genius, a film about Wolfe and his editor Maxwell Perkins, and the bond between them. She had recently read Wolfe, loved Look Homeward, Angel, and rued the day this North Carolina author had been neglected.
I love when these things happen. I love when the universe clicks, when the pair of dice on the green table finally roll an eleven or seven, when coincidence holds sway.
I'll keep this piece short, but let me go back to Conroy and Wolfe, an author who influenced an entire generation of writers ranging from Ray Bradbury to Norman Mailer. Here is one declaration by Conroy regarding Wolfe in his tribute:
What the critics loathed most, I loved with all the clumsiness I brought to the task of being a boy. "He's not writing, idiots," I wanted to scream at them all. "Thomas Wolfe's not writing. Don't you see? Don't you understand? He's praying, you dumb sons of bitches. He's praying."
Agreed, Mr. Conroy. He's praying. And may you and Mr. Wolfe enjoy together the great eternal library.
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