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Dec 17, 2009

A. added it

This book is my nemesis.

No, seriously: I've been trying to read it for almost six years. I've tried to read it in the spring, the summer, the fall, the winter -- on planes, on the bus, on the El, in Chicago, in Baltimore, in North Carolina. And every single time, I stall out about 60% of the way through.

Stargate: Atlantis fans think that John Sheppard's still trying to read War and Peace after three years in the Pegasus Galaxy; I canonically can't finish Look Homeward, More...

5 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Conrad rated it:

The first line: "A destiny that leads from the English to the Dutch is strange enough..." Oh, really? This book has definitely not aged well; he has little sympathy for people who are so far outside the right people as to not be of English stock - I would guess he thought being a Yankee well nigh unforgivable.

That said, there's something haunting about Wolfe's prose, which often reads almost like prose poem: "Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of u More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

David rated it:

sometimes books have to be read at a certain time in your life. for me. this one was the perfect end to college. i finished this two days after graduation. after all of my friends departed for points unknown or home. i was laying in the grass at fordham in the bronx with the sun shining and with the words my mother spoke to me when she dropped me off four years earlier. she said, you won't be back. and i told her i would. but reading this. finishing it in the grass in the bronx. with everyone wh More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

JG (The Introverted Reader) rated it:

I decided to read this because Thomas Wolfe was from my area and I only had to read one short story of his for an English class. I wanted to see what he was all about. This is basically the slightly fictionalized story of his childhood and young adult years growing up in the mountains of North Carolina in the early 1900's.

I read the very first sentence of this book and my heart sank. So I read it again. And again. After about the fifth reading, I finally had some idea what he was More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2009

Evan rated it:

This book is a masterpiece that I wouldn't recommended to my worst enemy. It is dense, repetitive, overly descriptive to the nth degree, filled with page after page of infuriating, hard-to-like characters, and more or less moves like molasses. It also is possibly the most beautifully written, poetic and longing book I've read. I've cradled it and put it aside variously over the course of the last month and a half -- during one of the most difficult and trying periods of my life: the loss of my j More...

11 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2008

Sean rated it:

I spent a pleasant couple of weeks with this 500+ page classic of American literature. I really enjoyed it, but then again I am a sucker for coming-of-age stories. This one is perhaps a bit loftier than most, and goes beyond just the coming-of-age theme, but at the heart of it all, that's what it is. It is also the story of a family, an odd and morbid Southern family full of quirky members, including my favorite, Ben Gant. I quickly became enamored with his constant scowling and stock response o More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Anita added it

I was about 17 when I first read this book, and the exquisitely written story of a young man's self-discovery at the beginning of the last century made a lasting impression on me. So when a road trip took me through Asheville NC two years ago, a stop at the Thomas Wolfe house was a must, as was buying a new copy of Look Homeward Angel. I still haven't finished it, though each time I open it I am struck once again by the beautiful language. But all these years later, I am also aware that the lang More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Maz rated it:

Thomas Wolfe and I seem to have a lot in common. We both grew up in Western North Carolina and went to college in Chapel Hill. I felt obligated to read this and somehow I made it through. Wolfe is an intensely personal writer and he works in extemely vivid detail. This lead me to either be infuriated at the story's pace or amused at the fantasticly descriptive writing. In any event, I'm glad I finally read it, though I will never pick it up again. I'd actually be more interested to read so More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 05, 2008

Suzanne rated it:

This was a very long book to get through. I read it after reading a biography of Max Perkins, the editor at Scribner's who so influenced Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The final version of Look Homeward, Angel had been cut in length significally, so, as editor, he had more than a few challenges with his author.
The prose and style reflect the time in which it was written. Wolfe agonized over every word which made me feel guilty when I found sometimes found passages too lon More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 07, 2011

Patrick rated it:

“Not a great novelist—but a great writer?” I’ll have to agree with that. I am re-reading both Wolfe masterpieces, since the first time I read them the words were wasted on my youth. Now I will let them be wasted on my middle age. Wolfe had courage, I’ll give him that—courage to attempt showing every ounce of his personal experience in the pure, naked, and sometimes brutal light of truth. This he did with a just hand toward both the extraordinary and the mundane alike. Extraordinary experiences, More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Lauren rated it:

This is a nearly impossible book to review. It is at once a classic, an experimental masterpiece, a resounding mess, and a beautiful failure. When I talk about which books inspired me to become a writer I often cite LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN by James Agee. LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL would, I suspect, have had the same sort of effect on me had I read it when I was a teenager, which is the age at which I read FAMOUS MEN. At such an age, and with the wild, passionate temperament of youth, I thrille More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 15, 2009

Kerri rated it:

Like the author himself, this first novel resonates with the surge of life. It is passionate, sensual, and unsparing. Every aspect of life, from the characters' every thought and emotion, to descriptions of the natural world around them, is explored in great detail, sometimes to the point of being rambling and incoherent. However, there is a structure to the novel that ensures that the reader does not lose his way for very long. The book is set in a town ringed by the North Carolina mountains, a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 27, 2009

David rated it:

Granted, I went into this book wanting to like it. I had heard good things from Kurt Vonnegut saying it changed his life when he read it around the age of graduation from college and from another writer who said it impacted him. But I believe Thomas Wolfe's first novel here is an exceptional work and one of the best coming-of-age stories for anyone that enjoys the Bildungsroman novels and his fairly literary.

I am not certain that someone who is not an English major or a lover of lo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 13, 2009

Micha rated it:

To be able to adequately review "Look Homeward, Angel," I will have to do extensive quoting, for much of the charm of this work lies in its exquisite choice of wording.

"Look Homeward, Angel" is a classic coming-of-age novel about Eugene Gant and his raving mad family, with a heavy emphasis on the family. An early problem that I encountered while reading about this eccentric little boy, who is apparently homologous to the real Thomas Wolfe, was that I disliked him. More...

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Jun 19, 2009

Stephen rated it:

There’s a large rock near the road in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains. Every time I pass it, I think of the sunny afternoon in 1984 that I sat there and read Thomas Wolfe’s autobiographical “Look Homeward Angel.” I didn’t finish the book there, it’s far too hefty, but it’s the place that I mentally connect to the story of Eugene Gant, i.e. Wolfe himself.

After finishing the book, I drove to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Home in downtown Asheville, just to see the boarding house h More...

0 comments like

May 19, 2009

Rhonda rated it:

I have often looked at Wolfe's books as surrealistic, his ideas thrown back at him in a necessary reflection of apparently meaningless things, but ones which, by necessity of being so integral into one's being, become important. I can always remember as an adolescent thinking that this book, judging from its title, must certainly be something maudlin and childish, a kind of reminiscence that resides in the happy minds of those who dream without nightmares. For years I wanted nothing to do with More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2010

Jenny rated it:

Why did I read this book? Well, I read “You Can’t Go Home Again” when I was about sixteen, and was impressed by Wolfe’s lavish prose. So I decided to read this, and almost instantly regretted it. But I slogged through the whole thing.

The hardest thing was the level of racism and sexism. It’s totally understandable for a book written by a Southern white man in the 20s. In this autobiographical novel, he was describing the environment he lived in, and the way he thought about i More...

0 comments like

May 26, 2009

El rated it:

Thomas Wolfe and Tom Wolfe are not the same person. The former died in 1938. The latter is still alive. There sometimes is confusion.

Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward, Angel when he was rather young, and it's almost hard to believe once you trample your way through this lofty tome. It's a highly fictionalized account of Wolfe's own life, told through the character of Eugene Gant from his birth up until just shy of his twentieth year. The family dynamic is surely a complicated one More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 13, 2007

Ruth rated it:

This is one of the most beautifully written books that I've read in years. Wolfe bravely risks plunging into the chasm of melodrama in order to eke out a colorful, intense inner life for his main character Eugene Gant. The experimental style and earned emotional intensity make the book uproot itself from its plot line at times to achieve a feeling of timelessness that makes the story of the Gants seem epic.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 28, 2011

Jade rated it:

Well, to be honest, if I hadn't been listening to this book on CD, I don't think I would have made it past the first chapter. Wolfe uses a lot of very descriptive (flowery) writing as he describes his own childhood up through the age of 19. Of course "the names have been changed to protect the innocent." But he didn't change the place names enough to completely mislead the reader familiar with the Asheville (Altamont) area. Academy St. is College St., Hatton Ave. is Patton Ave. (duh More...

2 comments like

Jun 20, 2011

David rated it:

When Thomas Wolfe is at his best, his writing is inspired, lyrical and athletic. Clearly, the work may be considered by some to be self-indulgent as the story line stays pretty close to home. Home is located in the hills of western North Carolina at his mother's boarding house, Dixieland. When a writer is fixed on his or her autobiography, and in Wolfe's case this involves his childhood, early youth and college education, the writing seems more non-fiction than fiction. This story is essentially More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Katelyn rated it:

A wonderfully flawed novel, though I'm sure that makes little sense. The last 10 pages were so beautiful that they literally made me forget where I was for a moment. The other 500 pages are good, sure, but those last make the rest worthwhile. You Can't Go Home Again is by far Wolfe's crowning achievement (and perhaps more readable than this), but both novels are essential to fully appreciate either one.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 26, 2009

Carmen rated it:

This book is really full of heart in that Wolfe just lays it all out on the table, seemingly his entire childhood. A coming-of-age story, a story about small-town America, a story about realizing what you love can also turn out to be what you hate. The irony of it all is how his suffocating family drives him crazy and he can't wait to get away from them, yet his childhood made him into the artist that he is and lead to him writing this epic, his first novel coincidentally. The story does lack so More...

0 comments like

Dec 01, 2008

Angie rated it:

There's a line in Robert Cormier's book, I am the Cheese, which inspired me to read Thomas Wolfe for the first time, and for that I will forever be indebted to Robert Cormier.

I cannot express myself in a manner that would do this book justice. It's lovely, haunting, compelling, lengthy.... One of my absolute favorite books.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 16, 2012

Mathew rated it:

Look Homeward, Angel is possibly one of the most beautiful and touching books I have ever read and definitely ranks in my Top Ten favourite books of all time. Thomas Wolfe is a true master of imagery and description and this book deserves a place on any shelf of bonafide American literature classics. I don’t know why people find this a challenge to get through at all. I could not put it down and finished it in a week.

His style of writing IS rambling and Wolfe does go off on many tan More...

1 comment like

Feb 24, 2009

Manda rated it:

I heard about this book from my friend, Brooke, and upon her glowing commendation, I picked up a copy from the library.

Although perhaps a little overly romantic, I appreciated Wolfe's style and its lyricism. And I believe I will read more of Wolfe as a result.

The book's plot is largely biographical *(autobiographical, supposedly)* following the life of Eugene Gant and his family. The version I read had some lovely illustrations alongside the text.

Thoma More...

3 comments like

Jul 12, 2010

eric rated it:

I thought this one would do more for me. Maybe it's worthy of four stars, but right now I think it's only three. In theory, I should like this book, because the writing is convoluted and the narrator loquacious. But the tone isn't quite right for my taste -- the prose is a little too purple. There were many moments I really enjoyed, but many more that left me cold. I'll mention briefly that it's a story of a smart, self-involved boy growing up in Asheville. That's the extent of the long-te More...

0 comments like

Aug 04, 2007

Kay rated it:

I adored Thomas Wolfe, and this novel in particular, when I was in my teens. Alas, now I find him practically unreadable. This is a novel for the young -- and I mean that in a good way. It's a superb novel of angst, longing, and discovery.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 06, 2007

Brian rated it:

As a young man who came of age in rural North Carolina, I thought that this novel of a young man coming of age in rural North Carolina was lackluster. Wolfe's prose is at times extremely beautiful, but his wordiness can be trying. Not for everyone.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2007

Ted rated it:

I loved this book as a teenager. Not as much now, but I do understand why it moved me so much, since I was living in Asheville at the time, headed to Chapel Hill. I think it's a rite of passage for certain teenagers, and I'm glad I read it.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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