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44th out of 598 books
—
1,402 voters
Look Homeward, Angel
by
Thomas Wolfe
The stunning, classic coming-of-age novel written by one of America's foremost Southern writers
A legendary author on par with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward, Angel, his first novel, about a young man's burning desire to leave his small town and tumultuous family in search of a better life, in 1929. It gave the world proof of
...morePaperback, 644 pages
Published
October 10th 2006
by Scribner
(first published 1929)
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Rating: 2.5* of five
The Book Report: A legendary author on par with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward, Angel, his first novel, about a young man's burning desire to leave his small town and tumultuous family in search of a better life, in 1929. It gave the world proof of his genius and launched a powerful legacy.
The novel follows the trajectory of Eugene Gant, a brilliant and restless young man whose wanderlust and passion shape his adolescent years in...more
The Book Report: A legendary author on par with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward, Angel, his first novel, about a young man's burning desire to leave his small town and tumultuous family in search of a better life, in 1929. It gave the world proof of his genius and launched a powerful legacy.
The novel follows the trajectory of Eugene Gant, a brilliant and restless young man whose wanderlust and passion shape his adolescent years in...more
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, Angel.
I know it shouldn't...more
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, Angel.
I know it shouldn't...more
16 likes · like · see review
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 us is not forever a stranger...more
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 us is not forever a stranger...more
9 likes · like · see review
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
13 likes · like · see review
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 trying to say a...more
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 trying to say a...more
Books are made out of books and many a book has been made out of this one. It lays such a brickwork, you’re almost obliged to read it, fated. But loving it? I couldn’t, not quite. After the first third I was dying for signs of Philip Carey, finding it so paltry and frustrating after something like Of Human Bondage. A metric ton of adjectives and a tenth of the power or story.
The ruinous Gants are mighty memorable, though, and this is the raw material for so many others. Thank you, Thomas Wolfe.
“...more
The ruinous Gants are mighty memorable, though, and this is the raw material for so many others. Thank you, Thomas Wolfe.
“...more
3 likes · like · see review
Wolfe astounds me with his writing on every page.
2 likes · like · see review
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
14 likes · like · see review
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
3 likes · like · see review
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
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 somethin...more
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 long to comple...more
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 long to comple...more
In my opinion, Look Homeward, Angel, was not a very good book. I originally chose to read it because it seemed easy to relate to, in that the story took place in a seemingly rural area. The basic story line of the book captured my interest; small town guy looks for a better and bigger life in the big city. Thomas Wolfe writes with excruciating detail, so that readers may imagine the true nature of the characters and the setting. Wolfe, in my opinion, did a great job developing the characters and...more
Likely the first and probably still the best portrait of a spectacularly dysfunctional American family by a stupendously gifted stylist, I imagine that readers fall into two camps from which there are no defections: those who find Wolfe's style too over-the-top and give up after 50 pages, and those who find it appealing over-the-top and want to do nothing more but keep reading and either begin rereading as soon as they reach the end or head for Of Time and the River and would happily read anythi...more
Look Homeward, Angel is Thomas Wolfe's masterwork, the novel that made his reputation. Born in Asheville, NC, in 1900, he was educated at the University of North Carolina and at Harvard. He spent his time teaching and traveling, building his reputation as one of America's master novelists. Wolfe died in 1938.
The novel tells the life of the Gant family in a small mountain town in North Carolina. It is widely acknowledged that the town is Asheville, NC and that the book is a thinly disguised accou...more
The novel tells the life of the Gant family in a small mountain town in North Carolina. It is widely acknowledged that the town is Asheville, NC and that the book is a thinly disguised accou...more
“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
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
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 long and in-dept...more
I am not certain that someone who is not an English major or a lover of long and in-dept...more
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. This was a serious dilemma, se...more
"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. This was a serious dilemma, se...more
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 his mother op...more
After finishing the book, I drove to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Home in downtown Asheville, just to see the boarding house his mother op...more
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 i...more
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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 it. But it just real...more
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 it. But it just real...more
I’m sorry I read the back cover of Look Homeward, Angel as I believe it unduly influenced my reading of this renowned work. To be clear, the following quote by Wolfe is what turned me off before I even opened the book,
“I don’t know yet what I am capable of doing,” wrote Thomas Wolfe at the age of twenty-three, “but, by God, I have genius–I know it too well to blush behind it.”
Perhaps my bias kept me from fully appreciating this read and I do wonder had I not been clued in to Wolfe’s overly infl...more
“I don’t know yet what I am capable of doing,” wrote Thomas Wolfe at the age of twenty-three, “but, by God, I have genius–I know it too well to blush behind it.”
Perhaps my bias kept me from fully appreciating this read and I do wonder had I not been clued in to Wolfe’s overly infl...more
May 26, 2009
El
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
1001-books-list,
early20th-centurylit
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, with an intensl...more
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, with an intensl...more
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.
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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!) Woodson St...more
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
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.
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
Sadly, I don’t get what the big deal is about this novel. It’s boring and plodding and pointless. It just goes on and on and on, and I’m asking myself, ‘What’s the point?’ I keep waiting to be wowed, and instead I find myself wishing I’d never begun reading it.
Quite honestly, I think Wolfe is overrated. He’s nowhere close to being a Hemingway or a Faulkner. The entire novel is just a bunch of nothing, really. There’s no substance to the “story” at all. In a way, he reminds me of Stephenie Meyer....more
Quite honestly, I think Wolfe is overrated. He’s nowhere close to being a Hemingway or a Faulkner. The entire novel is just a bunch of nothing, really. There’s no substance to the “story” at all. In a way, he reminds me of Stephenie Meyer....more
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Thomas Clayton Wolfe was an important American novelist of the 20th century. He wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works, and novel fragments. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodical, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written during the Great Depression, depict the variety and diversity of American culture.
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“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”
—
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“My dear, dear girl [. . .] we can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire--a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three-cents-worth of lime and iron--which we cannot get back.”
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Dec 12, 2012 08:15pm
Thank you, Chance! It still makes me flinch from boredom over...more
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