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The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, Including the Original Short Story
The extended version of Wolfe's short story in memory of his father
The Four Lost Men is the first publication of the long version of Thomas Wolfe's story of familial and national reflection set during World War I. Here Wolfe supplies a moving portrait of his dying father, as well as a rich meditation on American history and ambitions. Discussion of the title characters—Presidents James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes—provides Wolfe an opportunity to assess the mood and promise of the nation and to reflect on the obstacles toward untapped American potential.
Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes, the four Republican presidents who followed Grant during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, were all Civil War generals and self-made men, though none experienced a distinguished term in office. These presidents are iconic figures in the recollections and political monologues of the teenaged narrator's dying father. In his efforts to understand their importance to his father, the boy comes to appreciate the act of storytelling that redefines these men in his father's memory and in turn redefines the father in the narrator's memory.
Originally published as a short story of seven thousand words in Scribner's Magazine in 1934—and later abridged by one thousand words for republication in the 1935 anthology From Death to Morning—Wolfe's expanded tale is published here for the first time in its full length of some twenty-one thousand words. Editors Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli have employed the same methods to reestablish this text as they used in their centennial edition of O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life, the unabridged version of Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. The reestablishment of the long version of The Four Lost Men opens an undeveloped area of scholarship on Wolfe's short fiction and serves as a model for restoring other such works.
The Four Lost Men is the first publication of the long version of Thomas Wolfe's story of familial and national reflection set during World War I. Here Wolfe supplies a moving portrait of his dying father, as well as a rich meditation on American history and ambitions. Discussion of the title characters—Presidents James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes—provides Wolfe an opportunity to assess the mood and promise of the nation and to reflect on the obstacles toward untapped American potential.
Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes, the four Republican presidents who followed Grant during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, were all Civil War generals and self-made men, though none experienced a distinguished term in office. These presidents are iconic figures in the recollections and political monologues of the teenaged narrator's dying father. In his efforts to understand their importance to his father, the boy comes to appreciate the act of storytelling that redefines these men in his father's memory and in turn redefines the father in the narrator's memory.
Originally published as a short story of seven thousand words in Scribner's Magazine in 1934—and later abridged by one thousand words for republication in the 1935 anthology From Death to Morning—Wolfe's expanded tale is published here for the first time in its full length of some twenty-one thousand words. Editors Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli have employed the same methods to reestablish this text as they used in their centennial edition of O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life, the unabridged version of Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. The reestablishment of the long version of The Four Lost Men opens an undeveloped area of scholarship on Wolfe's short fiction and serves as a model for restoring other such works.
92 pages, Hardcover
First published July 20, 2008
About the author
Thomas Wolfe
415 books1,158 followersPeople best know American writer Thomas Clayton Wolfe for his autobiographical novels, including
Look Homeward, Angel
(1929) and the posthumously published
You Can't Go Home Again
(1940).
Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels and many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He mixed highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. Wolfe wrote and published books that vividly reflect on American culture and the mores, filtered through his sensitive, sophisticated and hyper-analytical perspective. People widely knew him during his own lifetime.
Wolfe inspired the works of many other authors, including Betty Smith with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Robert Morgan with Gap Creek; Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, said, "My writing career began the instant I finished Look Homeward, Angel." Jack Kerouac idolized Wolfe. Wolfe influenced Ray Bradbury, who included Wolfe as a character in his books.
(from Wikipedia)
Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels and many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He mixed highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. Wolfe wrote and published books that vividly reflect on American culture and the mores, filtered through his sensitive, sophisticated and hyper-analytical perspective. People widely knew him during his own lifetime.
Wolfe inspired the works of many other authors, including Betty Smith with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Robert Morgan with Gap Creek; Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, said, "My writing career began the instant I finished Look Homeward, Angel." Jack Kerouac idolized Wolfe. Wolfe influenced Ray Bradbury, who included Wolfe as a character in his books.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 10, 2025
Thomas Wolfe’s 1934 short story “The Four Lost Men” is a meditation on storytelling, the American past, and four obscure U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, I read the version of “The Four Lost Men” that appears in the 1987 book The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe. I just finished reading an expanded version of the short story in the book The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, published in 2008, and edited by Arlyn and Matthew J. Bruccoli.
The long version of “The Four Lost Men” is considerably longer than the version of the story that appears in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, as it’s expanded from 7,000 words to 21,000 words. The long version adds a lot of material, but is it actually better than the short version? I like the focus that the shorter version has, and I think the longer version ventures into some detours that don’t necessarily add much to the main story.
The story begins with the narrator’s father spinning a tale on the porch of the family’s boardinghouse in 1917. Wolfe’s fiction often had a strong autobiographical flavor, and his mother ran a boardinghouse, which is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site in Asheville, North Carolina.
The narrator’s father proclaims that he is a proud Republican, which makes him something of an oddity in the then “Solid South,” where nearly every politician was a Democrat. This was in large part due to the Civil War, and the South’s animosity towards the Republican party, which persisted until the 1960’s when the South flipped from Democratic to Republican, due to civil rights.
The narrator’s father then recounts all of the presidents he has seen come and go, including “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes.” Wolfe writes: “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes—time of my father’s time, earth of his earth, blood of his blood, life of his life—living, real, and actual people in all the passion, power, and feeling of my father’s youth. And for me, the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea-depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis.
And they were lost.” (p.38-9)
Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison are not exactly household names, and even a dedicated student of American history would have trouble telling you much about these men.
It’s no wonder these presidents seemed lost to Wolfe. Only Benjamin Harrison was still alive when Wolfe was born in 1900, and Harrison died the next year. To Wolfe, they were long gone, ancient. No one was penning odes to Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes. They were not inspiring sonnets, odes, poems, lyric dramas, great novels, or popular songs. Jazz Age underclassmen wearing racoon coats were not serenading sweethearts on their ukeleles with tunes about the Civil War heroism of these four forgotten men.
The core of the story is the flights of fancy that the narrator’s mind goes on as he is pondering the lives of these four presidents. He imagines what their Civil War service was like—all four men became generals during the war.
Wolfe writes: “Had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes been young? Or had they been born with flowing whiskers, sideburns, and wing-collars, speaking gravely from the cradle of their mother’s arms the noble vacant sonorities of far-seeing statesmanship?” (p.42) I love those sentences, it’s impossible for me to think of men from that era as having ever been young. But of course, they must have been.
Wolfe originally wrote of the four presidents frequenting brothels, but when his editor Maxwell Perkins objected, Wolfe cut the references for the original publication of the story in Scribner’s magazine. In the version of the story included in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, the reference was put back in: “Did they not, as we, when young, prowl softly up and down past brothels in the dark hours of the night, seeing the gas lamps flare and flutter on the corner, falling with livid light upon the corners of old cobbled streets of brownstone houses?” (p.113)
Curiously, the reference is changed in The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, as it reads “prowl softly up and down the doorless avenues of night.” (p.42) I’m not quite sure why the Bruccolis made this change to the text. Wolfe did take the word “brothel” out, but it seems clear that he had originally intended to use the word brothel and then changed it at Perkins’ request. I prefer the Complete Short Stories version, as it paints a more interesting portrait of the presidents as brothel visitors. And it seems in keeping with Wolfe’s idea of making these remote historical figures into real, flesh and blood humans.
The flights of fancy that Wolfe embarks upon in the story are fantastic. He has the four presidents proclaiming the virtues of American women from the different regions of the country, like a Greek chorus. “’And there are women in the North,’ cried Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes, ‘who wait for us with Viking eyes, the deep breast and the great limbs of the Amazons. There are powerful and lovely women in the North,’ they said, ‘whose eyes are blue and depthless as a mountain lake.’” (p.47)
“The Four Lost Men” was cut by quite a bit when it appeared in Wolfe’s 1935 collection of short stories, From Death to Morning, and this version, also included in the book, is inferior to the original magazine version, and the long version.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an admirer of “The Four Lost Men.” Fitzgerald wrote to a friend, asking “did you notice that in the second issue of Scribner’s that really great story by Tom Wolfe,” which was “The Four Lost Men.” (Correspondence of FSF, p.323)
Fitzgerald also expressed his enthusiasm for “The Four Lost Men” in a letter to Maxwell Perkins, written after Wolfe’s death. Fitzgerald wrote: “I like ‘Only the Dead’ {Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, another Wolfe short story} and ‘Arthur, Garfield, etc.’ {The Four Lost Men} right up with the tops.” (Letters of FSF, p.316) Obviously, the story made an impression on Fitzgerald.
I don’t envy the task that the Bruccolis faced in putting together the long version of “The Four Lost Men.” Basically, they found all kinds of additional material in Wolfe’s archives that seemed to belong to the story “The Four Lost Men” and so they included it. But because Wolfe’s authorial intent is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, it’s very hard to say, “This is how Thomas Wolfe wanted this story.” But for fans of Wolfe’s powerful writing, The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version highlights one of his great short stories.
The long version of “The Four Lost Men” is considerably longer than the version of the story that appears in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, as it’s expanded from 7,000 words to 21,000 words. The long version adds a lot of material, but is it actually better than the short version? I like the focus that the shorter version has, and I think the longer version ventures into some detours that don’t necessarily add much to the main story.
The story begins with the narrator’s father spinning a tale on the porch of the family’s boardinghouse in 1917. Wolfe’s fiction often had a strong autobiographical flavor, and his mother ran a boardinghouse, which is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site in Asheville, North Carolina.
The narrator’s father proclaims that he is a proud Republican, which makes him something of an oddity in the then “Solid South,” where nearly every politician was a Democrat. This was in large part due to the Civil War, and the South’s animosity towards the Republican party, which persisted until the 1960’s when the South flipped from Democratic to Republican, due to civil rights.
The narrator’s father then recounts all of the presidents he has seen come and go, including “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes.” Wolfe writes: “Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes—time of my father’s time, earth of his earth, blood of his blood, life of his life—living, real, and actual people in all the passion, power, and feeling of my father’s youth. And for me, the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea-depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis.
And they were lost.” (p.38-9)
Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison are not exactly household names, and even a dedicated student of American history would have trouble telling you much about these men.
It’s no wonder these presidents seemed lost to Wolfe. Only Benjamin Harrison was still alive when Wolfe was born in 1900, and Harrison died the next year. To Wolfe, they were long gone, ancient. No one was penning odes to Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes. They were not inspiring sonnets, odes, poems, lyric dramas, great novels, or popular songs. Jazz Age underclassmen wearing racoon coats were not serenading sweethearts on their ukeleles with tunes about the Civil War heroism of these four forgotten men.
The core of the story is the flights of fancy that the narrator’s mind goes on as he is pondering the lives of these four presidents. He imagines what their Civil War service was like—all four men became generals during the war.
Wolfe writes: “Had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes been young? Or had they been born with flowing whiskers, sideburns, and wing-collars, speaking gravely from the cradle of their mother’s arms the noble vacant sonorities of far-seeing statesmanship?” (p.42) I love those sentences, it’s impossible for me to think of men from that era as having ever been young. But of course, they must have been.
Wolfe originally wrote of the four presidents frequenting brothels, but when his editor Maxwell Perkins objected, Wolfe cut the references for the original publication of the story in Scribner’s magazine. In the version of the story included in The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, the reference was put back in: “Did they not, as we, when young, prowl softly up and down past brothels in the dark hours of the night, seeing the gas lamps flare and flutter on the corner, falling with livid light upon the corners of old cobbled streets of brownstone houses?” (p.113)
Curiously, the reference is changed in The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version, as it reads “prowl softly up and down the doorless avenues of night.” (p.42) I’m not quite sure why the Bruccolis made this change to the text. Wolfe did take the word “brothel” out, but it seems clear that he had originally intended to use the word brothel and then changed it at Perkins’ request. I prefer the Complete Short Stories version, as it paints a more interesting portrait of the presidents as brothel visitors. And it seems in keeping with Wolfe’s idea of making these remote historical figures into real, flesh and blood humans.
The flights of fancy that Wolfe embarks upon in the story are fantastic. He has the four presidents proclaiming the virtues of American women from the different regions of the country, like a Greek chorus. “’And there are women in the North,’ cried Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes, ‘who wait for us with Viking eyes, the deep breast and the great limbs of the Amazons. There are powerful and lovely women in the North,’ they said, ‘whose eyes are blue and depthless as a mountain lake.’” (p.47)
“The Four Lost Men” was cut by quite a bit when it appeared in Wolfe’s 1935 collection of short stories, From Death to Morning, and this version, also included in the book, is inferior to the original magazine version, and the long version.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an admirer of “The Four Lost Men.” Fitzgerald wrote to a friend, asking “did you notice that in the second issue of Scribner’s that really great story by Tom Wolfe,” which was “The Four Lost Men.” (Correspondence of FSF, p.323)
Fitzgerald also expressed his enthusiasm for “The Four Lost Men” in a letter to Maxwell Perkins, written after Wolfe’s death. Fitzgerald wrote: “I like ‘Only the Dead’ {Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, another Wolfe short story} and ‘Arthur, Garfield, etc.’ {The Four Lost Men} right up with the tops.” (Letters of FSF, p.316) Obviously, the story made an impression on Fitzgerald.
I don’t envy the task that the Bruccolis faced in putting together the long version of “The Four Lost Men.” Basically, they found all kinds of additional material in Wolfe’s archives that seemed to belong to the story “The Four Lost Men” and so they included it. But because Wolfe’s authorial intent is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, it’s very hard to say, “This is how Thomas Wolfe wanted this story.” But for fans of Wolfe’s powerful writing, The Four Lost Men: The Previously Unpublished Long Version highlights one of his great short stories.
March 12, 2020
My first experience of reading Thomas Wolfe. It was not what I was expecting. In the extended version of 'The Four Lost Men' (who, incidentally, are U.S. Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison -- although Wolfe apparently liked putting Hayes out-of-chronological-order, following Harrison -- alliteration, I suppose?), I marveled at the richness of Wolfe's language, even as it was a bit repetitive and looped back on itself. The 'shorter' version, originally published in Scribner's magazine in 1935 (and included in the anthology of his stories 'From Death to Morning'), is amazing in a different way: the editing job is remarkable for its clarity and directness. -- The story has to deal with the narrator's father, who is nearing death from cancer, and his reminiscences of past Republican Presidents, which he shares with several boarders at the guest house his wife runs. (Strong autobiographical tone here, as Wolfe's mother ran such an establishment.) Not much about the presidents, though -- mostly speculation-spinning (including allusions to brothel-frequenting that were deleted from the first published versions of the story). All in all, a bit confusing and not very involving. -- This edition includes a scholarly introduction, notes, and a comparison of the long and short versions. -- I'll have to tackle one of Wolfe's novels before I form a final judgment as to his quality as an author...
November 5, 2024
This is a short story that was written by Thomas Wolfe and is included in a compilation of his stories titled From Death To Morning. “The Four Lost Men” contains the noble concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as conveyed by the four lost men in the story; those concepts comprise what we call, the “American Way,” and it’s the best way for people the world over to live. ****
August 21, 2010
After many years away from reading Thomas Wolfe, I am reminded again why he is my favorite writer. He is a poet who writes prose, and this brief tone poem to his youth, his father, and to the vast promise and sorrow of America that infuses everything Wolfe wrote is as musical and profound as anything he ever wrote.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews