The Starwick Episodes

by Thomas Wolfe (Editor), Richard S. Kennedy (Editor)

One of the most enduring characters in Thomas Wolfe's fiction is Francis Starwick, the Midwestern aesthete who befriends Eugene Grant at Harvard in Wolfe's second autobiographical novel, Of Time and the River. Wolfe created Starwick in order to provide a foil for the artistic development of Starwick was the pretentious, narrow-minded dilettante whose response to the arts is all talk and pose, as compared with Eugene, who hopes to express in writing his intensity of feeling about all aspects of life.

While writing the novel, however, Wolfe found his manuscript proliferating beyond his control, and he turned to his editor at Scribner's Maxwell Perkins, for help in shaping the final version of the book. In the process of organizing the massive manuscript for publication, Perkins deleted some of the analyses of Starwick's behavior and several of the episodes involving Eugene and Starwick. The result was that the relationship between the two young men was not as fully developed as Wolfe had originally planned.

Richard S. Kennedy discovered these excised passages among the Wolfe papers at Harvard University's Houghton Library. In The Starwick Episodes has arranged them sequentially and indicated their position in the original manuscript. In one of them Starwick introduces Eugene to Joyce's Ulysses, and in another he takes him to view the paintings in Boston' Museum of Fine Arts. Additional scenes find the two exploring the lower depths of Paris until at length their true sexual natures are revealed in a visit to a Parisian brothel.

Kennedy's research also uncovered the story of the life of Kenneth Raisbeck, the young man whom Wolfe used as the starting point for his fictional creation of Starwick. In his Introduction, Kennedy describes Raisbeck's career, both its brilliant promise and its tragic end, and his similarity to the character in the novel.

The presence of Starwick in Of Time and the River is unforgettable despite the omission of some important scenes that Wolfe wrote for him. With the publication now of the deleted episodes, readers may gain an enriched sense of Wolfe's fascinating creation and a fuller understanding of what he was trying to convey.

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1994

About the author

People 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)

Reviews

[Adam Bregman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2000, O Lost is Thomas Wolfe's original manuscript, which would become his debut novel, Look Homeward Angel, released to great acclaim in 1929. Renowned editor, Maxwell Perkins, edited away some of that book's soul, and though Look Homeward Angel, is a classic, Wolfe's original vision is something else, a darker and deeper work. This isn't the case with The Starwick Episodes, several sections that did not make it into Wolfe's second novel, Of Time and the River. The story of Wolfe's inspiration for the Starwick character, a friend named Kenneth Raisbeck, is a tale worth telling and the first few episodes are Wolfe writing like few others could, but once the characters get to Paris, you will find yourself siding with Perkins in his editing choices. Wolfe at times goes off the deep end and the lengthy attacks on the Starwick character are exactly the sort of self-centered rants that should have been cut from a 900-page book. Still, Wolfe zealots will enjoy this, as I did.

[Pj Mensel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good except 90 per cent is in published works. His editor thought some other passages too racy for publication. Del with Starwicks homosexuality. Really a nothing burger