(Download) "Why Thomas Wolfe is a "Crate" American Novelist." by Thomas Wolfe Review # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Why Thomas Wolfe is a "Crate" American Novelist.
- Author : Thomas Wolfe Review
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 173 KB
Description
For a long time I have been fascinated--and also bothered--by some of the statements William Faulkner made about Thomas Wolfe. More than once, Faulkner put Wolfe at the top of the list of contemporary authors, but he spent just as much time backtracking from those lists and saying things like he really hadn't read much Wolfe, he wished he had never made a list, Wolfe's work was like an "elephant trying to do the hootchie-cootchie" (qtd. in Donald 354), and Wolfe bored him (Karl). But now I'd like to highlight two of Faulkner's statements about Wolfe. In a 1957 interview, Faulkner commented on the "splendid magnificent bust that Wolfe made in trying to put the whole history of the human heart on the head of the pin" (qtd. in Gwynn and Blotner 144). In a later interview he explained that he believed Wolfe "failed the best because he had tried the hardest, he had taken the longest gambles, taken the longest shots" (qtd. in Gwynn and Blotner 206). What are we to make of these comments about Wolfe's splendid failure? Should we take them seriously? If Faulkner wanted to praise Wolfe's work, which was clearly the intent of many of his statements, then why not just call his work a success, or a partial success? Why a splendid failure? Is this just Faulknerian wordplay? Is he indulging his habit of making inscrutable statements? Or does he have a point about Wolfe that is worth considering? I'd like to analyze the role that "splendid failure" plays in Wolfe's fiction and in his career. I believe Wolfe did not stumble into splendid failure, but that it was an inherent part of his literary philosophy. I will try to show Wolfe's conviction that if you're not failing as an artist, then that means you're not trying hard enough. Part of his literary method was to set impossible goals for himself and then fail to meet them in ways that were far more magnificent than success would have been. His work was a splendid failure by some ways of measuring it, but he did more with that failure than most of his contemporaries did with success.
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