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100-397: Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was a major American novelist of the first half of the 20th century. His enduring reputation rests largely on his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and on the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life. He was one of the first masters of autobiographical fiction , and along with William Faulkner , he

200-521: A Dramatist" (1907). In 1922, he was interviewed and given a cover page news story with photograph titled "What's the Matter With My Play?" Dr. Baker is quoted as beginning his lectures with " No one, no system, can create a dramatist. " Baker states when referring to Workshop 47 "In 1913 the Workshop began. From the beginning it has depended almost wholly on itself, doing all the work except for

300-483: A New York Times editorial challenging Misplaced Pages's categorization of American female novelists within a distinct category , which precipitated a significant amount of press coverage describing that Misplaced Pages's approach to categorization as sexism. For her, the public representation of women novelists within another category marginalizes and defines women novelists like herself outside of a field of "American novelists" dominated by men. However, other commentators, discussing

400-519: A Novel for Saturday Review , wrote that Look Homeward, Angel was "hacked and shaped and compressed into something resembling a novel by Mr. Perkins and the assembly-line at Scribners". Wolfe spent much time in Europe and was especially popular and at ease in Germany , where he made many friends. However, in 1936 he witnessed incidents of discrimination against Jews , which upset him and changed his mind about

500-510: A Novelist", highlight such moral and ethical justifications for their approach to both writing novels and criticizing them. When defining her description of the role of the modernist novelist in the essay " Modern Fiction ", Virginia Woolf argues for a representation of life not interested in the exhaustive specific details represented in realism in favor of representing a "myriad of impressions" created in experience life. Her definition made in this essay, and developed in others, helped define

600-644: A Panda-Leopard , at the age of 15, which brought him considerable critical attention. Similarly, Barbara Newhall Follett 's The House Without Windows , was accepted and published in 1927 when she was 13 by the Knopf publishing house and earned critical acclaim from the New York Times , the Saturday Review , and H. L. Mencken . Occasionally, these works will achieve popular success as well. For example, though Christopher Paolini 's Eragon (published at age 15)

700-481: A Scottish identity that the upper-class British society could embrace. In American fiction, the concept of American literary regionalism ensures that many genres of novel associated with particular regions often define the reception of the novelists. For example, in writing Western novels , Zane Grey has been described as a "place-defining novelist", credited for defining the western frontier in America consciousness at

800-611: A book as has ever been made out of the drab circumstances of provincial American life". An anonymous review published in Scribner's magazine compared Wolfe to Walt Whitman , and many other reviewers and scholars have found similarities in their works since. When published in the UK in July 1930, the book received similar reviews. Richard Aldington wrote that the novel was "the product of an immense exuberance, organic in its form, kinetic, and drenched with

900-498: A century after the novel form first solidified at the beginning of the 19th century. Often such British regional literature captures the social and local character of a particular region in Britain, focussing on specific features, such as dialect, customs, history, and landscape (also called local colour ): "Such a locale is likely to be rural and/or provincial." Thomas Hardy 's (1840–1928) novels can be described as regional because of

1000-655: A character in his books. Earl Hamner, Jr. , who created the popular television series The Waltons , idolized Wolfe in his youth. Hunter S. Thompson credits Wolfe for his famous phrase "Fear and Loathing" (on page 62 of The Web and the Rock ). Two universities hold the primary archival collections of Thomas Wolfe materials in the United States: the Thomas Clayton Wolfe Papers at Harvard University's Houghton Library , which includes all of Wolfe's manuscripts, and

1100-542: A distance) to note the order of their Coaches and Carriages..As if (presented to a Novelist) it had bin the spoyles of a Tryumph leading Captive, or a preparation to some sad Execution" According to the Google Ngrams, the term novelist first appears in the Google Books database in 1521. The difference between professional and amateur novelists often is the author's ability to publish. Many people take up novel writing as

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1200-450: A distinction between novelists who report reality by "taking life as it already exists, not to report it, but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it, and offer it to the reader" and journalists, whose role is to act as "crusaders" advocating for particular positions, and using their craft as a political tool. Similarly, writing in the 1950s, Ralph Ellison in his essay "Society, Morality, and

1300-607: A father figure in Perkins, and that Perkins, who had five daughters, found a sort of foster son in Wolfe. The novel, which had been dedicated to Bernstein, was published 11 days before the stock market crash of 1929 . Soon afterward, Wolfe returned to Europe and ended his affair with Bernstein. The novel caused a stir in Asheville, with its over 200 thinly disguised local characters. Wolfe chose to stay away from Asheville for eight years because of

1400-508: A fee paid by the writer. In these settings, unlike the more traditional publishing industry, activities usually reserved for a publishing house, like the distribution and promotion of the book, become the author's responsibility. The rise of the Internet and electronic books has made self publishing far less expensive and a realistic way for authors to realize income. Novelists apply a number of different methods to writing their novels, relying on

1500-565: A greater appreciation of his experimentation with literary forms. The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe was published in 1987, and his short stories were later published in several anthologies, including American Classics (1989, Marshall Cavendish ), The American Short Story: A Treasury of the Memorable and Familiar, by the Great American Writers from Washington Irving to Saul Bellow (1994, State Street Press), Short Stories from

1600-470: A group of writers known as the " Angry young men ," which included the novelists Alan Sillitoe and Kingsley Amis , who came from the working class and who wrote about working class culture . Some novelists deliberately write for a working class audience for political ends, profiling "the working classes and working-class life; perhaps with the intention of making propaganda". Such literature, sometimes called proletarian literature , maybe associated with

1700-460: A hobby, but the difficulties of completing large scale fictional works of quality prevent the completion of novels. Once authors have completed a novel, they often will try to publish it. The publishing industry requires novels to have accessible profitable markets, thus many novelists will self-publish to circumvent the editorial control of publishers. Self-publishing has long been an option for writers, with vanity presses printing bound books for

1800-476: A literary achievement of the previous year. The Thomas Wolfe Society celebrates Wolfe's writings and publishes an annual review about Wolfe's work. The United States Postal Service honored Wolfe with a postage stamp on the occasion of what would have been Wolfe's 100th birthday in 2000. The "Old Kentucky Home" was donated by Wolfe's family as the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and has been open to visitors since

1900-471: A more global perspective. In July, he became ill with pneumonia while visiting Seattle, spending three weeks in the hospital there. His sister Mabel closed her boarding house in Washington, D.C. and went to Seattle to care for him. Complications arose, and Wolfe was eventually diagnosed with miliary tuberculosis . On September 6, he was sent to Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment by Walter Dandy ,

2000-407: A novelist works and the reception of their novels by both the public and publishers can be influenced by their demographics or identity. Similarly, some novelists have creative identities derived from their focus on different genres of fiction , such as crime , romance or historical novels . While many novelists compose fiction to satisfy personal desires, novelists and commentators often ascribe

2100-675: A particular character based on the national identity of the authors. In some literature, national identity shapes the self-definition of many novelists. For example, in American literature , many novelists set out to create the " Great American Novel ", or a novel that defines the American experience in their time. Other novelists engage politically or socially with the identity of other members of their nationality, and thus help define that national identity. For instance, critic Nicola Minott-Ahl describes Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris directly helping in

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2200-414: A particular social responsibility or role to novel writers. Many authors use such moral imperatives to justify different approaches to novel writing, including activism or different approaches to representing reality "truthfully." Novelist is a term derivative from the term "novel" describing the "writer of novels." The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes other definitions of novelist, first appearing in

2300-612: A playwright, in 1919 Wolfe enrolled in a playwriting course. His one-act play, The Return of Buck Gavin , was performed by the newly formed Carolina Playmakers , then composed of classmates in Frederick Koch's playwriting class, with Wolfe acting the title role. He edited UNC's student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel and won the Worth Prize for Philosophy for an essay titled "The Crisis in Industry". Another of his plays, The Third Night ,

2400-559: A position he occupied periodically for almost seven years. Wolfe was unable to sell any of his plays after three years because of their great length. The Theatre Guild came close to producing Welcome to Our City before ultimately rejecting it, and Wolfe found his writing style more suited to fiction than the stage. He sailed to Europe in October 1924 to continue writing. From England he traveled to France, Italy and Switzerland. On his return voyage in 1925, he met Aline Bernstein (1880–1955),

2500-467: A scene designer for the Theatre Guild. Twenty years his senior, she was married to a successful stockbroker with whom she had two children. In October 1925, she and Wolfe became lovers and remained so for five years. Their affair was turbulent and sometimes combative, but she exerted a powerful influence, encouraging and funding his writing. Wolfe returned to Europe in the summer of 1926 and began writing

2600-489: A secondary hobby. Few novelists become literary celebrities or become very wealthy from the sale of their novels alone. Often those authors who are wealthy and successful will produce extremely popular genre fiction. Examples include authors like James Patterson , who was the highest paid author in 2010, making 70 million dollars, topping both other novelists and authors of non-fiction. Other famous literary millionaires include popular successes like J. K. Rowling , author of

2700-625: A short story and in Look Homeward, Angel . The angel was sold and, while there was controversy over which one was the actual angel, the location of the "Thomas Wolfe angel" was determined in 1949 to be Oakdale Cemetery in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Wolfe's mother took in boarders and was active in acquiring real estate. In 1904, she opened a boarding house in St. Louis, Missouri, for the World's Fair . While

2800-490: A small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of sales are anticipated, the advance can be larger. However, once an author has established themselves in print, some authors can make steady income as long as they remain productive as writers. Additionally, many novelists, even published ones, will take on outside work, such as teaching creative writing in academic institutions , or leave novel writing as

2900-452: A strong focus by novelists from there on the significance of family, religion, community, the use of the Southern dialect , along with a strong sense of place. The South 's troubled history with racial issues has also continually concerned its novelists. In Latin America a literary movement called Criollismo or costumbrismo was active from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of

3000-476: A total of over 2.8 billion words. Novelists do not usually publish their first novels until later in life. However, many novelists begin writing at a young age. For example, Iain Banks began writing at eleven, and at sixteen completed his first novel, "The Hungarian Lift-Jet", about international arms dealers, "in pencil in a larger-than-foolscap log book". However, he was thirty before he published his first novel,

3100-440: A variety of approaches to inspire creativity. Some communities actively encourage amateurs to practice writing novels to develop these unique practices, that vary from author to author. For example, the internet-based group, National Novel Writing Month , encourages people to write 50,000-word novels in the month of November, to give novelists practice completing such works. In the 2010 event, over 200,000 people took part – writing

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3200-416: A variety of backgrounds and social classes, and frequently this shapes the content of their works. Public reception of a novelist's work , the literary criticism commenting on it, and the novelists' incorporation of their own experiences into works and characters can lead to the author's personal life and identity being associated with a novel's fictional content. For this reason, the environment within which

3300-559: Is based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi . In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have appeared because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard to slavery , the American Civil War , and Reconstruction . The conservative culture in the South has also produced

3400-464: Is considered one of the most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon. He is North Carolina's most famous writer. Wolfe wrote four long novels as well as many short stories, dramatic works, and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written and published from

3500-409: Is not a question of the subject matter or political stance of a particular author, but of her gender : her position as a woman within the literary marketplace. However, the publishing market's orientation to favor the primary reading audience of women may increasingly skew the market towards female novelists; for this reason, novelist Teddy Wayne argued in a 2012 Salon article titled "The agony of

3600-799: Is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial . Wolfe was closest to his brother Ben, whose early death at age 26 is chronicled in Look Homeward, Angel . Julia Wolfe bought and sold many properties, eventually becoming a successful real estate speculator. Wolfe began to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) when he was 15 years old. A member of the Dialectic Society and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, he predicted that his portrait would one day hang in New West near that of celebrated North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance , which it does today. Aspiring to be

3700-573: Is particularly associated with the rural English Midlands, whereas Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) is the novelist of the Potteries in Staffordshire , or the "Five Towns", (actually six) that now make-up Stoke-on-Trent . Similarly, novelist and poet Walter Scott 's (1771–1832) contribution in creating a unified identity for Scotland and were some of the most popular in all of Europe during the subsequent century. Scott's novels were influential in recreating

3800-623: The Harry Potter series, Dan Brown author of The Da Vinci Code , historical novelist Bernard Cornwell , and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer . "[the novelist's] honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...] The novelist is the sole master of his work. He is his work." Milan Kundera The personal experiences of the novelist will often shape what they write and how readers and critics will interpret their novels. Literary reception has long relied on practices of reading literature through biographical criticism , in which

3900-523: The Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1988. Wolfe inspired the works of many other authors, including Betty Smith with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , Robert Morgan , author of Gap Creek , and Prince of Tides author Pat Conroy , who has said "My writing career began the instant I finished Look Homeward, Angel ." Jack Kerouac idolized Wolfe. Ray Bradbury was influenced by Wolfe, and included him as

4000-516: The Yale School of Drama . He remained there until his retirement in 1933. Baker was Hyde lecturer and taught a seminar on Shakespeare and English drama at the Sorbonne University (Paris) in 1907-08. He lectured at other French universities and gave several series of lectures at Lowell Institute. He has edited books on drama and written several himself, including "Shakespeare's Development as

4100-448: The 16th and 17th centuries to refer to either "An innovator (in thought or belief); someone who introduces something new or who favours novelty" or "An inexperienced person; a novice." However, the OED attributes the primary contemporary meaning of "a writer of novels" as first appearing in the 1633 book "East-India Colation" by C. Farewell citing the passage "It beeing a pleasant observation (at

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4200-411: The 1920s to the 1940s, vividly reflect on the American culture and mores of that period, filtered through Wolfe's sensitive and uncomfortable perspective. After Wolfe's death, Faulkner said that he might have been the greatest talent of their generation, aiming higher than any other writer. Faulkner's endorsement, however, failed to win over mid to late 20th century critics and for a time Wolfe's place in

4300-456: The 1950s, owned by the state of North Carolina since 1976 and designated as a National Historic Landmark . Wolfe called it "Dixieland" in Look Homeward, Angel . In 1998, 200 of the house's 800 original artifacts and the house's dining room were destroyed by a fire set by an arsonist during the Bele Chere street festival. The perpetrator remains unknown. After a $ 2.4 million restoration, the house

4400-892: The 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Drama . Frings was named "Woman of the Year" by The Los Angeles Times in the same year. In 1972, it was presented as a television drama, as was Of Time and the River in a one-hour version. Wolfe's play Welcome to Our City was performed twice at Harvard during his graduate school years, in Zurich in Switzerland during the 1950s, and by the Mint Theater in New York City in 2000 in celebration of Wolfe's 100th birthday.[51] The title character of Herman Wouk 's 1962 bestselling novel Youngblood Hawke , and its subsequent film adaptation,

4500-759: The 20th century, which is considered equivalent to American literary regionalism. It used a realist style to portray the scenes, language, customs and manners of the country the writer was from, especially the lower and peasant classes, criollismo led to an original literature based on the continent's natural elements, mostly epic and foundational. It was strongly influenced by the wars of independence from Spain and also denotes how each country in its own way defines criollo , which in Latin America refers to locally-born people of Spanish ancestry. Novelists often will be assessed in contemporary criticism based on their gender or treatment of gender. Largely, this has to do with

4600-470: The Author " that the author no longer should dictate the reception and meaning derived from their work. Other, theoretical approaches to literary criticism attempt to explore the author's unintentional influence over their work; methods like psychoanalytic theory or cultural studies , presume that the work produced by a novelist represents fundamental parts of the author's identity . Milan Kundera describes

4700-673: The Novel", sees the novelist as needing to "re-create reality in the forms which his personal vision assumes as it plays and struggles with the vivid illusory "eidetic-like" imagery left in the mind's eye by the process of social change." However, Ellison also describes novelists of the Lost Generation , like Ernest Hemingway , not taking full advantage of the moral weight and influence available to novelists, pointing to Mark Twain and Herman Melville as better examples. A number of such essays, such as literary critic Frank Norris 's "Responsibilities of

4800-556: The Old North State (2012, University of North Carolina Press ), and Writing Appalachia: An Anthology (2020, University Press of Kentucky ) among others. Wolfe is now read more widely in high school and college literature courses then previously. Today, William Faulkner and Wolfe are considered the two most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon. Southerner and Harvard historian David Herbert Donald's biography of Wolfe, Look Homeward , won

4900-599: The River , most reviewers and the public remained supportive, though some critics found shortcomings while still hailing it for moments or aspects of greatness. The book was well received by the public and became his only American bestseller. The publication was viewed as "the literary event of 1935"; by comparison, the earlier attention given to Look Homeward, Angel was modest. Both The New York Times and New York Herald Tribune published enthusiastic front-page reviews. Clifton Fadiman wrote in The New Yorker that while he

5000-488: The Rock and You Can't Go Home Again . He also wrote "The Party at Jack's" while at the cabin in the Oteen community. The city bought the property, including a larger house, from John Moyer in 2001, and did some work fixing up the cabin. Restoring the cabin would cost $ 300,000 but as of 2021 there is no funding. Plans for the site would cost at least $ 3.5 million, and as much as $ 6.7 million. The Thomas Wolfe Society, established in

5100-567: The Thomas Wolfe Collections in the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Each October, at the time of Wolfe's birthday, UNC-Chapel Hill presents the annual Thomas Wolfe Prize and Lecture to a contemporary writer, with past recipients including Roy Blount, Jr. , Robert Morgan , and Pat Conroy . Return of an Angel , a play by Sandra Mason, explores the reactions of Wolfe's family and

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5200-619: The alien and external as possible?" George Pierce Baker George Pierce Baker (April 4, 1866 – January 6, 1935) was a professor of English at Harvard and Yale and author of Dramatic Technique , a codification of the principles of drama . Baker graduated in the Harvard College class of 1887, served as Editor-in-Chief of The Harvard Monthly , and taught in the English Department at Harvard from 1888 until 1924. He started his "47 workshop" class in playwriting in 1905. He

5300-404: The author's life is presumed to have influence on the topical and thematic concerns of works. Some veins of criticism use this information about the novelist to derive an understanding of the novelist's intentions within his work. However, postmodern literary critics often denounce such an approach; the most notable of these critiques comes from Roland Barthes who argues in his essay " Death of

5400-560: The beginning of the 20th century while becoming linked as an individual to his depiction of that space. Similarly, novelist such as Mark Twain , William Faulkner , Eudora Welty , and Flannery O'Connor are often describe as writing within a particular tradition of Southern literature , in which subject matter relevant to the South is associated with their own identities as authors. For example, William Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County , which

5500-497: The capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public. Responding to the difficulty of successfully writing and publishing first novels, especially at a young age, there are a number of awards for young and first time novelists to highlight exceptional works from new and/or young authors (for examples see Category:Literary awards honouring young writers and Category:First book awards ). In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only

5600-655: The citizens of his hometown of Asheville to the publication of Look Homeward, Angel . The play was staged several times near the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, in the month of October, to commemorate his birthday. Pack Memorial Library in Asheville hosts the Thomas Wolfe Collection which "honors Asheville's favorite son". The Western North Carolina Historical Association has presented the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award yearly since 1955 for

5700-584: The controversy also note that by removing such categories as "Women novelist" or "Lesbian writer" from the description of gendered or sexual minorities, the discover-ability of those authors plummet for other people who share that identity. Similarly, because of the conversations brought by feminism, examinations of masculine subjects and an author's performance of "maleness" are a new and increasingly prominent approach critical studies of novels. For example, some academics studying Victorian fiction spend considerable time examining how masculinity shapes and effects

5800-471: The creation of French political and social identity in mid-nineteenth century France. Some novelists become intimately linked with a particular place or geographic region and therefore receive a place-based identity . In his discussion of the history of the association of particular novelists with place in British literature , critic D. C. D. Pocock, described the sense of place not developing in that canon until

5900-653: The educated middle classes. However, working men and women began publishing novels in the twentieth century. This includes in Britain Walter Greenwood 's Love on the Dole (1933), from America B. Traven 's, The Death Ship (1926) and Agnes Smedley , Daughter of Earth (1929) and from the Soviet Union Nikolay Ostrovsky 's How the Steel Was Tempered (1932). Later, in 1950s Britain, came

6000-460: The exception rather than the norm. Other critics and writers defending the merits of genre fiction often point towards King as an example of bridging the gap between popular genres and literary merit. Both literary critics and novelists question what role novelists play in society and within art. For example, Eudora Welty writing in 1965 for in her essay "Must the Novelist Crusade?" draws

6100-468: The family was in St. Louis, Wolfe's 12-year-old brother, Grover, died of typhoid fever . In 1906, Julia Wolfe bought a boarding house named "Old Kentucky Home" at nearby 48 Spruce Street in Asheville, taking up residence there with her youngest son while the rest of the family remained at the Woodfin Street residence. Wolfe lived in the boarding house on Spruce Street until he went to college in 1916. It

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6200-638: The first time since publication of his first book. In 1938, after submitting over one million words of manuscript to his new editor, Edward Aswell, Wolfe left New York for a tour of the Western United States. On the way, he stopped at Purdue University and gave a lecture, "Writing and Living", and then spent two weeks traveling through 11 national parks in the West, the only part of the country he had never visited. Wolfe wrote to Aswell that while he had focused on his family in his previous writing, he would now take

6300-498: The first version of an autobiographical novel titled O Lost . The narrative, which evolved into Look Homeward, Angel , fictionalized his early experiences in Asheville, and chronicled family, friends, and the boarders at his mother's establishment on Spruce Street. In the book, he renamed the town Altamont and called the boarding house "Dixieland". His family's surname became Gant, and Wolfe called himself Eugene, his father Oliver, and his mother Eliza. The original manuscript of O Lost

6400-549: The genre or within their own interests. In describing the place within the industry, novelist Kim Wright says that many authors, especially authors who usually write literary fiction, worry about "the danger that genre is a cul-de-sac" where publishers will only publish similar genre fiction from that author because of reader expectations, "and that once a writer turns into it, he'll never get out." Similarly, very few authors start in genre fiction and move to more "literary" publications; Wright describes novelists like Stephen King as

6500-452: The hands of his publisher at death. Two Wolfe novels, The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again , were edited posthumously by Edward Aswell of Harper & Brothers. The novels were "two of the longest one-volume novels ever written" (nearly 700 pages each). In these novels, Wolfe changed the name of his autobiographical character from Eugene Gant to George Webber. O Lost , the original "author's cut" of Look Homeward, Angel ,

6600-457: The heights and might equally have torn him down. Time wrote: "The death last week of Thomas Clayton Wolfe shocked critics with the realization that, of all American novelists of his generation, he was the one from whom most had been expected." Wolfe saw fewer than half of his work published in his lifetime, there being much unpublished material remaining after his death. He was the first American writer to leave two complete, unpublished novels in

6700-741: The highly controversial The Wasp Factory in 1984. The success of this novel enabled Banks to become a full-time novelist. Often an important writers' juvenilia , even if not published, is prized by scholars because it provides insight into an author's biography and approach to writing; for example, the Brontë family 's juvenilia that depicts their imaginary world of Gondal , currently in the British Library , has provided important information on their development as writers. Occasionally, novelists publish as early as their teens. For example, Patrick O'Brian published his first novel, Caesar: The Life Story of

6800-566: The impacts of cultural expectations of gender on the literary market, readership and authorship. Literary criticism , especially since the rise of feminist theory , pays attention to how women, historically, have experienced a very different set of writing expectations based on their gender; for example, the editors of The Feminist Companion to Literature in English point out: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions usually very different from those which produced most writing by men." It

6900-514: The late 1970s, issues an annual publication of Wolfe-related materials, and its journal, The Thomas Wolfe Review features scholarly articles, belles lettres, and reviews. The Society also awards prizes for literary scholarship on Wolfe. In 1958, Ketti Frings adapted Look Homeward, Angel into a play of the same name . It ran on Broadway for 564 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre , received six Tony Award nominations, and won

7000-533: The literary canon was questioned. However, 21st century academics have largely rejected this negative assessment, and a more positive and balanced assessment has emerged, combining renewed interest in his works, particularly his short fiction, with greater appreciation of his experimentation with literary forms, which has secured Wolfe a place in the literary canon. Wolfe had great influence on Jack Kerouac , and his influence extended to other postwar authors such as Ray Bradbury and Philip Roth , among others. Wolfe

7100-443: The literary movement of modernist literature . She argues that the novelist should represent "not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; [rather] life is luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of the conscious to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of

7200-487: The love of life...I rejoice over Mr. Wolfe". Both in his 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech and original press conference announcement, Sinclair Lewis , the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, said of Wolfe, "He may have a chance to be the greatest American writer...In fact I don't see why he should not be one of the greatest world writers." Upon publication of his second novel, Of Time and

7300-554: The making of scenery flats and some of the bulky properties. It occupies the lower floor of Massachusetts Hall, one of the oldest of the Harvard buildings. Students are admitted in English 47 and 47A, the two courses in playwriting. These appear also in the curriculum of Radcliffe, the woman's college. To get from the first group (47) to the second group (47A) is by competition; students in the former submitting June 1 of each year manuscripts of one act plays. Prof. Baker passes on these and forms

7400-413: The male novelist" that midlist male novelists are less likely to find success than midlist female novelist, even though men tend to dominate "literary fiction" spaces. The position of women in the literary marketplace can change public conversation about novelists and their place within popular culture, leading to debates over sexism. For example, in 2013, American female novelist Amanda Filipacchi wrote

7500-465: The most famous neurosurgeon in the country, but an operation revealed that the disease had overrun the entire right side of his brain. Without regaining consciousness, he died 18 days before his 38th birthday. On his deathbed and shortly before lapsing into a coma, Wolfe wrote a letter to Perkins. He acknowledged that Perkins had helped to realize his work and had made his labors possible. In closing he wrote: I shall always think of you and feel about you

7600-411: The next year's band of aspiring playwrights out of the winning men. And these students write the plays that are acted in the theater of Massachusetts Hall in the next term, put on the stage by the director or his aids and criticized by the classes." Among those he taught in his playwriting Workshop 47 class were: His Dramatic Technique (1919) offered a codification in English of the principles of

7700-509: The overly negative criticism of Wolfe from the mid to late 20th century. This re-assessment of Wolfe began in the 1980s with writers like Leslie Fields whose entry on Wolfe in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) was one of the earlier publications to provide a more thorough and positive assessment of Wolfe's short stories. From this point on, positive re-assessment began to grow and current assessment of Wolfe tends to be more balanced, with

7800-797: The playwright Kenneth Raisbeck who was Baker's graduate assistant. Wolfe later based the character of Francis Starwick in his semi-autobiographical novel Of Time and the River (1935) on Raisbeck. In 1922, Wolfe received his master's degree from Harvard. His father died in Asheville in June of that year. Wolfe studied another year with Baker, and the 47 Workshop produced his 10-scene play Welcome to Our City in May 1923. Wolfe visited New York City again in November 1923 and solicited funds for UNC, while trying to sell his plays to Broadway. In February 1924, he began teaching English as an instructor at New York University (NYU),

7900-691: The political agendas of the Communist party or left wing sympathizers, and seen as a "device of revolution". However, the British tradition of working class literature, unlike the Russian and American, was not especially inspired by the Communist Party, but had its roots in the Chartist movement , and socialism , amongst others. Novelists are often classified by their national affiliation, suggesting that novels take on

8000-564: The political developments in the country. He returned to America and published a story based on his observations ("I Have a Thing to Tell You") in The New Republic . Following its publication, Wolfe's books were banned by the German government, and he was prohibited from traveling there. In 1937, "Chickamauga", his short story set during the American Civil War battle of the same name , was published. Wolfe returned to Asheville in early 1937 for

8100-399: The sole master of his work. He is his work." The close intimacy of identity with the novelist's work ensures that particular elements, whether for class, gender, sexuality, nationality, race, or place-based identity, will influence the reception of their work. Historically, because of the amount of leisure time and education required to write novels, most novelists have come from the upper or

8200-455: The tensions between the novelist's own identity and the work that the author produces in his essay in The New Yorker titled "What is a novelist?"; he says that the novelist's "honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...]The work is not simply everything a novelist writes-notebooks, diaries, articles. It is the end result of long labor on an aesthetic project[...]The novelist is

8300-457: The uproar; he traveled to Europe for a year on a Guggenheim Fellowship . Look Homeward, Angel was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and Germany. Some members of Wolfe's family were upset with their portrayal in the book, but his sister Mabel wrote to him that she was sure he had the best of intentions. After four more years writing in Brooklyn, the second novel Wolfe submitted to Scribner's

8400-449: The way he makes use of these elements in relation to a part of the West of England, that he names Wessex . Other British writers that have been characterized as regional novelists, are the Brontë sisters , and writers like Mary Webb (1881–1927), Margiad Evans (1909–58) and Geraint Goodwin (1903–42), who are associate with the Welsh border region. George Eliot (1801–86) on the other hand

8500-494: The way it was that Fourth of July day three years ago when you met me at the boat, and we went out on the cafe on the river and had a drink and later went on top of the tall building, and all the strangeness and the glory and the power of life and of the city was below. Wolfe was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina, beside his parents and siblings. After Wolfe's death, The New York Times wrote: His

8600-951: The works, because of its prominence within fiction from the Victorian period. Traditionally, the publishing industry has distinguished between " literary fiction ", works lauded as achieving greater literary merit , and " genre fiction ", novels written within the expectations of genres and published as consumer products. Thus, many novelists become slotted as writers of one or the other. Novelist Kim Wright , however, notes that both publishers and traditional literary novelist are turning towards genre fiction because of their potential for financial success and their increasingly positive reception amongst critics. Wright gives examples of authors like Justin Cronin , Tom Perrotta and Colson Whitehead all making that transition. However, publishing genre novels does not always allow novelist to continue writing outside

8700-492: Was The October Fair , a multi-volume epic roughly the length of Marcel Proust 's In Search of Lost Time . After considering the commercial possibilities of publishing the book in full, Perkins opted to cut it significantly and create a single volume. Titled Of Time and the River , it was more commercially successful than Look Homeward, Angel . In an ironic twist, the citizens of Asheville were more upset this time because they had not been included. The character of Esther Jack

8800-448: Was not Hamlet." Warren also praised Wolfe in the same review, though, as did John Donald Wade in a separate review. Though he was acclaimed during his lifetime as one of the most important American writers, comparable to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, or William Faulkner, Wolfe's reputation as a writer was heavily criticized after his death. He was ridiculed by such prominent critics as Harold Bloom and James Wood. At one time he

8900-424: Was based on Bernstein. In 1934, Maxim Lieber served as his literary agent. Wolfe was persuaded by Edward Aswell to leave Scribner's and sign with Harper & Brothers . By some accounts, Perkins' severe editing of Wolfe's work is what prompted him to leave. Others describe his growing resentment that some people attributed his success to Perkins' work as editor. In 1936, Bernard DeVoto , reviewing The Story of

9000-421: Was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children of William Oliver Wolfe (1851–1922) and Julia Elizabeth Westall (1860–1945). Six of the children lived to adulthood. His father, of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, was a successful stone carver and ran a gravestone business. W. O. Wolfe's business used an angel in the window to attract customers. Thomas Wolfe "described the angel in great detail" in

9100-673: Was instrumental in creating the Harvard Theatre Collection at Harvard University Library . In 1908 he began the Harvard Dramatic Club, acting as its sponsor, and in 1912 he founded Workshop 47 to provide a forum for the performance of plays developed within his English class. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914. Unable to persuade Harvard to offer a degree in playwriting, he moved to Yale University in 1925, where he helped found

9200-489: Was left out of college courses and anthologies devoted to great writers. Faulkner and W.J. Cash listed Wolfe as the ablest writer of their generation, although Faulkner later qualified his praise. Despite his early admiration of Wolfe's work, Faulkner later decided that his novels were "like an elephant trying to do the hoochie-coochie". Ernest Hemingway's verdict was that Wolfe was "the over-bloated Li'l Abner of literature". Twenty-first century scholars have largely rejected

9300-557: Was loosely based on Wolfe. Wolfe's relationship with his editor Maxwell Perkins was the basis of a movie titled Genius in 2016 in which Jude Law and Colin Firth played the roles of Wolfe and Perkins respectively. Nicole Kidman played Aline Bernstein . Posthumous Works: Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River were published in Armed Services Editions during World War II. Novelist Novelists come from

9400-630: Was not a great critical success, its popularity among readers placed it on the New York Times Children's Books Best Seller list for 121 weeks. First-time novelists of any age often are unable to have their works published, because of a number of reasons reflecting the inexperience of the author and the economic realities of publishers. Often authors must find advocates in the publishing industry, usually literary agents , to successfully publish their debut novels . Sometimes new novelists will self-publish , because publishing houses will not risk

9500-553: Was not sure what he thought of the book, "for decades we have not had eloquence like his in American writing". Malcolm Cowley of The New Republic thought the book would be twice as good if half as long, but stated Wolfe was "the only contemporary writer who can be mentioned in the same breath as Dickens and Dostoevsky". Robert Penn Warren thought Wolfe produced some brilliant fragments from which "several fine novels might be written". He went on to say: "And meanwhile it may be well to recollect that Shakespeare merely wrote Hamlet ; he

9600-401: Was one of the most confident young voices in contemporary American literature, a vibrant, full-toned voice which it is hard to believe could be so suddenly stilled. The stamp of genius was upon him, though it was an undisciplined and unpredictable genius ... There was within him an unspent energy, an untiring force, an unappeasable hunger for life and for expression which might have carried him to

9700-549: Was over 1,100 pages (333,000 words) long, and considerably more experimental in style than the final version of Look Homeward, Angel . It was submitted to Scribner's , where the editing was done by Maxwell Perkins , the most prominent book editor of the time, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway . He cut the book to focus more on the character of Eugene, a stand-in for Wolfe. Wolfe initially expressed gratitude to Perkins for his disciplined editing, but he had misgivings later. It has been said that Wolfe found

9800-629: Was performed by the Playmakers in December 1919. Wolfe was inducted into the Golden Fleece honor society. Wolfe graduated from UNC with a bachelor of arts in June 1920, and in September, entered Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker . Two versions of his play The Mountains were performed by Baker's 47 Workshop in 1921. While taking Baker's 47 Workshop course he befriended

9900-563: Was re-opened in 2003. A cabin built by Wolfe's friend Max Whitson in 1924 near Azalea Road was designated as a historic landmark by the Asheville City Council in 1982. Thomas Wolfe Cabin, as it is called, was where Wolfe spent the summer of 1937 in his last visit to the city. In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald , Wolfe wrote "I am going into the woods. I am going to try to do the best, the most important piece of work I have ever done", referring to October Fair , which became The Web and

10000-720: Was reconstructed by F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli and published in 2000 on the centennial of Wolfe's birth. Bruccoli said that while Perkins was a talented editor, Look Homeward, Angel is inferior to the complete work of O Lost and that the publication of the complete novel "marks nothing less than the restoration of a masterpiece to the literary canon". Upon publication of Look Homeward, Angel , most reviewers responded favorably, including John Chamberlain , Carl Van Doren , and Stringfellow Barr . Margaret Wallace wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Wolfe had produced "as interesting and powerful

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