... Light entrou e saiu e entrou novamente, a expansão dos três tacadas bater em toda a cidade em thronging bronze, ventos moderados a fonte de abril soprou no arco-íris folhas, até a plumagem devolvidos e pulsado, como virou Grover na Praça.
Thomas Wolfe, The Lost Boy Thomas Wolfe
The Lost Boy , a novella by Thomas Wolfe is a surprising gem of a story.
The Lost Boy, uma novella por Thomas Wolfe é uma jóia de uma história surpreendente. A fictionalized portrait of the author's elder brother, who died of typhoid fever at age twelve, the novella consists of four parts each told from a different point of view. A fictionalized retrato do autor do irmão mais velho, que morreu de febre tifóide em doze anos, a novella consiste de quatro partes de cada disse um outro ponto de vista. The first is a third person narrative that presents an important afternoon in Grover's life. A primeira é a narrativa de uma terceira pessoa que apresenta um importante tarde, em Grover's vida. We see him at home, roaming around the town square, going from shop to shop. Vemo-lo em casa, ao redor da cidade roaming quadrados, que vão de loja para loja. He builds up his nerve and purchases 15 cents worth of fudge from the stingy candy shop owner who is angered that Grover pays him in stamps and insists he return three one cent stamps the boy mistakenly gave him. Ele constrói o seu nervo e as compras no valor de 15 centavos de fudge a regatear candy shop proprietário que está indignado Grover que ele paga em selos e insiste em que ele voltar três cêntimos selos um engano deu-lhe o rapaz. Afriad that the store keeper will accuse him of stealing the stamps, he confesses to his father who takes dramatic action to correct the situation. Afriad que a loja detentor irá acusá-lo de roubar os selos, que confessa ao pai que toma medidas drásticas para corrigir a situação.
The second and third parts look at Grover from the point of view of his mother, who has always held that Grover was the smartest of her children, and his sister, who can't quite believe that the author does not remember Grover more than he does. A segunda e terceira partes Grover olhar do ponto de vista de sua mãe, que sempre se considerou que Grover era o mais inteligente dos seus filhos, e sua irmã, que não podem perfeitamente convencido de que o autor não se lembrar mais do que ele Grover faz. The interesting story here is that of the mother. A história interessante aqui é a da mãe. She relates the tale of a train ride from St. Louis to Indiana and how proud she is that her son insists a black man return to the proper passenger car once they enter Indiana even though Jim Crow laws do not apply there. Ela diz respeito a história de uma viagem de trem para São Luís, Indiana e de como ela está orgulhoso que seu filho fosse um homem negro insiste em voltar para o bom automóvel de passageiros após a sua entrada Indiana apesar de Jim Crow leis não se aplicam lá. This part of the novella was excised by Wolfe's editors in early editions, but I'd have to suport it's inclusion in this version. Esta parte do novella foi excisadas por Wolfe editores da edições, no início, mas eu teria suport it's a inclusão nesta versão. Wolfe is telling it like it was, showing us that his mother's belief that Grover was the best of her children is wrapped up in the prejudices they shared. Wolfe está dizendo a ele como ele estava, mostrando-nos que sua mãe Grover's convicção de que era o melhor dos seus filhos está embrulhado em que os preconceitos partilhados. It's not a flattering portrait but it does help explain why she felt his loss so deeply. Não é um retrato lisonjeiro mas ajudar a explicar por que ela sentiu tão profundamente a sua perda.
It's in the final part of the novel, a largely first person account of the author/narrator's attempt to visit the St. Louis house his family lived in and his brother Grover died in, that the particular power of this novella and Wolfe's writing comes to fruition. É na parte final do romance, uma grande parte primeira pessoa em conta o autor / narrador 's tentativa de visitar o St. Louis sua família vivia na casa e seu irmão morreu em Grover, nomeadamente que a potência do presente Novella e da escrita trata de Wolfe frutos. That you can't go home again comes as no surprise to any fan of Thomas Wolfe, but no one portrays that particular sense of loss as well as he does. Que você não pode ir para casa novamente vem como nenhuma surpresa para qualquer fã de Thomas Wolfe, mas não retrata um sentimento de perda que a particular, assim como ele faz. In The Lost Boy we not only morn the passing of the world and people of our youth, we morn a particular loss, a particular person. Lost In The Boy nós não só pela manhã o passar do mundo e as pessoas da nossa juventude, temos uma determinada perda amanhecer, uma determinada pessoa. It's not just the sometimes vague, sometimes tangible sense that something has passed out of our lives forever, there really is someone missing this time. Não é só a vaga, por vezes, às vezes tangíveis sentido de que alguma coisa já se passou fora de nossas vidas para sempre, há realmente alguém está ausente neste momento.
Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was an acclaimed American novelist of the early 20th century.
Wolfe 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 and published during the 1920s and 1930s, reflect vividly on American culture and mores of the period, albeit filtered through Wolfe's sensitive, sophisticated and hyper-analytical perspective.
After Wolfe's death, William Faulkner said that he was his generation's best writer; Faulkner listed himself as second. Wolfe's influence extends to the writings of famous Beat writer Jack Kerouac and author Philip Roth, among others. He remains one of the most important writers in modern American literature.
Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children of William Oliver Wolfe (1851–1922) and Julia Elizabeth Westall (1860–1945). His siblings were sister Leslie E. Wolfe (1885–1886); Effie Nelson Wolfe (1887–1950); Frank Cecil Wolfe (1888–1956); Mabel Elizabeth Wolfe (1890–1958); Grover Cleveland Wolfe (1892–1904); Benjamin Harrison Wolfe (1892–1918); and Frederick William Wolfe (1894–1980).
The Wolfes lived at 92 Woodfin Street, where Tom was born. His father was a successful stone carver who ran a gravestone business. His mother took in boarders and was active in acquiring real estate. In 1904, she opened a boarding house in St. Louis, for the World's Fair. While the family was in St. Louis, 12-year-old Grover died of typhoid fever.
In 1906, Julia Wolfe bought a boarding house named "Old Kentucky Home" at nearby 48 Spruce Street. She took 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.
Wolfe studied at the University of North Carolina (UNC), where he was a member of the Dialectic Society and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. In the fall of 1919, he enrolled in a playwriting course. His one-act play, The Return of Buck Gavin, was performed by the Carolina Playmakers with Wolfe acting in the title role. He edited the Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper, and won the Worth Prize for Philosophy for an essay, The Crisis in Industry. Another of his plays, The Third Night, was performed by the Playmakers in December 1919.
He graduated from UNC with a B.A. degree in June 1920. In September of that year, he entered the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker. Two versions of Wolfe's play The Mountains were performed by Baker's 47 Workshop in 1921.
In 1922, Wolfe received his Master's from Harvard. His father died in June of that year, in Asheville, an event that would influence his writing. He continued to study with Baker in the 47 Workshop, which produced his ten-scene play Welcome to Our City in May 1923.
Wolfe went to New York City, in November 1923, and solicited funds for UNC. In February 1924, he began teaching English as an instructor temporarily at New York University (NYU), a position he occupied periodically for almost seven years.
Unable to sell any of his plays, 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 (1882-1955), a scene designer for the Theatre Guild. Bernstein, 18 years his senior, was married to a successful stock broker by whom she had two children.
In October 1925, Wolfe and Aline became lovers. Their affair was turbulent and sometimes combative, but she was a powerful influence. He returned to Europe in the summer of 1926 and began writing the first version of a novel, O Lost, which eventually evolved into Look Homeward, Angel. It was an autobiographical novel that fictionalized his early experiences in Asheville, the narrative chronicling 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 was fictionalized under the name Gant, with Wolfe calling himself Eugene, his father Oliver, and his mother Eliza.
The original manuscript of O Lost was over 100 pages longer and considerably more experimental in character than the final edited version of Look Homeward, Angel. The editing was done by Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's, the most prominent book editor of the time, who also worked with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Initially, Wolfe expressed gratitude to Perkins for his disciplined editing. When the novel was published in 1929, Wolfe dedicated it to Bernstein. Soon after the book's publication, Wolfe returned to Europe and ended his affair with Bernstein.
The second novel Wolfe submitted to Scribner's 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 down extremely and create a single, bestseller-sized volume, which would be titled Of Time and the River.
Wolfe then left Scribner's and signed with Harper and Row. By some historic accounts, it was Perkins' severe editing of Wolfe's work that prompted him to leave the Scribner imprint; other accounts describe Wolfe's growing resentment that his success was commonly attributed to the efforts of Perkins.
In 1938, after turning in a large body of manuscript materials to his new editor, Edward Aswell, Wolfe left New York for a tour of the West. On the way, he stopped at Purdue University and gave a lecture, Writing and Living. In July, he became ill with pneumonia in Seattle. Complications arose and he was eventually diagnosed with miliary tuberculosis of the brain.
He was sent for treatment to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, on September 6, but an attempt at a life-saving operation revealed the disease had overrun the entire right side of his brain. Without regaining consciousness, he died 18 days before his 38th birthday.
Despite his disagreements with Perkins and Scribner's, on his deathbed Wolfe wrote a deeply moving 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 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."[1]
Thomas Wolfe is interred in Riverside Cemetery, Asheville, North Carolina, beside his parents, W.O. and Julia Wolfe. Another famous author, O. Henry, is also interred in Riverside.
Two further Wolfe novels, The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again were published posthumously. They were editorially mined out of his October Fair manuscript by Edward Aswell of Harper and Row.
Recently, O Lost, the original "author's cut" of Look Homeward, Angel, has been reconstructed by Matthew Bruccoli and published. Unfortunately, the October Fair manuscript was so scattered among editors during their various operations upon it, that it cannot be reconstructed, and readers will never know what Wolfe intended for that immense work.
