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Fuck Thomas Wolfe. He was right, and that makes me angry. I want to go home, I want to curl up around my naivete... At least in those hollow spots at night, Back when the bullies used to tease me And I couldn't take it And I was so lonely and out of control of myself And when I'd get upset I couldn't talk Because my throat clenched up, At least then I could feel something, Even if it was pain. I had plans, then: What kept me from suicide were my plans. I would be an author. I would smoke a pipe. I would live in a big manor with my Irish Wolfhounds and my Supermodel wife. Who would dote on me and kneel at my feet before the roaring fireplace. Which the butler stoked. I feel cheated. I didn't like the movie, but I stuck with it. Waited it out. Waited for the characters to develop. Now the movie's gotten dull, but I'm too far into it to turn away. So fuck Thomas Wolfe. I want to rewind the tape, Make it the movie it was supposed to be. I want to sleep through the boring parts. I want to laugh at all the jokes, because I get them now. I want to walk backwards through the maze until I find the corridor Where I made the wrong turn And make the right turn. I want to speak for myself, with my own voice. I want to be what I wanted to be. So fuck Thomas Wolfe. 2/7/01
11 responses total.
Hey, the messenger isn't to blame. Once, in a dream, I tried to rewind the tape of my life, but the tape broke.
re #1: <laughs> the last "fuck thomas wolfe" sounds petulant.
It was in one of the pair -- My Mother's House/My Father's whatever -- that the city kid complains to the country kid that he has to wash his hands before meals now, because Louis Pasteur has invented germs. <speaking of blaming the messenger>
Makes me wanna go absorb some Thomas Wolfe now and find out what the fuss is about.
His most famous novel is _You Can't Go Home Again_.
Well, it goes on the list anyway.
hmm.. I suppose maybe I should find out who Thomas Wolfe is.. Maybe later. Clean, spiffy, and on the prosy side, I see. I can feel the wistfulness and the longing. I can identify with it, too.
I am beginning to feel like a big-city paper film critic: my critiques have gotten a bit fluffy.. you know? Sorry.
I misspoke that "You Can't Go Home Again" was Wolfe's best-known
novel. That honor goes to "Look Homeward, Angel".
Here is an excerpt from the biography on the Thomas Wolfe Web Site
<http://library.uncwil.edu/wolfe/wolfe.html>.
Thomas Clayton Wolfe, 1900-1938
Thomas Wolfe is one of the great writers of the twentieth
century. His opulent language and unique literary style
have elevated his life to legendary status through his four
autobiographical novels. His first novel, Look Homeward, Angel
was published in 1929, only nine years before his death. His
second novel, Of Time and the River, was published in 1935.
This was followed by a collection of short stories, From Death
to Morning, published that same year. An autobiographical essay
on writing, The Story of a Novel, was published in 1936. These
books, along with many short stories published in magazines,
completes the works that appeared during his lifetime. There were
three posthumous works--The Web and the Rock, You Can't Go Home
Again, and The Hills Beyond--that were gleaned from the huge
manuscript Wolfe left behind. All of Wolfe's manuscripts are
housed at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Wolfe scholars
continue to use these manuscripts to produce such works as the
complete edition of The Party at Jack's, published in 1995.
I didn't think that sounded right, but then, the only things I knew about Wolfe were that he wrote "Look Homeward, Angel" and he is associated with the concept that you can never go home again. (The latter being the reference in #0)
Well, a novel of his called "You Can't Go Home Again" was published posthumously. I believe it's the last volume in a trilogy that begins with "Look Homeward, Angel".
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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss