Talk:Thomas Wolfe

Topics

Any point in including a dismbig. message directing to the hip fin-de-siecle journalist-novelist Tom Wolfe? Ellsworth 15:49, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

No point in discussing that at all! Thomas Wolfe should not be confused with pedestrian pop-icon Tom Wolfe, the James Michener of the baby boomers, who thinks wearing a Colonel Sanders/ice cream salesman suit all the time-a stereotype of the pathetic post Civil War Southern gentry-is some kind of cachet cool. He embodies exactly the type of respectable polite middle class society Thomas Wolfe had nothing but contempt for.

Absolutely, Ellsworth. Since no one has yet done it in 7 months, I'll Be bold and do it. I'm curious about the quote "You can't go home again." I think I've actually seen newspaper articles that seem to attribute that to Tom Wolfe, which is exactly why I cam here. So I will try to investigate and later include that fact in both articles. I also want to include Tom Wolfe in List of notable eccentrics, since I remember him as the guy in the white suit. Spalding 12:06, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Aline Bernstein: why does she redirect here?

If you go to Tony Award for Best Costume Design, you will see that Aline Bernstein won an award in 1950. Click on her name -- Aline Bernstein -- and you end up on Thomas Wolfe's page.

Does this make sense? — Lawrence King ^(talk) 00:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Faulkner comment

It's a small point, but Faulkner was misquoted when he claimed that Wolfe was his generation's best writer. Not sure if it's really something worth altering though. Below is a letter from Faulkner that Richard Walser included in a book of his on Thomas Wolfe:

"I seem to have been misquoted... as apparently happens every time I open my mouth to newspaper people. I never said Wolfe was ‘the greatest American writer of modern times.’ I said, and this was several years ago, that among his and my contemporaries, I rated Wolfe first because we had all failed but Wolfe had made the best failure because he had tried hardest to say the most – a generalisation [sic] made rather in conversation than as a public statement, or so I thought at the time. I still support the statement, of course. Man has but one short life to write in, and there is so much to be said, and of course he wants to say it all before he dies. My admiration for Wolfe is that he tried his best to get it all said; he was willing to throw away style, coherence, all the rules of preciseness, to try to put all the experience of the human heart on the head of a pin, as it were. He may have had the best talent of us, he may have been ‘the greatest American writer’ if he had lived longer, though I have never held much with the ‘mute inglorious Milton’ theory; I believe it all gets said; that is, unless you are run down by a hit-and-run car, you say what you are capable of before you can persuade yourself to let go and die." (Walser, Richard (ed). The Enigma of Thomas Wolfe: Biography and Critical Seletions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953. pg. vii.) - Alaaious 01:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Film Series?

I'm wondering why none of his works have been, to my knowledge, depicted in film or TV. Look Homeward Angel or Of Time and the River would be right up there with the best of them like Deadwood. I remember one of the opening scenes of Of Time and the River when our protaganist and an acquaintance are headed North towards the Mason-Dixon line with the character based on Wolfe headed to Harvard. They step out between the cars for a smoke as the train speeds along clickety clack down the rails. They go back into the parlor car and are confronted with the visage of two well healed gentlemen having their drinks and reading their papers with an eye to the stocks and enjoin them in a topical conversation about the upcoming Presidential election in which these gentlemen with pained condesencion relate that of course they're for Cox and Roosevelt but after all Harding and Coolidge aren't such a bad prospect Wolfe relates he and his comrade's naive perplexity at their dissembling.Tom Cod (talk) 03:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)