Look homeward : a life of Thomas Wolfe
/ David Herbert Donald
- Boston, Massachusetts : Little, Brown and Company , c1987.
- 577 p. ; 23 cm,
Wolfe's editor, Maxwell Perkins, argued that no writer was ever less in need of a biographer, so rich and candid was the autobiographical content of his fiction. Donald is the third biographer in 25 years to gainsay Perkinsand the most successful. Less worshipful than his predecessors, Donald has other advantages, too: full access to Wolfe's papers and the death of most of those whose feelings hitherto had to be spared. What emerges is a forthright but disciplined portrait of an explosive genius and his place in modern American letters. Wolfe's turbulent life, extraordinary learning, surprisingly conscious craft, and complex relations with his editors all affected his artistic development. Donald analyzes these matters without psychological or critical buzzwords but leaves unresolved Wolfe's ultimate literary worth.