Wolfe, Thomas Clayton (1900-1938)

Wolfe, Thomas Clayton (1900-1938)

American novelist, known for the intense individualism, extreme exuberance of spirit, frequently extravagant rhetoric, and mystical celebration of youth, sex, and America which characterize his writings. His work, virtually all of which is autobiographical or semi-autobiographical in character, has been criticized as over-written in many places and naïve in its inordinate subjective emphasis, and has been found to show the influence of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and especially James Joyce.

His books include Look Hemward, Angel ( 1929) and its sequel of Time and the River ( 1935); From Death to Morning ( 1935), stories; The Story of a Novel ( 1936), criticism of his own work; The Face of a Nation ( 1939), a collection of excerpts from his various novels; The Web and the Rock ( 1939) and its sequel You Can't Go Home Again ( 1940), posthumously published novels resembling his first two novels. Critical opinion at the time of Wolfe's death was divided on the value and promise of his work.

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