Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1956-10-07

Wolfe once said of Look
Homeward. Angel" is an apt
description of this volume: 1T
represents an enormous ex-
cavation of my spirit.
The letters are replete with
the raw material Of his novels.
In fact, pages of them found
their way intact into his books.
And he was inevitably the
hero Of his own writings. These
700 letters constitute a less
formal elf-portrait of a Tar
heel genius who took every
thing big and everything hard.
Through them runs a theme
of what Wolfe called the great
weakness of his hero, Eugene
Cant, "a kind of romantic
classification"
Capsule Biographies
AS a young man, Wolfe
wrote every letter as if it were
his last will and testament, a
capsule biography, an apologize
pro Uitd SuG. In some cases it
added up to what he once de-
scribed as "pretentious, windy
bunkum.
Here, for instance, is a let
ter to a North Carolina friend,
Margaret Roberts, who had
known him from boyhood:
MY life from its begin
ningS has been a strange
and miraculous thing. I was
a boy from the mountains;
/ came from a strange. wild
family; I went beyond the
mountains and knew the
State: I went beyond the
State and knew the Nation
and its greatest university,
only a magic name to my
childhood; I went to the
greatest city and met strange
and beautiful people, good.
bad and ugly ones: I went
beyond the seas alone and
walked down the million
streets Of life"
Life Was Stormy
The weather Of Wolfe's life
seemed always to be stormy.
His ego was in proportion to
his immense physical size, and
his obsession with himself was
truly gigantic. He alternated,
as writer's will, between an
absolute certainty in his own
genius C"there are moments
when I work when I feel that
no one else has a quarter my
power and Hichness") and q
despairing conviction that he
would never write another
word.
His life throbbed with re-
proaches. contradictions and
protest. He protested at in
terminable lengths to his fam
lily that he did not care what
his native town Of Asheville
thought Of Look Homeward,
Angel" He protested for
thousands Of words that he did
not care what Bernard De
Voto said about "Of Time and
the River" He was sure that
F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom he
compassionately under stood
was wrong when he told Wolfe
to prune a little bit. "A great
writer is not only q leaver-
outer but a putter-inner
Shakespeare and Cervantes
and Dostoievsky were greater
putter-inners than taker-
cutters. ;"
1t is interesting. in view Of
the libel suits and continual
explanations that Wolfe had
to make about his characters,
to see how he reacted when
the shoe was on the other foot.
In one Of her stories, Aline
Bernstein, the older, married
woman who was the love of
his life, described him. "You
were unfair about me-" he
writes. exhibiting the same in
dignation as his own corre-
spondents.
The Last Word
Wolfe described himself as
one who was born without
the proper allowance of hide"
which might account for his
need to have the last word
or perhaps more accurately. the
last few thousand words. The
most remarkable illustration
of this is a letter sent to a
young woman who had been
briefly his mistress and who
later told him she had not
enjoyed their sexual relation
ship. Wolfe insisted that she
had in long letter, and then
astonishingly demanded to
have the letter back.
Much of the book is taken
up with his letters to his editor,
Perkins of Scribner's.
Perkins was as great an editor
as Wolfe was a writer, and in
their long friendship and part
nership Wolfe reveals his best
and worst self He admitted
that putting Look Homeward.
Angel" into shape was "a little
like putting corsets on an ele-