The Notebooks of Thomas Wolfe ed. by Richard S. Kennedy and Paschal Reeves (review)

Studies in American Fiction229 with the Protestant middle class," a suggestive statementin itself: thoughUpdike may deal with traditional themes, he handles them in a consistently modern manner, as one dedicated to his vocation, his calling as a kind of prophet calling modern man to make the world better than it sometimes seems to be. The limitations of the Twayne formatnecessarily makeDetweiler's book less detailed and all-encompassing than one would like. But within its limits, hehas fashioned abrilliant study, one certain to be consulted in any subsequent consideration of Updike the writer. Kean College of New JerseyPaul Schlueter Kennedy, Richard S. and Paschal Reeves, eds. The NotebooL· of Thomas Wolfe. Chapel HuI: The U. of North Carolina Press, 1970. 1024 pp. 2 vols. Boxed set: $30.00. The editors of the Notebooks know their subject. Both are authors of penetrating full length scholarly and critical studies of Wolfe. Their apparatus criticus is thorough but unobtrusive. Their references identifying passages that will be later developed in lesser known Wolfe works areknowledgeable. Their editorial commentary forms a narrative of its own which helps to patch together a group of eclecticnotebook jottings. Thecollection is comprehensive. It runs from the trivial to the significant: there is, for example, a brief sample of notes that Wolfe made for Harvard term papers and I, for one, don't want to read anybody's notes for a termpaper. Abit more interesting are the entries of the Harvard years that show Wolfe's emotional struggles with religion and morality, especially sexual morality. Especially curious from the early papers is Wolfe's Covenent with God, asortof Man and God at Harvard, in which he swears to "abjure the mental and carnal fleshpots— beasts which have well-nigh destroyed" him. Wolfe didn't much succeed. The editors, in fact, are tasteful (or squeamish) when they delete later "scurrilous" remarks about certain -women and his carefully kept "sexual scorecard." Included, however, are Wolfe's jottings of men's room graffitti that seem to have impressed him. In more important areas, though, the editors are meticulous: they identify paintings Wolfe saw (but did not name) in Munich'sAltePinakothekand Antwerp's Musée Royaldes Beaux-Arts by the writer's brief description of them. Reading the notebooks from Europe 1927-28, one gets the impression that Wolfe spent most of his time alone in (or in front of) bookstores, alone in museums and theatres, andin whorehouses (obviously not alone.) The picture that emerges is of a man alone—but one who is storing up huge lists of names, places, and things to write about. He is revealed as a writer totally absorbed inhis craft: as if by writing down the names of obscure Hungarian actors he will preserve them, if and when he should want to refer to them. But the two volumes are most interesting because they demonstrate Wolfe incorporating his experiences into fiction, butalso revealhowthat experience is reshaped by his imagination. It might seem thatonlyreviewers willreadthrough everylineof this collection, butit's really a weird and wonderful trip, this reading through somebody's scraps and fragments trying to piece together, to make connections and sense. While the early notebooks are of interest, it is some of the late ones that coveran intensively creative period of his life which are richer in materials that form important sections of hismajor fiction. As wegetlater into the notebooks (1932, for example) it becomes more difficult to distinguish between his personal entries and those which are a part of his fictional projection of himself. There is little of Wolfe's meetings with other famous writers, Fitzgerald for example—a good deal 230Reviews less than theLetters, say, but the developedpicture here is of a manalone, who places in his notebooks almost everything he planned for future use in his fiction. As well, the latest notebooks demonstrate, as does his fiction, Wolfe's growingsocial and political awareness. Augmenting with material from other manuscripts on those occasions when thenotebooks are sparce, Kennedy and Reeves have done an outstanding job in carefully editing a generous selection from Wolfe's voluminous notebooks. Another critic has said that these Notebooks "will give grist to scholars' mills for years to come." I might...