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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1930s) Of Time And The River
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights
Books
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Of Time and the River
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(March 11, 1935)
</p>
<p> The Great American Novel has not yet been written. Herman
Melville did several chapters on it, Walt Whitman some chapter
headings, Henry James an appendectiform footnote, Mark Twain
roughed out the comic bits, Theodore Dreiser made a prehistoric-
skeleton outline. Sinclair Lewis, John Dos Passos, Ernest
Hemmingway all contributed suggestions. Last week it began to
look as if Thomas Wolfe might also be at work on his hypothetical
volume. His first installment (Look Homeward Angel) appeared five
years ago, his second (Of Time and the River) last week. In the
interval Author Wolfe has written some 2,000,000 words, now has
ready two more volumes of his projected six. Great in conception
and scope. Author Wolfe's big book occasionally falters in
execution, but his second volume is written with a surer hand
than the first. If installments to come improve at such a rate
there will no longer be any question about Wolfe's great and
lasting contribution to U.S. letters.
</p>
<p> Readers of Look Homeward, Angel will remember its wildly
sensuous account of the Gant family. In Of Time and the River
Author Wolfe picks up his story, continues his method: he flays
real life until the skin is off it and the blood comes. It
contains hundreds of characters, scenes that range from harsh
realism through satire and humor to passages of Joycean
impressionism. Whitmanesque poetry. In form it is variously a
narrative, an epic, a diatribe, a chronicle, a psalm, but in
essence it is a U.S. voice. Author Wolfe's whole theme: "Why is
it we have crossed the stormy seas so many times alone, lain in
a thousand alien rooms at night hearing the sounds of time, dark
time, and thought until heart, brain, flesh and spirit were sick
and weary with the thought of it: `Where shall I go now! What
shall I do!'...We are so lost, so lonely, so forsaken in
America: immense and savage skies bend over us, and we have no
door."</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>