| |||||
Look Homeward, Angel
Books: CookBooks: German Cooking: Item 6
|
Look Homeward, Angelby Thomas Wolfe
|
61 of 65 people found the following review helpful: Straight from the heart - the truest "American" novel, February 17, 2000 Reviewer:Mark Shanks (Portland, OR) - I feel sorry for anyone who can't find echoes of their own youth in Wolfe's undeniably Romantic writing. You won't find clipped Hemingway-esque sentences, nor the pages-long obscure wanderings of fellow Southerner Faulkner, but Wolfe recreates his world so perfectly that filming it would be redundant. "Self-absorbed"? Yes, how else could anyone produce a literary translation of a life's experience? Cliched? Not when it was written, although as a "coming of age" novel it has many predecessors, none were so ambitious in scope or detail. Achingly, achingly nostalgic, beautifully written, TRUE to itself, sparing nothing of the author or his vision. Pretentious? Hardly, especially when set next to the Oprah-fied books on the best-seller lists today. This and its immediate succesor "Of Time and the River" are, to me, arguably the finest books ever written describing not just life in America but more importantly the sense of loss through time and distance of love, family, and home and the emotional maturation that follows. No, I couldn't recommend this to EVERYbody, but if you haven't become too sophisticated to remember what it was really like to be young, lonely, in love, or homesick, or to see though a child's eyes the wonder in a leaf, a stone, a door; to cry "Oh, lost!" over a memory, you will find much to cherish in this book.
Book Description
Look Homeward, Angel is an elaborate and moving
coming-of-age story about Eugene Gant, a restless and
energetic character whose passion to experience life takes him
from his small, rural hometown in North Carolina to
Harvard University and the city of Boston. The novel's
pattern is artfully simple -- a small town, a large family,
high school and college -- yet the characters are
monumental in their graphic individuality
and personality.
Through his rich, ornate prose, Wolfe evokes the
extraordinarily vivid family of the Gants, and with
equal detail, the remarkable peculiarities of small-town
life and the pain and upheaval of a boy who must leave
both. A classic work of American literature, Look
Homeward, Angel is a passionate, stirring, and
unforgettable novel.
Simon & Schuster
Look Homeward, Angel is an elaborate and moving coming-of-age story about Eugene Gant, a restless and energetic character whose passion to experience life takes him from his small, rural hometown in North Carolina to Harvard University and the city of Boston. The novel's pattern is artfully simple -- a small town, a large family, high school and college -- yet the characters are monumental in their graphic individuality and personality.
Through his rich, ornate prose, Wolfe evokes the extraordinarily vivid family of the Gants, and with equal detail, the remarkable peculiarities of small-town life and the pain and upheaval of a boy who must leave both. A classic work of American literature, Look Homeward, Angel is a passionate, stirring, and unforgettable novel.
Shop Bookstores:
Books
Resources
Most Watched Book Auctions
German Cooking at Sduf
News To Peruse
More Subjects
Book Review Directory
Reviewed Authors
Reviewed Titles
Review List
Site Map
