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Rating: 
Summary: Dense but Entertaining
Review: I kept waiting for Wolfe to share with us what would make Eugene the writer he was waiting to be - where would he find the courage to not only fail (or fail again) but to believe in himself and know that he could write after reading the thousands of books he gorged himself on. And then as the book winds down, it happens, he falls in love. And in a few paragraphs, we learn that the momentual problems of the past were wiped away. He finds his courage and the book ends abruptly. Perhaps a little more editing earlier would have led Wolfe to write more about this episode. I enjoyed the novel though not as much as the prequel.
Rating: 
Summary: of time and the river
Review: It was early 1980 when I first read "Look Homeward.." for a University of Colorado course. The professor who seemed to be a hundred years old to me at the time instructed me to read my critical report to the entire class. After smugly concluding Wolfe was lacking in many areas the professor graded my paper an "A"...then she patted my young shoulders and told me that one day I'd be old enough to understand Wolfe. She was right and my criticicm was dead wrong. Wolfes' wordiness is his beauty. The scene in "Of Time And The River" where his father dies is as beautiful and compelling as anything I've read. I think the book is unique and those who are critical of it may need to read it again -when they are a little older.
Rating:
Summary: of time and the river
Review: It was early 1980 when I first read "Look Homeward.." for a University of Colorado course. The professor who seemed to be a hundred years old to me at the time instructed me to read my critical report to the entire class. After smugly concluding Wolfe was lacking in many areas the professor graded my paper an "A"...then she patted my young shoulders and told me that one day I'd be old enough to understand Wolfe. She was right and my criticicm was dead wrong. Wolfes' wordiness is his beauty. The scene in "Of Time And The River" where his father dies is as beautiful and compelling as anything I've read. I think the book is unique and those who are critical of it may need to read it again -when they are a little older.
Rating:
Summary: American Masterpiece
Review: The massive sequel to "Look Homeward, Angel". I suppose that Wolfe is very much an acquired taste: you have to be patient with his frequent bouts of self-indulgence, when he falls in love with his own prose and the story vanishes beneath the flow of his descriptive narrative. Better just to let yourself be carried along. But I can see that for some readers, it would be irritating. At times, Wolfe can be sublime (the descriptions of Will Gant's death, the episode with the small town cops and the weird experiences in Orleans stick in the mind). Yet, alongside that he can be frustratingly clumsy (a previous reviewer mentioned that characters appear, disappear and then are re-introduced anew to the reader), and you feel the need for an editor: for example; "It was a dream house, a house such as one sees only in a dream...like some enchanted structure that one sees in dreams." Yet, if you forgive him his (comparatively minor) faults, Wolfe is a compelling and passionate writer. The fascination for the non-American reader is not only with the descriptions of life in the South and in New York, but in Wolfe's sardonic and somewhat cynical descriptions of some Americans' need to find an indentity and their attempt to do this by going abroad, to England and to Paris. Wolfe, via Eugene Gant (and the Jewish scholar Fried), is scathing of their self-delusion. Not for Wolfe the eulogistic descriptions of Oxford "dreaming spires" (thank goodness), nor the supposed sophistication of everything French. Rather, you feel that Wolfe sees through the self-indulgent inverted snobbery of the young bloods in Oxford and Paris, in favour of a re-affirmation of the need to identify with America on its own, wholly valid, terms.
Rating:
Summary: Patch up?
Review: This is a rather hysterical novel. Chapters of poetic descriptions of seasons and places seem to be indispersed among some sort of narrative. Characters are introduced in great detail and then vanish, sometimes to return later on. Wolfe was a feverish writer used to bursts of inspiration who had to [reluctantly] allow his publisher [Perkins] to edit his voluminous manuscript down to some sort of logical sequence. This shows in both this novel and its preceding volume [LOOK HOMEWARD]. The story is semi-autobiographical. The writing is, in a strange sort of way, unique.
Rating: 
Summary: A failling-off from Look Homeward Angel
Review: Those who enjoyed Look Homeward Angel will find this novel somewhat disappointing. Continuing Eugene Gant's story with his trip to Harvard, and life in New York, the book lacks the vivid characters of the earlier novel. While the book contains some wonderful, Whitman-like passages, the only real character is Eugene Gant; everyone else seems to exist only to show how brillant Gant (Wolfe) is. Moreover, some of the book seems to border on anti-semitism. Nevertheless, anyone interested in Wolfe will want to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A failling-off from Look Homeward Angel
Review: Those who enjoyed Look Homeward Angel will find this novel somewhat disappointing. Continuing Eugene Gant's story with his trip to Harvard, and life in New York, the book lacks the vivid characters of the earlier novel. While the book contains some wonderful, Whitman-like passages, the only real character is Eugene Gant; everyone else seems to exist only to show how brillant Gant (Wolfe) is. Moreover, some of the book seems to border on anti-semitism. Nevertheless, anyone interested in Wolfe will want to read this book.
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