The Web and the Rock (Voices of the South)

Rating:
Summary: Bitter, yet compelling
Review: A bitter, imperfect and yet compelling novel. As in his earlier works, I found Wolfe to be stronger when he describes small-town life in the South than when he moves onto a wider stage. The illustrations of youth are particularly powerful, and I should imagine strike a chord with anyone brought up in a small town, anywhere.

Wolfe pulls no punches when attacking the idolisation by the old of their poverty-striken past: for Wolfe there is no fondness at the recollection of grinding poverty, of the unceasing production of children to be born into penury. The bitterness of the "nostalgia" of Webber's uncle Mark Joyner is starkly contrasted to the drivel spouted at the young Webber by his other relations. Wolfe's descriptions of the horrible Lampley family also stick in the mind.

The novel then moves to New York and the affair between Webber and the married woman, Esther Jack. The descriptions of the attitudes of Southerners in the North could be written of Northerners in the South of England, and are at times funny yet ascerbic. The details of Webber's relationship with Esther grated on me after a while (the endless repetition of the same old arguments), yet is it true that we often hurt the ones we love the most? Wolfe seemed to be exploring similar territory to DH Lawrence, who (among other things) described the mixture of deep emotions - love and hate are so strong that they often exist with each other rather than to the exclusion of each other. Yet I was left wondering what of Mrs Jack's husband and daughter - how did her affair with Webber affect them? Wolfe barely mentions them in passing.

Woven into this complex novel are Wolfe thoughts on the persistence of memory and the transience of time. I detected heavy Proustian influences at work here. In all, an emotional, moving and powerful piece of work.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Finest Books in the English Language
Review: I am astounded that such a moving, powerful, and lyrical book is out of print. Wolfe writes with such a commanding and passionate love of language. His prose *is* poetry. There are passages in this book that rank with the most romantic and ethereal ever written. The sense of place in NYC is virtually unparalleled. George Webber's love for Esther Jack--the lost half of the broken talisman--remains one of the more beautiful and moving of interpersonal relationships set down in print. That such hackneyed, commercial tripe as "The Bridges of Madison County" goes through multiple printings while this gem languishes out of print is beyond me.

Rating:
Summary: You have to persevere with it...
Review: This book is best described as a kind of bildungsroman. Unfortunately Thomas Wolfe has been overshadowed by that other more modern writer sharing his name. It would be safe to say that that other writer was more revolutionary. Thomas Wolfe is not doing much new, he is a story teller, and one not to all tastes. Tom Wolfe you read for his place in literary history, Thomas Wolfe you read more for its description of the second quarter of the twentieth century and New York.

He rambles a lot. He repeats himself. Sometimes it's hard to tell where he's going with something, and sometimes it's very obvious we're dealing with roman a clef, or what Wolfe wished his life to have been. It's more a collection of incidents, until he meets his "gal". I get the feeling Wolfe was striving after that elusive "Great American Novel", and its whole look at life is very American. It concerns the boy from the small town south (thinly veiled North (? South) Carolina), symbolically coming together with the North (including his girlfriend who is an epitome of the North). But it's difficult to see much more depth than that, that's not to say it isn't there, but there isn't much sign of it.

If you keep on at it, it's not a bad read, but it's not the best read I've had either. His style makes for fairly slow reading and it drags a little a third of the way through.