O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life

Rating:
Summary: Finally, the lost is found
Review: I first re read Look Homeward Angel,( which I had not read for almost 50 years) then O Lost. I think that the original manuscript is far superior to the edited version, that was originally published. Certainly the introduction is excellant and sets the stage for W.O.Gant's odessey. Admittedly, some editing would be helpful, to make a smoother transition from one chapter to another, but only minor ones, not the radical surgery that was actually done.

I think that Wolfe realized this, and that was why he changed publishers. I look forward to the unedited manuscripts of the Web and the Rock, and You can't go home again.

My only problem is that during the period when I first read these novels, I have had medical and particularly psychiatric training. It is obvious that W.O. suffered from severe bipolar or manic depressive psychosis. With modern treatment, he would have been a happier man, or at least those around him would have had better lives. But then perhaps Thomas Wolfe would not have been the writer that he was to become.

Rating:
Summary: A book to basque in
Review: Like so many others, "Look Homeward Angel" provided one of those pivotal experiences in college. I remember reading it twice - consecutively! - and then hastening on to Wolfe's other books. Well now here is the full work and for me it provided a long, leisurely read that not only had the nostalgia inherent in the story and the leftovers from my life during my first reading, it had more of the things that make Wolfe such an important literary figure in the 20th Century. O LOST ( a phrase oft repeated in this long and rambling coming of age story) is full of the unfinished sentences, fragments, stream of consciousness admixing of past/present/future that Wolfe gradually polished during his brief career. This is a work of poetry that nestles in with Whitman, Dickinson, Agee, Faulkner in its ability to create characters who step off the page and take up permanent residence in your psyche.

Yes, some of the previously edited portions give credence to the need for the Editor's role in shaping a novel. But being able to slowly drift along with Wolfe's imagery and imagination, his acute visualization of life and death, fear and orgasm, rage and gullability...this original piece gives so much back to the reader that finishing the book is painful.

In a time when most novels hover around the 300 page mark it is a complete joy to meander through a tome of nearly 800 pages that takes concentration, patience, and a lot of time to consume. But the journey is overwhelmingly justified. Do your mind - and your heart - a favor: read "O Lost" next.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not revolutionary
Review: Look Homeward Angel has for decades been a standard coming of age book read devotedly by people in their late teens and early twenties. Over the years, stories developed concerning the amount of cutting that editor Maxwell Perkins (who also edited Hemingway and Fitzgerald) did on the book. The accepted wisdom was that Perkins pulled a masterpiece out of a huge, unpublishable manuscript. This edition, which is based on Wolfe's orginial manuscript and uses his chosen title, shows that while Perkins did help to shape the book, the text that he began with was not the monstrosity it was later believed to be. Some of the cuts Perkins made, such as W.O. Gant's memories of Gettysburg, would appear in Of Time and the River, and Perkins later admitted that he was wrong to cut it. Other material that one reads for the first time seems less important. Overall, I did not find the book to be that different from Look Homeward Angel. It shows both Wolfe's strengts and weaknesses, his abiliy to create Whitmanesque passages, and to engage in self-indulgent prose. I agree with the other reviewers that it is unfortunate that this book so quickly was allowed to go out of print. Whichever version you read, this is a book best read before you are 30.

Rating:
Summary: Heartsick for the Bruccolis
Review: Thomas Wolfe is undoubtedly one of the, if not THE, greatest writers of the Twentieth Century. He is so underappreciated. O Lost is the correct title (finally) to his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. It was always intended to bear this title, and rightfully so, for if you read it you will understand how lost he was as a child, an adolescent, and a man. His story of the Gants is incredibly gripping and touching...hang in there the speed picks up once you get into it. It will give you so much insight on the South and the trials of a young man torn between his city, his family, and his ambitions. Thank God for Thomas Wolfe.

Rating:
Summary: Time regained
Review: What a wonderful book. It's too bad so many readers today know only Tom Wolfe, not Thomas Wolfe. Even though it has been at least 10 years since reading Look Homewood Angel, I knew almost immediately when I came to the new sections. They add a depth to the novel, bringing in the whole town and relatives, rather being only about Eugene Gant. My favorite Wolfe readings involve trains; the experience about time stopping for a moment when you look into the eyes of someone looking directly at you into the train, is exactly as I remember my earlier train rides.What are they doing now, that the train has passed? Other 800 page books might be dull, but not this one. Having been given it as a present recently, I am very surprised and disappointed that it is already 'out of print." More people should know about O Lost!