Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe
Look Homeward, Angel
FictionComing of AgeFamily & Domestic Fiction
25h 53m listening
3.91from 16,108 ratingson Goodreads
Eugene Gant grows up in the mountain town of Altamont, the youngest son of a stonecutter who drinks and a mother who buys property, and hungers from childhood for a larger life than the boarding house can hold. Wolfe's autobiographical first novel (1929).
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Published in 1929, Look Homeward, Angel follows Eugene Gant from his birth in the mountain town of Altamont to the end of his student years. His father is a hard-drinking stonecutter with a gift for rhetoric, his mother a shrewd woman absorbed in property and in running her boarding house, and Eugene grows up hungry for books, love and escape. Thomas Wolfe drew heavily on his own family and his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, and the novel’s lyrical, torrential prose was shaped into its final form with the editor Maxwell Perkins. It is a coming-of-age story full of appetite and grief, especially in the pages on Eugene’s bond with his brother Ben.
Characters
Eugene Gant — Protagonist
A restless, bookish boy growing up in Altamont, eager to escape the confines of his family and town.
Oliver Gant — Eugene's father
A stonecutter whose theatrical speech, drinking, and frustrated ambitions dominate the household.
Eliza Gant — Eugene's mother
A tenacious boardinghouse keeper and property owner, absorbed in the demands of business and family.
Ben Gant — Eugene's brother
A sharp-tongued, inwardly tender brother whose attention matters deeply to Eugene.
Helen Gant — Eugene's sister
An energetic and outspoken daughter who takes a forceful part in the family's disputes.
Laura James — Young woman at the boardinghouse
A visitor whose presence becomes an important part of Eugene's awakening to love.
About the author
Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) was an American novelist, born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest child of a stonecutter and of a mother who ran a boarding house in the town. He entered the University of North Carolina at fifteen, studied playwriting at Harvard, and taught English at New York University while trying without success to have his plays produced. With the support of the stage designer Aline Bernstein he wrote an enormous autobiographical novel, which the editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribner’s helped him cut and shape into Look Homeward, Angel (1929). Its frank portraits of recognisable people angered many in Asheville. Of Time and the River followed in 1935. Wolfe died of tuberculosis of the brain in Baltimore in 1938, just before his thirty-eighth birthday, and two more novels, The Web and the Rock and You Can’t Go Home Again, were assembled from his manuscripts after his death.