Prior to reading this novel I had read reviews by both established authors and critics.  Harold Bloom gave the most negative of Wolfe, stating rather bluntly the Asheville native’s body of work exhibits no literary merit.  Others were more favorable, especially those coming from more renowned writers, most notably William Faulkner, who considered him one of the best of his generation.  So from the outset I was a bit perplexed on how to approach this novel.  However, after laborouring through this painfully long work, I can firmly place myself in the bloom camp, something which is difficult to do considering how obtuse the Yale Professor can be.

The problem is, that this mostly autobiographical piece of fiction forces the reader to have considerable difficulty pulling for the main protagonist, Eugene Gant.  That is a great shame, for the story desperately needs someone or something to draw us through the end.  The dysfunctionality of everyone within the Gant family, their inability to break from the grasp of their abusive dependence to one another, makes for a rather morbid reading.

There are some passages which hint at Wolfe’s Modernist writing style acumen, but these all too often are assembled in such a haphazard fashion without any semblance of having a necessary place within the overall coherence of the novel.  Describing a walk down a street approaching a local eatery, the pedestrians shown in wonderful stream-of-conscious detail, can be done with great effect, but only if the focus of such a book uses a more Ulyssesesque treatment of time (as in the passing of a single day).  It only causes confusion when the novel portraits the twenty plus years of a person’s upbringing.

Perhaps, with time, I’ll return to Wolfe and attempt one of his more concise works. But having slogged my way through this catastrophe, hoping on every page for something drastic to occur – a death, an accident, a simple twist of fate, anything other than the despondent hopelessness that hurls itself at you through nearly the entire work – I will gladly avoid this writer, and possibly anything that comes out of North Carolina, for quite some time.