Well, let me tell ya, this “Look Homeward, Angel” book, it stirred up quite a fuss, you know? Folks got their knickers in a twist over it, that’s for sure.
What’s all the fuss about, you ask? It’s about this young fella, Eugene, see? He’s got this itch to get outta his small town. Town’s kinda like mine, everybody knows everybody’s business, and that ain’t always a good thing. He’s got a family, too, a real handful they are. Lots of yelling and carrying on, from what I hear. Sounds like a regular Tuesday at my place, ha!
Now, this fella, Thomas Wolfe, he wrote it all down. Every little bit of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Folks in his town, Asheville they call it, they weren’t too happy about it. Said he made ‘em look bad. Well, sometimes the truth hurts, don’t it? He just told it like it was, I reckon. Like when you spill the beans about the neighbor’s kid getting into the cookie jar, ain’t always pretty, but it’s the truth.
- Folks got mad because he talked about their town.
- They said he made things up, but maybe it was just the truth they didn’t want to hear.
- Some folks liked it, said it was real, like looking in a mirror, wrinkles and all.
This Eugene fella, he goes back home after a while. Things ain’t much better. His brother, Ben, he gets sick and dies. Real sad, that part is. Made me think of my own kin we lost, and it ain’t easy, let me tell you. Then Eugene meets this lady, Mrs. Pert, she was friends with Ben, real close friends, if you catch my drift. She says she ain’t never going back to Ben’s grave. Maybe she just couldn’t bear the sadness, I reckon.
This writer, Wolfe, he had a way with words. Some folks say he wrote like poetry, all flowery and such. But he also wrote about real life, about how people live and what they feel. He wrote about America, back in the old days. Things were different then, but people were still people, you know? They loved, they fought, they laughed, they cried. Just like us, only with fewer cars and more horse-drawn buggies, I imagine.
Now, some smarty-pants folks, they compare this Wolfe fella to other writers, like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Big names, I guess. They say he’s just as good. I don’t know much about them fancy writers, but I know what I like, and I liked this “Look Homeward, Angel” book, even if it did make some folks mad. It’s about life, see? It’s about wanting something more, about leaving home and finding your own way. And it’s about the folks you leave behind and the ones you meet along the way. It’s about love and loss and everything in between.
And that, I guess, is why it caused such a ruckus. It hit too close to home for some folks. It showed them things they didn’t want to see, maybe things they didn’t want to admit about themselves or their town. But that’s what good books do, ain’t it? They make you think, make you feel, and sometimes, they make you a little uncomfortable. They make you look homeward, even if you don’t want to.
It’s like looking at an old photo album. You see the good times, the bad times, and all the folks who ain’t around anymore. It ain’t always pretty, but it’s real. And that’s what this book is, real. And that’s why folks are still talking about it, all these years later.
So, if you ask me, this “Look Homeward, Angel” book is worth reading, even if it stirred up a hornet’s nest. It’s a story about life, about family, about leaving and coming home. And ain’t that something we can all understand, one way or another?
Tags: [Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe, American Literature, Novel, Controversy, Asheville, Family, Loss, Coming-of-age]
