Look Abroad, Angel
Thomas Wolfe and the Geographies of Longing
Title Details
Pages: 252
Illustrations: 6 b&w images
Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in
Formats
Hardcover
Pub Date: 02/01/2020
ISBN: 9-780-8203-5646-4
List Price: $54.95
Look Abroad, Angel
Thomas Wolfe and the Geographies of Longing
Exploring the global reach and influence of a major American writer
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- Description
Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) was one of the most influential southern writers, widely considered to rival his contemporary, William Faulkner-who believed Wolfe to be one of the greatest talents of their generation. His novels- including Look Homeward, Angel (1929); Of Time and the River (1935); and the posthumously published The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940)-remain touchstones of U.S. literature.
In Look Abroad, Angel, Jedidiah Evans uncovers the "global Wolfe," reconfiguring Wolfe's supposedly intractable homesickness for the American South as a form of longing that is instead indeterminate and expansive. Instead of promoting and reinforcing a narrow and cloistered formulation of the writer as merely southern or Appalachian, Evans places Wolfe in transnational contexts, examining Wolfe's impact and influence throughout Europe. In doing so, he de-territorializes the response to Wolfe's work, revealing the writer as a fundamentally global presence within American literature.