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carollynnrivera 's review for:
Look Homeward, Angel
by Thomas Wolfe
I would have given this book one star because I disliked it so very much, but I can appreciate what the author was trying to do and also the fact that he influenced some of my favorite Beat Generation writers.
However, I still disliked this book so very much. This was 500 pages of word vomit. A thesaurus turned novel. A book in which nothing at all happens, nothing matters, and the characters are intensely unlikable people with barely enough complexity to be even marginally three-dimensional. They were caricatures from the first page, with their quirks and odd language repeated to an annoying degree. The guy who licks his thumb. The guy who talks to invisible people over one shoulder. It's stunning to me that after 500 pages of living with the same people beating the inside of my skull, it was impossible to drum up an ounce of empathy.
For me this read like East of Eden and On The Road had an illegitimate inbred child. It wanted to be vast. It wanted to be profound. It wanted to be something, though mostly I wasn't sure what. In the end it was a slog. A good deal of the time I literally could not figure out what he was talking about. The references went entirely over my head.
The word "overwrought" comes to mind. Even the "stream of consciousness" style was completely ineffective, with fits and starts and over the top laments that broke up the flow. I had to read through pages of dollar amounts related to real estate investments. I had to read through pages of book titles and author names. I had to read through pages... upon pages upon pages... describing minutia in the most mind-numbing detail. It wasn't good enough to describe the woman walking down the street. That woman had to be described down to the wrinkle in her dress and the precise shine on her shoes.
I read somewhere that Wolfe describes something like 200 characters in this book. That number of characters alone should give you pause as to how effective a story can be. But then imagine knowing everything about how each one walks, talks, breathes, every quirk, the position of every strand of hair, the tone of their skin, what they did for a living and where they lived. All to no end. None of these people mattered.
This is supposed to be a fictionalized autobiography. Which mens basically it's about an insane guy who writes like he's insane.
Once I start a book I can't quit until I'm done, but this one almost made me quit reading for good.
However, I still disliked this book so very much. This was 500 pages of word vomit. A thesaurus turned novel. A book in which nothing at all happens, nothing matters, and the characters are intensely unlikable people with barely enough complexity to be even marginally three-dimensional. They were caricatures from the first page, with their quirks and odd language repeated to an annoying degree. The guy who licks his thumb. The guy who talks to invisible people over one shoulder. It's stunning to me that after 500 pages of living with the same people beating the inside of my skull, it was impossible to drum up an ounce of empathy.
For me this read like East of Eden and On The Road had an illegitimate inbred child. It wanted to be vast. It wanted to be profound. It wanted to be something, though mostly I wasn't sure what. In the end it was a slog. A good deal of the time I literally could not figure out what he was talking about. The references went entirely over my head.
The word "overwrought" comes to mind. Even the "stream of consciousness" style was completely ineffective, with fits and starts and over the top laments that broke up the flow. I had to read through pages of dollar amounts related to real estate investments. I had to read through pages of book titles and author names. I had to read through pages... upon pages upon pages... describing minutia in the most mind-numbing detail. It wasn't good enough to describe the woman walking down the street. That woman had to be described down to the wrinkle in her dress and the precise shine on her shoes.
I read somewhere that Wolfe describes something like 200 characters in this book. That number of characters alone should give you pause as to how effective a story can be. But then imagine knowing everything about how each one walks, talks, breathes, every quirk, the position of every strand of hair, the tone of their skin, what they did for a living and where they lived. All to no end. None of these people mattered.
This is supposed to be a fictionalized autobiography. Which mens basically it's about an insane guy who writes like he's insane.
Once I start a book I can't quit until I'm done, but this one almost made me quit reading for good.