Wolfe Pictures Men And Carolina Scenes
Chapel Hill and Asheville Appear As Background and Bully Bernard and Other Notables As Characters In Novel By Carolina Graduate.

LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. By Thomas Wolfe. 626 pp. New York. Scribner's; $2.50
Reviewed by Richard L. Young

North Carolinians should be proud of Thomas Wolfe, for soon the nation will doubtless hail him as one of our greatest contemporary writers. "Look Homeward, Angel," his first novel, stamps him as a true interpreter of human ambitions and passions.

In fine literary style, which frequently swings into the most appealing sort of writing, the book sets forth the deep seated emotions that disturb the heart and soul of a restless youth and portrays the tragedy, the sorrow, the pathos of just an ordinary family in a small town. Contrary to most similar attempts, Tom Wolfe records these every day happenings with a sympathetic understanding and reveals that humdrum living in such locations is not all sham and Babbittism but is full of strong human emotions. The dark, dry lust, the mean and the ugly are treated as the beautiful, the appealing and the gentle are.

The story centers about the Gants of Altamount [sic], a large family, and extends over a period of 20 years. To Tar Heels, Altamount can readily be recognized as Asheville, the birthplace of the author. Carolinians will be particularly interested in the book because of its picturesque Carolina atmosphere and the reader with knowledge of the State will be intrigued in spotting real places and characters in his fiction. Chapel Hill is designated in the book as Pulpit Hill and his description of the place and the life there is enthralling to those who know that charming center of the State's culture and enlightening to those who do not.

University students will easily recognize the sympathetic Greek professor of Freshman Gant. He is none other than the well-known and beloved "Bully" Bernard.

Knowing Tom Wolfe as a student at Chapel Hill and coming in daily intimate contact with him in the same fraternity chapter house, we are constrained to believe that in some elements, Eugene Gant is none other than Wolfe himself. The author will doubtless deny this. Yet the restless, moving, idealistic Gant appears a counterpart of Wolfe, the young student, fresh from the mountains. The groping for the beautiful, the soulful, the big and great of life was Wolfe's as well as Gant's.

Chapel Hill and to hundreds of University graduates he is well known. He was prominent in the Carolina Playmakers and some eight or nine years ago appeared here at the old auditorium in "The Return of Buck Gavin," which he wrote.

At the University he was initiated into the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and the members of that chapter have received from the author an autographed copy of "Look Homeward, Angel," containing a personal greeting from their distinguished brother.