In most books, editors have told me, the author rides some particular expression. Here, Wolfe does it within one page.
The above sentence does at least convey a specific thought: that this is the end of the man’s youthful independence. But then the next sentence expresses exactly the same thought: “At that instant of their meeting, that proud inviolability of youth was broken, not to be restored.” Wolfe should have used one sentence or the other, but not both.
“... henceforth to share all that he might feel or make or dream, until there was for him no beauty that she did not share, no music that did not have her being in it, no horror, madness, hatred, sickness of the soul, or grief unutterable, that was not somehow consonant to her single image and her million forms.” The thought is good: the woman will hereafter be part of every important moment of the man’s life. It is also good that Wolfe tries to specify the moments; here he is writing by means of essential details. But the terrible overwriting destroys the dignity of the thought: “horror, madness, hatred, sickness of the soul, or grief unutterable. ” A writer has to know when to stop.
The best part of this sentence is: “that was not somehow consonant to her single image and her million forms.” Wolfe has communicated not only his meaning, but also its emotional quality. To have said “her personality and its different aspects” would have been a dry synopsis; “her single image and her million forms” is both specific and Romantic. But to reach the meaning of the emotion Wolfe is conveying, the reader has to break through some dreadful verbal weeds.
“—and no final freedom and release, bought through the incalculable expenditure of blood and anguish and despair, that would not bear upon its brow forever the deep scar, upon its sinews the old mangling chains, of love.” Wolfe is trying to suggest some great suffering, but it cannot be done by piling up synonyms. Never use words like blood, anguish, and despair together; one means essentially the same as the others. And if you mean despair, then anguish is too weak a word; if you mean blood, then both anguish and despair are anticlimaxes.
What kind of philosophy comes across in Wolfe’s style? First, a malevolent view of the universe, which he reveals not merely in such particular statements as “he is so cruelly mistaken,” but in the whole tone of “This is torture, but it’s wonderful,” “This is fate, and we’re helpless.” Inherent in his style is an implication of human helplessness in the face of emotion and destiny.
But the main philosophical implication of Wolfe’s style is subjectivism. A man who approached reality objectively would not write this way; he would not, for instance, relate what the two persons saw in each other without giving any indication of the physical means by which they inferred it all. Wolfe, however, does not identify what causes his own emotions, and therefore has no idea how to communicate those emotions to others; all he knows is that certain semipoetic expressions appeal to him, and he tries to communicate emotions by means of these. They are not the proper means.
In this whole passage from Wolfe, there is a very meager selection of content and an enormous overweight of language. The content could be conveyed in two sentences; the rest is extra words. This is not to say that a first meeting between lovers must be described in two sentences. No, you can write four pages on it—if you have something to say.
Thomas Wolfe’s style is the archetype of what I call, borrowing from modem sculpture, the “mobile” style: it is so vague that anyone can interpret it as anything he wishes. This is why his appeal is usually to people under twenty. Wolfe presents an empty mold to be filled by any reader, the general intention being aspiration, undefined idealism, the desire to escape from the commonplace and to find “something better in Life”—none of it given any content. A young reader recognizes the intention and supplies his own concretes—if he does not hold the writer responsible for conveying his own meaning, but is willing to take him merely as a springboard.
I cannot do that. I do not collaborate with what I read in any such manner.
From Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
Sound of mating birds, sound of spring blossoms dropping in the tranquil air, the bark of sleepy dogs at midnight; who is to