Donald notes that "Wolfe's fundamental concern was less with political and economic conditions that with the spirit of America." And the spirit of America was, of necessity, one which he had felt in his own soul, deeply, at times abstractly if not outright vaguely, in exhortations and patriotic rumblings and sentimental dithyrambs. The difficulty with such an artistic creed is its high risk factor, its potential to bring about disillusionment.
IN THE FALL of 1937, Wolfe met Ella Winter, a political activist and the widow of Lincoln Steffens. As Wolfe spoke of his hometown, Winter asked, "Don't you know you can't go home again?" Her question struck a chord in Wolfe's dilemma. Wolfe had hoped to be the Great American Novelist, "reminding his readers of the promise of American life, of the greatness that could still lie ahead for a nation begun with an ideal of a free man's life,...fulfilling its whole purpose in an atmosphere of free and spacious enlightenment." The promise felt, the goal defined, Wolfe nonetheless was unable to realize the essence of his self-imposed task.
Wolfe was not incapable of making social statements; his fear of fascism spreading to America spurred the following passage:
When it happens if it happens, as it happens--it may not happen in any of the ways you feared, the ways you had heard about; nor speak any of the words you fear that it may speak; or say any of the things you thought it would say--
It will just speak to you the same old words--"Fellow Americans"--"freedom"--"our great people"--
And there will be no drums beat, and no grim compulsive beat--
It will just come in quietly into the yards of a silent plant--
And say "let the wheels turn"--
When it happens, if it happens, as it happens.
But Wolfe never produced a book developing such themes. This task was left for an editor, Edward C. Aswell of Harper and Brothers, who published Wolfe's last novel, You Can't Go Home Again (as well as his penultimate novel, The Web and The Rock) after his death at the age of 38. It contained pieces of social criticism, which Aswell gathered together and heavily edited, and it touched on such subjects as economic depression, social decadence and fascism.
Thomas Wolfe lived and wrote extravagantly, and his work was the reflection of an expansive emotional capacity. But effort is not necessarily enough. David Donald allows us to feel the passions that drove Wolfe to fill reams and reams of paper with his writing. Yet he leaves us with one riddle unanswered. Is genius of intent enough? Or must Thomas Wolfe ultimately be judged as a member of the society he identified as his own but never conclusively chronicled?