Friday from the Archives: “Look Homeward, Angel: Of Ghosts, Angels, and Lostness” by Elizabeth Spencer, introduced by Terry L. Roberts, from NCLR 12 (2003)
We are looking forward to catching up dear friends at the Thomas Wolfe Society Conference in Durham NC at the end of May.
This piece from NC Lit Hall of Fame writer Elizabeth Spencer looks at Wolfe’s seminal novel Look Homeward Angel and, like the great creative writer and professor she was, identifies three themes to the book: “…we shouldn’t neglect the symphonic quality of the novel, how it relies on the repetition throughout of certain chords in differing connections, embodying different meanings and interpretations. In Look Homeward, Angel I find three chords at work: the angel, the ghost, and lostness.”
After providing examples of all three chords from multiple Gant family members, Spencer makes the work personal for the reader, writing, “Perhaps we do not go in so much for rhetoric these days, but I think we have all experienced lostness; all have longed for some remembered dear face, not a ghost, to return; all desire the blessing of angels.”
This year’s Thomas Wolfe Society Conference is focusing on Wolfe’s short stories rather than the full-length novel. Spencer acknowledges the trepidation many readers have approaching Wolfe’s best-known work. “But then recently, prompted by an invitation to make these few remarks, I reread Look Homeward, Angel. And I loved it! It gave me a totally different experience from that of my first reading, and I was able to see the life it was dealing with so lavishly as a many-sided experience that the writer had felt compelled to show from every angle, not just from his own growing pains. I read and was drawn on with interest, at times with laughter and delight.”
The piece also is the very first in the “Flashbacks” section of NCLR, in which we publish new work that harkens back to an older feature or issue. Now with over thirty years of features, and ever more literature being penned, and four issues to fill, there are more opportunities to submit for publication. Check out all the options on our submissions page.
Read the entire article on Gale Cengage or purchase a copy of the 2003 issue with the feature “Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the First Flight: Aviation in North Carolina Literature and Letters”.
