Autobiography of an American Novelist

This book consists in two seperate pieces, " The Story of a Novel" and " Writing and Living". In them Thomas Wolfe tells the story of his own writing life. He tells of his own great hunger to encompass all experience all worlds and remake them into art. In speaking before an audience of college students and providing them his own example as writer he stresses again and again the difference between the writer like himself who turns to life, experience , the world, and a writer like Robert Louis Stevenson who learns from books, and writes his own books on the basis of books primarily. Wolfe's writing here is clear and moving and strong and truly flows . Here is one passage from this brilliant work which will illustrate why it is one of the most powerful statements of his own credo ever made by a writer." "These and a million other things which all of us have known, which all of us remember, which are the breath, the blood, the substance of our lives , but now come back to me in a blazing imagery, in a torrential flood tide of aching , and intolerable memory, and suddenly I understood clearly for the first time in my life that I had no language for them, no words to give them utterance, no tongue to tell their shape, dimension, tone and special quality, and all the meaning and emotion that they have for us. And when I saw and understood this thing , I saw that I must find a language for myself, find for myself the tongue to utter what I knew but could not say. And from the day and moment of that discovery, the line and purpose of my life was shaped. The end toward which every energy of my life and talent would be henceforth directed was in such a way as this defined." pp.34