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The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, edited by Elizabeth Nowell
- Abstract
Characteristically, this book of Wolfe’s letters is a behemoth. Wolfe was one of those writers—and there were better ones than he who did the same thing (e.g. Rabelais and Whitman)—who never used one word where three might serve just as well. He emphatically did not believe in the virtue of concentration and vigorously defended his own position against Scott Fitzgerald’s friendly recommendation to him of the attractions of “the novel of selected incidents.” Wolfe replied to Fitzgerald (in a letter printed here but already available to us in The Crack-Up): “You say that the great writer like Flaubert has consciously left out the stuff that Bill or Joe will come along presently and put in. Well, don’t forget, Scott, that a great writer is not only a leaver-outer but also a putter-inner, and that Shakespeare and Cervantes and Dostoievsky were great putter-inners—greater putter-inners in fact, than taker-outers—and they will be remembered for what they put in—remembered, I venture to say, as long as Monsieur Flaubert will be remembered for what he left out.”
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