A LA CARTE. Intended to include this quote, yesterday, from Wolfe’s novel: (p167-68, Scribner Paperback 1995 edition), keeping in mind he wrote this when he was in his twenties, in the 1920’s.
” ___And the air will be filled with warm-throated plum-dropping bird-notes. He was almost twelve. He was done with childhood. As that Spring ripened he felt entirely, for the first time, the full delight of loneliness. Sheeted in his thin nightgown, he stood in darkness by the orchard window of the back room at Gant’s, drinking the sweet air down, exulting in his isolation in darkness, hearing the strange wail of the whistle going west.”

“The prison walls of self had closed entirely round; he was walled completely by the esymplastic power of his imagination—he had learned by now to project mechanically, before the world, an acceptable counterfeit of himself which would protect him from intrusion. . . .”

And as I looked at the publisher’s info page I noticed, for the first time, the subtitle of LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL: A Story of the Buried Life.

Poignant.
Interested in wading through this prosaic novel? Be sure to have a dictionary in hand, or your laptop dictionary at the ready. And let me know what you think of it!