The Web and the Root - (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Thomas Wolfe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Published for the first time as a discrete whole, The Web and the Root presents the critically acclaimed opening sections of Thomas Wolfe's classic novel The Web and the Rock

Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again, The Hills Beyond, and The Web and the Rock.

The Web and the Root features the three initial sections of the The Web and the Rock, widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to You Can't Go Home Again, it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North--offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.

From the Back Cover

Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again, The Hills Beyond, and The Web and the Rock.

The Web and the Root features the three initial sections of the The Web and the Rock, widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to You Can't Go Home Again, it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North--offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.

Review Quotes

"Wolfe wrote as one inspired. No one of his generation had his command of language, his passion, his energy." - The New Yorker

"Wolfe has written passage after passage that you want to read aloud, to memorize; no novelist since Conrad has more verbal effectiveness." - Saturday Review

"He was one of the most brilliant of them all. He had an enormous appetite for life, and a deep sensitivity." - New York Herald Tribune

"Among his and my contemporaries, I ranked Wolfe first." - William Faulkner