O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life Book

Maxwell Perkins, legendary editor for Scribner & Sons, had a 'stable' of writers that included; Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. At one point in his career, William Faulkner wanted to join the fold, but Perkins scotched that idea, as it would have certainly meant losing Hemingway who was intimidated by Faulkner's talent. For years, I, along with most of the literary world, held Perkins in high regard because of his success. However, we can thank Matthew J Bruccoli, who became interested in the undoctored manuscript of 'O Lost' that Wolfe originally presented to publishers. He has shed new light upon the Perkins mystique. Wolfe offered the book to Perkins after three previous publishers, who all declined the genius of its achievement. Perkins however, at least recognized something of the talent before him and went about the business of editing what became, 'Look Homeward Angel.' That editing was intended to meet constrictions of space along with some the mores of the time. While pale by today's markets (I could hardly call much of what we have today as meeting 'standards'), the scenes in question included the seductions of Eugene Gant often with married women and other times with prostitutes.
I'd read a good portion of 'Look Homeward Angel,' before acquiring 'O Lost' and after one evening of seeing how drastically Perkins altered the fabric of Wolfe's genius, I put down 'LHA' and stuck with the original text. I'm convinced as I suspect Mr. Bruccoli was, that Max Perkins was a great editor because he had great writers to work with. He was good at the mechanics of getting a book to the public, in fact he excelled at it, but I do not believe he understood Wolfe as well as either he, we or even Wolfe himself believed. Remember, Wolfe was desperate to publish after the three rejections. Rejection was something Wolfe, a powerfully sensitive artistic temperament, could not tolerate. The crux of Perkins' approach was threefold, first, he had to bring down the word count to appease his publisher, Scribner & Sons. Publishing costs were very high in Wolfe's time, because books, even galleys and proofs all had to be set by hand. Then there was pricing. More words meant more cost, meant a higher price in stores and generally, fewer sales. The cuts to meet the mores of their time were questionably necessary, although Perkins actually wanted little of that at first. However, the third calculation was Perkins' chief mistake: to make Eugene Gant (aka Wolfe's fictional alter ego) the central protagonist. In doing so, great swaths of material about the Gant family and other characters who like layers of an onion, comprise the whole of its substance, are reconfigured, butchered and in the case of W. O. Gant, Eugene's debauched, alcoholic father, entire chapters of invaluable text are simply erased altogether. See Elizabeth Newell's [Wolfe's literary agent]biography of Wolfe; wherein Perkins, in detail, lays out this gaffe as his intention. Thank goodness for 'O Lost.' It is a glorious book that reveals Thomas Wolfe as perhaps our true, great American literary genius. Twain and Whitman had their entire lives to produce their work; Twain being nothing if not prodigious and Whitman revising one single volume for the length of his career. Wolfe's achievements were astonishing, given his early death at thirty-seven years. I put neither Fitzgerald (whose talent was immense, but his achievement not warranting the accolade) nor Hemingway (whose talent had limits and his scope regarding the human condition, even more so)in this category and Faulkner spent vast stretches of his career lost in the Byzantine corruptions of Hollywood, which took years of his power hostage. 'O Lost' does at times seem in want of constraint, but Wolfe is only using longstanding literary devices, some of which; his penchant for lists and the repetition of phrases, are as old as the Bible and Homer before that. The book is richly textured, the characters so fully dimensional we can smell them, at times even able to sense how each of them breaths. Perkin's cuts and reworking of material severely damages that fabric. For example; he chopped off the entirety of W. O. Gant's young years before becoming a stone cutter. The result is a two dimensional, mean, petulant man. Those early years show us that Gant's foibles and defects were in deed part of a depth of character and they allow for the true tragedy of his small minded fears in contrast to his gargantuan appetites, which were developed through years of hard labor on farm and in the army.
'O Lost' restores such vital character counterweights and gives us an incredible book that has influenced major writers from Kerouac to Cormac McCarthy. For proof, read Wolfe's denouements of Eugene Gant's farewell to Mrs. Prim in 'O Lost' and then the farewell of Cornelius Suttree and Tripping in the Dew in Cormac McCarthy's 'Suttree.' Read also Kerouac's denouement between Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. All three are breathless in their heartbreak, but it is Wolfe who influenced these other icons of American letters. His genius shines in 'O Lost' and no grasp of American Literature or Thomas Wolfe, is complete without this book.