"O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." Lines like that were once the cynosure of adolescents and the despair of writers like Ernest Hemingway, who called their creator, Thomas Wolfe, a "glandular giant with the brains and the guts of three mice . . . the over-bloated Li'l Abner of literature."
In the '30s, few agreed with that verdict. Wolfe was a best-selling author celebrated for his gargantuan appetites, his 600-page novels with their catalogs of sensual impressions, and his operatic love affair with Stage Designer Aline Bernstein, whom he alternately praised as someone who afforded him...
To continue reading: or Log-In