Look Abroad, Angel: Thomas Wolfe and the Geographies of Longing

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) was one of the most influential southern writers, widely considered to rival his contemporary, William Faulkner--who believed Wolfe to be one of the greatest talents of their generation. His novels-- including Look Homeward, Angel (1929); Of Time and the River (1935); and the posthumously published The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940)--remain touchstones of U.S. literature.

In Look Abroad, Angel, Jedidiah Evans uncovers the "global Wolfe," reconfiguring Wolfe's supposedly intractable homesickness for the American South as a form of longing that is instead indeterminate and expansive. Instead of promoting and reinforcing a narrow and cloistered formulation of the writer as merely southern or Appalachian, Evans places Wolfe in transnational contexts, examining Wolfe's impact and influence throughout Europe. In doing so, he de-territorializes the response to Wolfe's work, revealing the writer as a fundamentally global presence within American literature.