IN this little book the author of "Look Homeward Angel" and "Of Time and the River" tells us about his literary method. He writes and writes and writes, he makes lists of rivers, towns, railways, names, he burns with the desire to set down on paper the secrets of America. Sometimes it seems as though he just has to write, other times he can't write to save him. When he gets so many million words done he and Max Perkins sit down and make a book out of them.
He has scores of manuscripts already completed. His problem (and Max Perkins's) is to fit them in with other things he has done. A lot of his work has been wasted because they can't see how to fit it in with the rest. But with a great deal of good luck the larger part of it will eventually find publication and most of the gaps in Mr. Wolfe's great catalogue of America will be filled in.
Eugene Gant
Mr. Wolfe's ways of thinking and working are a great deal like Eugene Gant's, the hero of both the volumes already published. If he could get a little discipline, a little order, a little sense of proportion into his writing he would be what his publishers bill him as America's greatest living writer. He is now almost a pathetic figure, the major part of his genius going to waste.
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