"Well, my 'art' has kept me ragged and driven me half mad; --I will see now if prostitution can put a few decent garments on my back and keep me housed. My good friends, Professor Baker included, have told me for years now of 'my great talent,' 'my artistry,' and so on--they have told me it would be a terrible thing for me to do anything else but write. They have said, 'You have it--it's bound to come'--but not once has anyone given me advice on the simple matter of keeping the breath of life in my body until the miracle does happen.
"That I can write better plays than most of those on Broadway I have no doubt--God help me if I can't--but to write such filthy, sexy twaddle, rot, and bunkum as this, I must cast all conscience to the winds. Well, I can and will do even that, for money, money, money."
Sound and Fury
All of which was a great deal of sound and fury, signifying very little, for Wolfe's mother paid for his support through Harvard. What he really seemed to want was recognition, and a larger audience than the man in the classroom.
So Thomas Wolfe left Harvard, and sailed to Europe with his "Starwick," who turned out to be homosexual. Like O'Neill he didn't return to Cambridge. He went to Brooklyn. Unlike O'Neill, he did not write plays, but a novel.
Each of these men speaks of Baker as a personality, but neither cites a