SOURCE: "The City in the Short Fiction of Thomas Wolfe," in The Thomas Wolfe Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall, 1983, pp. 36-40.

In the following essay, Boyer outlines developments in Wolfe's presentation of the city in his stories, noting his "growing compassion for and identification with city-dwellers" throughout his career.

In the summer of 1937 Thomas Wolfe returned to Asheville. He had not been back since the great outcry against him after the publication in 1929 of Look Homeward, Angel, that nakedly autobiographical novel that had exposed and enraged many people in his home town. The Asheville reception in 1937 was a warm one. Wolfe had become famous in the intervening years and people had forgiven him. Family and friends flocked around him, and for a while the attention was pleasant and flattering. But by fall the joys of the old home town had worn thin, and Wolfe went hurrying back to New...