SOURCE: "A Reevaluation of Wolfe's Only the Dead Know Brooklyn'," in The South Carolina Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, Fall, 1987, pp. 45-9.

In the following essay, Boyer argues that "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn " effectively presents a message urging readers to experience life with intensity rather than to attempt to experience all things in life.

When Leslie Field assembled and edited Thomas Wolfe: Three Decades of Criticism in 1968, he noted in his introduction that little criticism had been written on Wolfe's short fiction. Three Decades, in fact, includes analyses of only three Wolfe stories. One of these analyses is Edward Bloom's short essay on "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn." That story, often anthologized, is a fine one, capable of illustrating through its structure and its theme much about Wolfe's growth as a short story writer. Unfortunately Bloom gets things jumbled in his analysis, obscuring what is an important theme for...