SOURCE: "Two Stories," in Thomas Wolfe: Beyond the Romantic Ego, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975, pp. 159-67.

In the following excerpt, Gurko examines Wolfe's short stories "In the Park" and "The Lost Boy, " both of which present the theme of life appreciated through the contemplation of death.

Wolfe had a flair for short fiction as well as long: he turned out to be a very good and very skillful writer of short stories. He composed his own special brand of stories which depended less on plot than mood, less on action and incident than on perception and the feel of things. A fair number made their way into the novels. Two collections—one published while Wolfe was alive, the other posthumously—stand by themselves, and are reasonably representative of his efforts along these lines. They include some particularly well-known stories, like "Chickamauga" and The Web of Earth, the one narrated...