In the following essay, Joyner discusses the popularity and merits of Look Homeward, Angel.

"Genius is Not Enough," the catchy title of Bernard De Voto's negative review of Thomas Wolfe's essay The Story of a Novel, was not written of Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life. Ever since the publication of Wolfe's first and unarguably best novel, it has been a target for critical attack and encomium. But the severest attacks Wolfe suffered were in reaction to his subsequent work. If Wolfe had never written anything else, Look Homeward, Angel would have more stature today. It has been dismissed as a "novel of youth," attractive only to teenagers; it has been excoriated as formless, verbose, shallow, and altogether too personal. While there is some truth in all of those accusations, the novel stands as a unique, perdurable monument of American literature. Richard Walser has...