- Paperback: 712 pages
- Publisher: Scholarly Book Services Inc; New edition edition (Jun 27 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0807123897
- ISBN-13: 978-0807123898
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 14.1 x 3.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 821 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,631,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
Published posthumously in 1939, this novel introduces George Webber, whose saga is followed up in Wolfe's signature work, You Can't Go Home Again. The story begins with Webber's North Carolina upbringing and moves on to his relocation to New York City, where he meets wealthy socialite Esther Jack, who introduces him to a whole new world. Essential for public and academic libraries.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
UP TO THE TIME GEORGE WEBBER'S FATHER DIED, THERE WERE SOME UNforgiving souls in the town of Libya Hill who spoke of him as a man who not only had deserted his wife and child, but had consummated his iniquity by going off to live with another woman. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
UP TO THE TIME GEORGE WEBBER'S FATHER DIED, THERE WERE SOME UNforgiving souls in the town of Libya Hill who spoke of him as a man who not only had deserted his wife and child, but had consummated his iniquity by going off to live with another woman. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bitter, yet compelling,
By
This review is from: Web & the Rock (Paperback)
A bitter, imperfect and yet compelling novel. As in his earlier works, I found Wolfe to be stronger when he describes small-town life in the South than when he moves onto a wider stage. The illustrations of youth are particularly powerful, and I should imagine strike a chord with anyone brought up in a small town, anywhere. Wolfe pulls no punches when attacking the idolisation by the old of their poverty-striken past: for Wolfe there is no fondness at the recollection of grinding poverty, of the unceasing production of children to be born into penury. The bitterness of the "nostalgia" of Webber's uncle Mark Joyner is starkly contrasted to the drivel spouted at the young Webber by his other relations. Wolfe's descriptions of the horrible Lampley family also stick in the mind. The novel then moves to New York and the affair between Webber and the married woman, Esther Jack. The descriptions of the attitudes of Southerners in the North could be written of Northerners in the South of England, and are at times funny yet ascerbic. The details of Webber's relationship with Esther grated on me after a while (the endless repetition of the same old arguments), yet is it true that we often hurt the ones we love the most? Wolfe seemed to be exploring similar territory to DH Lawrence, who (among other things) described the mixture of deep emotions - love and hate are so strong that they often exist with each other rather than to the exclusion of each other. Yet I was left wondering what of Mrs Jack's husband and daughter - how did her affair with Webber affect them? Wolfe barely mentions them in passing. Woven into this complex novel are Wolfe thoughts on the persistence of memory and the transience of time. I detected heavy Proustian influences at work here. In all, an emotional, moving and powerful piece of work.
3.0 out of 5 stars
You have to persevere with it...,
By R Bell (Dun Eideann/Edinburgh Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Web & the Rock (Paperback)
This book is best described as a kind of bildungsroman. Unfortunately Thomas Wolfe has been overshadowed by that other more modern writer sharing his name. It would be safe to say that that other writer was more revolutionary. Thomas Wolfe is not doing much new, he is a story teller, and one not to all tastes. Tom Wolfe you read for his place in literary history, Thomas Wolfe you read more for its description of the second quarter of the twentieth century and New York.He rambles a lot. He repeats himself. Sometimes it's hard to tell where he's going with something, and sometimes it's very obvious we're dealing with roman a clef, or what Wolfe wished his life to have been. It's more a collection of incidents, until he meets his "gal". I get the feeling Wolfe was striving after that elusive "Great American Novel", and its whole look at life is very American. It concerns the boy from the small town south (thinly veiled North (? South) Carolina), symbolically coming together with the North (including his girlfriend who is an epitome of the North). But it's difficult to see much more depth than that, that's not to say it isn't there, but there isn't much sign of it. If you keep on at it, it's not a bad read, but it's not the best read I've had either. His style makes for fairly slow reading and it drags a little a third of the way through.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.1 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews) 31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Finest Books in the English Language,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Web and the Rock (Paperback)
I am astounded that such a moving, powerful, and lyrical book is out of print. Wolfe writes with such a commanding and passionate love of language. His prose *is* poetry. There are passages in this book that rank with the most romantic and ethereal ever written. The sense of place in NYC is virtually unparalleled. George Webber's love for Esther Jack--the lost half of the broken talisman--remains one of the more beautiful and moving of interpersonal relationships set down in print. That such hackneyed, commercial tripe as "The Bridges of Madison County" goes through multiple printings while this gem languishes out of print is beyond me.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A quintessential bildungsroman...,
By M. L. Dias "Joycean bildungsroman" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Web & the Rock (Paperback)
Preface: I would give this book ten stars if I could.Thomas Wolfe was a [woefully underrated] master of the English language and character development. The Web and the Rock, perhaps the finest of his works, invites you into the tortured mind of George Webber without any sort of forceful literary entry. His forays into Webber's psyche are never contrived, never as dissonant as the failed attempts of other writers to accomplish the same sort of candor. The alternating ebb and flow of George's dialogue and inner monologue feel as natural as inhaling and exhaling, and the text takes on a sort of organic quality in that sense. Though some criticize Wolfe's writing for its convoluted streams of consciousness and tangents, these are the things that make his characters so intense and tangible to the reader. There is an unapologetic candor to Wolfe's bildungsroman, an innate willingness to open up a secret world to the reader, one of mental anguish, feelings of inadequacy, and the passion that can simultaneously electrify and destroy a man's life. There is nothing forced about his philosophical asides--they are natural progressions of Webber's inner monologue and some of the most deliciously probing prose I have ever had the pleasure to read. I will leave you with two of the most compelling quotes of the novel--and, perhaps, some of the most honest, candid passages in all of American literature: "So all were gone at last, one by one, each swept out into the mighty flood tide of the city's life, there to prove, to test, to find, to lose himself, as each man must--alone" (272). "The sight of these closed golden houses with their warmth of life awoke in him a bitter, poignant, strangely mixed emotion of exile and return, of loneliness and security, of being forever shut out from the palpable and passionate integument of life and fellowship, and of being so close to it that he could touch it with his hand, enter it by a door, possess it with a word--a word that, somehow, he could never speak, a door that, somehow he would never open" (170). 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Truthful and Powerful Book,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Web and the Rock (Library Binding)
Why there are not enough reprints of Wolfe's books are a mystery to me. He's without doubt one of America's finest writers, and one of the most gifted in the English language
|
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
