If there is something I ever learned from Thomas Wolfe, was how to write one hundred pages full of very elaborate nothing.
No, really, I mean it.
Take a look at this (my 'commentaries' are in bold, to break the monotony)--
From 'Of Time and The River' by T. Wolfe
Ah, strange and beautiful, the woman thought, how can I longer bear this joy intolerable, the music of this great song unpronounceable, the anguish of this glory unimaginable, of this prose unreadable, which fills my life to bursting and which will not let me speak! THEN PLEASE, DO NOT! ... Oh magic moment that is so perfect, unknown, and inevitable, OOOOOOH sweet msytery of life at last I've foooound youuuuuuu! to stand here at this ship's great side, here at the huge last edge of evening and return, with this still wonder in my heart and knowing only that somehow we are fulfilled of you, oh time!
... Ah secret and alone, she thought- how lean with hunger and how fierce with pride, and how burning with imposing desire , and how heavy with adjectives he bends there at the rail of night (which was but recently installed after several romantic heroes took a nasty fall)- and he is wild and young and foolish and forsaken, and his eyes are starved (Note to self: Feed Eyes), his soul is parched with thirst (That's what gatorade is for: "It's got Electrolite.. it's what souls want"), his heart is famished with a hunger that cannot be fed, and he leans there on the rail and dreams great dreams, and he is mad for love and is athirst for glory (Clearly, he is very thirsty all over), and he is so cruelly mistaken- and so right!
...Oh passionate and proud! -how like the wild, lost soul of youth you are, how like my wild lost father who will not return! ... Riiight. She's falling in love with this man, and immediately thinks of HER DADDY. Iiiiiiiisues.
And isn't it me, but every single paragraph so far has begun with this woman moaning? oooh, Aaaah, Oooh... WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING ON THAT DECK?
He turned, and saw her then, and so finding her, was lost, and so losing self, was found, (Amaaaaazing graaaace..> I oooonce was loooost but noooow I'm foooound) and so seeing her, saw for a fading moment only the pleasant image of the woman that perhaps she was, and that life saw (I oooonce was bliiiind but nooow I seeeee).
He never knew: he only knew that from that moment his spirit was impaled upon the knife of love. Then he slammed his fingers in the automovile door of love, over which he wrapped the bandages of despair and angst.
From that moment on he never was again to lose her utterly, never to wholly re-possess unto himself the lonely, wild integrity of youth which had been his (He likes the word 'wild' a lot). At that instant of their wild meeting, that proud wild inviolability of wild youth was wildly broken, not to be restored.
At that moment of their meeting she got into his life by some dark magic, and before he knew it, he had her beating in the pulses of his blood (Got it, she's a plaquette) - somehow thereafter- how he never knew- to steal into the conduits of his heart (Apparently he's got a mechanical heart), and to inhabit the lone, inviolable tenements of his one life; so , like love's great thief, to steal through all the adyts of his soul, and to become a part of all he did and said and was-
through this invasion so to touch all loveliness that he might touch, through this strange and subtle stealth of love henceforth to share all that he might feel or make or dream, until there was for him no beauty that she did not share, no music that did not have her being in it, no horror, madness, hatred, sickness of the soul, or grief unutterable , nor story unreadable,, that was not somehow consonant to her single image and her million forms (She's a mutant!).
And no final freedom and release ( He should have gone tot he bathroom BEFORE starring in the book), bought through the incalculable expenditure of blood and anguish and despair, that would not bear upon its brow forever the deep scar, upon its sinews the old mangling chains, of love.
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Thomas Wolfe, the Author Laureate of Asheville, North Carolina.
Nowadays, he'd probably be writing Harry Potter Mary Sues.
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