Thomas Wolfe - The Web and the Rock

The Web and the Rock
ThomasWolfe

First published in 1937

Author's Note

This novel is about one man's discovery of life andof the world- discovery not in a sudden and explosive sense as when"a new planet swims into his ken," but discovery through aprocess of finding out, and finding out as a man has to find out,through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion,through falsehood and his own foolishness, through being mistaken andwrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful andbelieving and confused, and pretty much what every one of us is, andgoes through, and finds out about, and becomes.
Ihope that the protagonist will illustrate in his own experience everyone of us--not merely the sensitive young fellow in conflict with histown, his family, the little world around him; not merely thesensitive young fellow in love, and so concerned with his littleuniverse of love that he thinks it is the whole universe--but all ofthese things and much more. These things, while important, aresubordinate to the plan of the book; being young and in love and inthe city are only a part of the whole adventure of apprenticeship anddiscovery.
This novel, then, marks notonly a turning away from the books I have written in the past, but agenuine spiritual and artistic change. It is the most objective novelthat I have written. I have invented characters who are compactedfrom the whole amalgam and consonance of seeing, feeling, thinking,living, and knowing many people. I have sought, through freecreation, a release of my inventive power.
Finally,the novel has in it, from first to last, a strong element of satiricexaggeration: not only because it belongs to the nature of thestory--"the innocent man" discovering life--but becausesatiric exaggeration also belongs to the nature of life, andparticularly American life.

THOMAS WOLFE
NewYork, May 1938

Could I make tongue say more than tongue could utter!Could I make brain grasp more than brain could think! Could I weaveinto immortal denseness some small brede of words, pluck out ofsunken depths the roots of living, some hundred thousand magic wordsthat were as great as all my hunger, and hurl the sum of all myliving out upon three hundred pages--then death could take my life,for I had lived it ere he took it: I had slain hunger, beaten death!

BOOK I

THE WEB AND THE ROOT

The Child Caliban

UP TO THE TIME GEORGE WEBBER'S FATHER DIED, THEM WERESOME UNforgiving souls in the town of Libya Hill who spoke of him asa man who not only had deserted his wife and child, but hadconsummated his iniquity by going off to live with another woman. Inthe main, those facts are correct. As to the construction that may beplaced upon them, I can only say that I should prefer to leave thefinal judg ment to God Almighty, or to those numerous deputies of Hiswhom He has apparently appointed as His spokesmen on this earth. InLibya Hill there are quite a number of them, and I am willing to letthem do the talking. For my own part, I can only say that the nakedfacts of John Webber's desertion are true enough, and that none ofhis friends ever attempted to deny them. Aside from that, it is worthnoting that Mr. Webber had his friends.
JohnWebber was "a Northern man," of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, who had come into Old Catawba back in 1881. He was a brickmason and general builder, and he had been brought to Libya Hill totake charge of the work on the new hotel which the Corcorans wereputting up on Belmont Hill, in the center of the town. The Corcoranswere rich people who had come into that section and bought up tractsof property and laid out plans for large enterprises, of which thehotel was the central one. The railroad was then being built andwould soon be finished. And only a year or two before, GeorgeWilletts, the great Northern millionaire, had purchased thousands ofacres of the mountain wilderness and had come down with hisarchitects to project the creation of a great country estate thatwould have no equal in America. New people were coming to town allthe time, new faces were being seen upon the streets. There was quitea general feeling in the air that great events were just around thecorner, and that a bright destiny was in store for Libya Hill.
It was the time when they were just hatchingfrom the shell, when the place was changing from a little isolatedmountain village, lost to the world, with its few thousand nativepopulation, to a briskly moving modern town, with railway connectionsto all parts, and with a growing population of wealthy people who hadheard about the beauties of the setting and were coming there tolive.
That was the time John Webbercame to Libya Hill, and he stayed, and in a modest way he prospered.And he left his mark upon it. It was said of him that he found theplace a little country village of clap board houses and left it athriving town of brick. That was the kind of man he was. He likedwhat was solid and enduring. When he was consulted for his opinionabout some new building that was contemplated and was asked whatmaterial would be best to use, he would invariably answer, "Brick."
At first, the idea of using brick was a novelone in Libya Hill, and for a moment, while Mr. Webber waitedstolidly, his questioner would be silent; then, rather doubtfully, asif he was not sure he had heard aright, he would say, "Brick?"
"Yes, sir," Mr. Webber would answerinflexibly, "Brick. It's not going to cost you so much more thanlumber by the time you're done, and," he would say quietly, butwith conviction, "it's the only way to build.
Youcan't rot it out, you can't rattle it or shake it, you can't kickholes in it, it will keep you warm in Winter and cool in Summer, andfifty years from now, or a hundred for that matter, it will still behere. I don't like lumber," Mr. Webber would go on doggedly. "Idon't like wooden houses. I come from Pennsylvania where they knowhow to build. Why," he would say, with one of his rare displaysof boastfulness, "we've got stone barns up there that are builtbetter and have lasted longer than any house you've got in this wholesection of the country.
In my opinionthere are only two materials for a house--stone or brick.
And if I had my way," he would add atrifle grimly, "that's how I'd build all of them."
But he did not always have his way. As timewent on, the necessities of competition forced him to add a lumberyard to his brick yard, but that was only a grudging concession tothe time and place. His real, his first, his deep, abiding love wasbrick.
And indeed, the very appearanceof John Webber, in spite of physical peculiarities which struck oneat first sight as strange, even a little startling, suggestedqualities in him as solid and substantial as the houses that hebuilt. Although he was slightly above the average height, he gave thecurious impression of being shorter than he was.
Thiscame from a variety of causes, chief of which was a somewhat "bowed"formation of his body. There was something almost simian in his shortlegs, bowed slightly outward, his large, flat-looking feet, thepowerful, barrel-like torso, and the tremendous gorillalike length ofhis arms, whose huge paws dangled almost even with his knees. He hada thick, short neck that seemed to sink right down into the burlyshoulders, and close sandy-reddish hair that grew down almost to theedges of the check bones and to just an inch or so above the eyes. Hewas getting bald even then, and there was a wide and hairless swatheright down the center of his skull. He had extremely thick and bushyeye brows, and the trick of peering out from under them with the headout-thrust in an attitude of intensely still attentiveness. But one'sfirst impression of a slightly simian likeness in the man was quicklyfor gotten as one came to know him. For when John Webber walked alongthe street in his suit of good black broadcloth, heavy and well-cut,the coat half cutaway, a stiff white shirt with starched cuffs, awing collar with a cravat of black silk tied in a thick knot, and aremarkable looking derby hat, pearl-grey in color and of a squarishcut, he looked the very symbol of solid, middle-class respectability.