SOURCE: "The Narrative Discourse of Thomas Wolfe's 'I Have a Thing to Tell You'," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 30, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 45-52.

In the following essay, Idol explores Wolfe's discourse of "steadfast opposition to the suspicion, mistrust, hatred, betrayal and atrocities in German society under Hitler's crazed sway" in I Have a Thing to Tell You.

Writing to Dixon Wecter of the imminent publication of I Have a Thing to Tell You, Thomas Wolfe said:

It cost me a good deal of time and worry to make up my mind whether I should allow publication of the story because I am well known in Germany, my books have a tremendous press there, I have many friends there, and I like the country and the people enormously. But the story wrote itself. It was the truth as I could see it, and I decided that a man's...