SOURCE: "Thomas Wolfe's Success as Short Novelist: Structure and Theme in A Portrait of Bascom Hawke," in The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Fall, 1980, pp. 32-41.

In the following essay, Domnarski describes A Portrait of Bascom Hawke as a "tightly structured work" and investigates its themes of the cycles of life, youth, age, and time.

Maxwell Perkins said that Thomas Wolfe was a born writer if there ever was one.¹ Few critics have disagreed with that assessment of Wolfe's natural talent. Even Bernard DeVoto, who turned his heavy artillery on Wolfe in 1936, conceded that Wolfe had genius. But genius was not enough for DeVoto.² Others have felt the same way, thus making the vital issue in Wolfe's critical reputation not whether he had talent, but what he did with it.

The most frequent charges levelled against Wolfe have stressed his prolixity, structural formlessness, and excessive interest in...