by Stephen Kirk
Or something like that.
But here’s how it came out: “I have been seven years from home, but now I have come back again. And what is there to say?
“Time passes, and puts halters to debate. There is too much to say; there is so much to say that never can be told;—we say it in the impassioned solitudes of youth, and of ten thousand nights and days of absence and return. But in the end, the answer to it all is time and silence: this answers all; and after this, there is no more to say.”
Several columns later, he returned to wrestle with the same point: “For now I have come home again—and what is there to say? I think that there is nothing—save the silence of our speech. I think that there is nothing—save the knowledge of our glance. I think that there is nothing—save the silent and unspoken conscience in us now that needs no speech but silence, because we know what we know, we have what we have, we are what we are.”
In between was an impressionistic interpretation of his boyhood, reading in part, “Here, from this little universe of time and place, from this small core and adyt of my being where once, hill-born and bound, a child, I lay at night, and heard the whistles wailing to the west, the thunder of great wheels along the river’s edge, and wrought my vision from these hills of the great undiscovered earth and my America—here, now, forevermore, shaped here in this small world, and in the proud and flaming spirit of a boy, new children have come after us, as we: as we, the boy’s face in the morning yet, and mountain night, and starlight, darkness, and the month of April, and the boy’s straight eye.”
He’s like a freshman trying to fill a blue book, desperately hoping windiness and obfuscation will cover for a dearth of substance.
I’ve never been inside the Thomas Wolfe Memorial. One time, I arrived just after closing. Another, I was so low on money that I couldn’t afford the nominal tour fee. And then I planned a visit for what turned out to be the weekend of the fire. When I woke that Saturday morning and learned the news, I decided against making the trip. By the next time I was in Asheville, the tarps were up, boards were nailed over the windows, a chain-link fence was in place, and the house was closed.
And so, too, am I absent from the grand reopening, which falls on the same weekend my manuscript is due. I miss the rededication and ribbon cutting, the historic photograph exhibit, the celebration banquet, the guided trolley tours of Wolfe’s Asheville, and the authors’ presentation featuring Fred Chappell, Gail Godwin, Sharyn McCrumb, and others.
But I vow not to always be on the outside looking in. I’ll give the man another chance. I’ll tour the memorial. Meanwhile, I’ll continue reading. I’ll try to judge him by his best work instead of his worst.
I hear his short stories are good.
Acknowledgments
I’ve heard stories beyond number of the kindness of authors and book people, and I’ve witnessed many of their charitable acts firsthand. Still, I was surprised at the level of goodwill I found when writing this book.
I thank Gail Godwin, Sharyn McCrumb, Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, Charles Price, Bill Brooks, Ann B. Ross, Joan Medlicott, Randy Russell, Jill Jones, James Seay, Bryan Aleksich, Eileen Johnson, Frankie Schelly, Steve Brown, Jack Pyle, Taylor Reese, Mart Baldwin, Susan Snowden, the unnamed members of the writer’s group, Duncan Murrell, Darcy Lewis, David Toht, Bob Klausmeier, Jane Voorhees, Jerry Burns, Rob Neufeld, Mike Vidotto, Steve Hill, Peter Caulfield, Carolyn Sakowski, Elizabeth Woodman, Debbie Hampton, Tony Roberts, Martin Tucker, Ed Southern, Anne and Andrew Waters, Kim Byerly, Sue Clark, Jackie Whitman, Heath Simpson, Margaret Couch, and Pat and Ed Kirk.