From an Amazon review: "As Pat Conroy writes on the rear jacket panel of this book, "'O Lost' is the greatest news for Thomas Wolfe lovers since the publication of 'Look Homeward, Angel.'" The statement is not hyperbole. This is it---the original manuscript that Wolfe delivered to the offices of Scribners, the version around which have swirled controversies and questions ever since and yet which has remained unseen by the public until now. Was Thomas Wolfe a sort of idiot savant, a wildly impulsive and uncontrolled writer who desperately needed the firm professional hand of a Maxwell Perkins to bring form and control to his inspired ramblings? Or was he simply a genius, so far ahead of his time that even the likes of Perkins could not comprehend what he had in the innovative and unconventional manuscript of "O Lost"? On the basis of this new edition, it might be said that he was a bit of both.
