Word: donalds
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...David Herbert Donald...
...irony in her flash appraisal runs through David Herbert Donald's lengthy biography of Wolfe. Where, if indeed they exist, are the proper boundaries between genius and social being? Must a person's success in one category be contingent upon his success in the other...
Wolfe today is regarded as neither literary genius nor social success. Both his writing and his behavior are seen to have suffered from gargantuan excess. Donald, however, reveals a man whose literary genius draws its very strength from social excess, from the ability to experience and emote on a grand scale. He reveals a man who, according to one of his lovers, was "intolerable and wonderful and talked like an angel and was a real son-of-a-bitch...
...judge Wolfe as a product, a victim, of the rural Southern environment that bred such beliefs? Or are we to judge and condemn his standards by our own? Donald succeeds in bridging a gap between these two extreme forms of interpretation. His biography of this most autobiographical of authors never excuses Wolfe's social immaturity, but it fights to prevent Wolfe himself from fading into literary exile...
WOLFE WROTE in a ceaseless quest for a meaning grandiose enough to explain his life. This quest, argues Donald, formed the basis of his genius. It caused him to produce a tremendous output, which ranged from the admirable to the ridiculous. For example, Wolfe once wrote an account that, according to Donald...