Pages containing corrections and additions or deletions would then be retyped. Once he reached this state, Wolfe rarely did more than correct typographical errors. The two major exceptions to this practice occurred when he sought to develop the characters and ideas of the elevator men more fully and to introduce more guests at Esther’s party. For these and shorter passages elsewhere, he wrote additional copy, had it typed, and marked in the original where in should be inserted. Occupied with these revisions at Oteen, he wrote Nowell in New York, “I am working on ‘The Party at Jack’s.’ I have changed and revised it a great deal with an effort to weave it together better and to get it to move more quickly” (Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 635).

Copy text for this edition comes from material indexed in the Wisdom Collections as bMS Am 1883 (982), (983), (984), and (986). Material indexed under (985) apparently includes additions and revisions undertaken during Wolfe’s Oteen sojourn and after his return to New York. Much of that revised material appears in the pages indexed as (986). It was from these pages that Nowell extracted the story published in Scribners Magazine. Her choice of that draft indicates to us that it represents Wolfe’s intent to use it as copy text in Part IV of the projected You Cant Go Home Again. Groupings (985) and (986) reflect changes representing Wolfe’s decision to rework material originally written for “The October Fair” and that portion of it detailing Eugene Gant’s break with Esther and her circle. Consequently, stylistic practices in (986) are in accord with the simpler, less poetic, leaner prose of his final period. Copy text for Book II of You Can’t Go Home Again, as cut and revised by Aswell, comes from (982), (983), (984), and (986). A comparison of these pages with page proofs of the novel reveals that Aswell decided not to restore the Jacks’ son to the story. He changed the names Amy Van Leer to Amy Carleton, Robert Fetzer to Samuel Fetzer, and Katy Fogarty to Nora Fogarty. He gave words that Wolfe had put in Mr. Jack’s mouth to Mrs. Jack, and he added clarifying passages. For example, “Janie and May and Lily, in their trim, crisp uniforms and with their smiling, pink faces, were really awfully pretty” becomes “Janie and May, passing back and forth between the kitchen and the maids’ sitting room in their trim, crisp uniforms and their smiling, pink faces, were really awfully pretty.” He dropped a few of the guests that Wolfe had on hand for the party, perhaps because he feared legal action if he kept them in. Our text is entire and untouched except for the silent corrections and omissions of repetitive passages.

We find in these pages as reassembled what Wolfe hoped Nowell would discover when he mailed his revisions back to her from Oteen—“unity and the direction of a single thing” (Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 653).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

•   •   •

Our indebtedness to persons and institutions for help, encouragement, and funding begins with Paul Gitlin, administrator of the Thomas Wolfe estate. To him we are deeply grateful. Various administrators at our universities, Pennsylvania State and Clemson, supported our efforts: from Penn State, English department head Robert Secor, Deans Margaret Leidy, Raymond Lombra, Leonard Mustazza, and Jack Royer; from Clemson, Dean Robert Waller and English department head James Andreas. Not the least of their commitments to this project were the sabbatical leaves we enjoyed. We express our thanks to Richard S. Kennedy, Aldo P. Magi, Harold Woodell, Carol Johnston, James Clark, David Strange, Ted Mitchell, Melinda M. Ponder, Darlene O’Dell, Susan Hilligoss, and the Houghton Reading Room staff.

For her belief in the worth of this project, we thankfully acknowledge the encouragement we received from Sandra Eisdorfer of the University of North Carolina Press.

John Idol expresses personal gratitude to Clemson’s English department for granting him one of the John Lane awards, to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a travel grant, to the Thomas Wolfe Society for a William B. Wisdom Grant in Aid of Research, and to Adelaide Wisdom Benjamin for the gift that funded the Wisdom Grant.

Suzanne Stutman expresses her thanks to Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, the Research and Graduate Studies Office, and the Office of the Associate Dean of the CES system for the grants that made this research possible.

Finally, we thank our families. Once again Fred and Marjorie proved themselves to be patient, understanding, interested, and wholly supportive.

THE PARTY AT JACK’S

•   •   •

MORNING

•   •   •

“Hartmann!”

“Hier, Herr Professor.”

“Das wort für garten.”

“Hortus, Herr Professor.”

“Deklination?”

“Zweite.”

“Geschlecht?”

“Maskulinum, Herr Professor.”

“Deklinieren!”

Hartmann stiffened his shoulders slightly, drew a deep breath, and, looking straight before him with a wooden expression, rapidly recited in an expressionless sing-song tone:

“Hortus, horti, horto, hortum, horte, horto; horti, hortorum, hortis, hortos, horti, hortis.”

“So. Setzen sie, Hartmann.”

Hartmann sat down blowing slightly at the corners of his thick mouth. For a moment he held his rigid posture, then he relaxed warily, his little eyes wavered craftily from side to side, he stole a look of triumph and of satisfaction at his comrades.

He was only a child in years, but his limbs and features held in miniature the mature lineaments of a man.