Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe’s depictions of small-town Southern life offer a lively and revealing sense of the bigoted attitudes prevalent in the early 1900s; his short story presents a clear picture of the town’s visceral response to Harris’s murderous spree.

Of its legacy, Wolfe writes: “Something had come into life—into our lives—that we had never known before. It was a kind of shadow, a poisonous blackness filled with bewildered loathing. The snow would go, we knew… The homely light of day would shine again familiarly. And all of this would vanish as an evil dream. And yet not wholly so. For we would still remember the old dark doubt and loathing of our kind, of something hateful and unspeakable in the souls of men. We knew that we should not forget.”

Joanne Mauldin, scholar and author of two books about Wolfe and Wolfe’s Asheville, says, “‘The Child by Tiger’ makes for thoughtful reading and addresses complex issues. I will only say that Wolfe, the Wolfe family, and Asheville of that era represent their times. Wolfe does emphatically show why Dick Prosser became a murderer.”

Does the story indicate an evolution in Wolfe’s prejudices? Mauldin will share scholarly perspectives and offer her own assessment of Wolfe’s outlook on race toward the end of his life.

Project Director Karen Loughmiller notes, “‘The Child by Tiger’ is the most haunting and provocative chronicle of the Will Harris saga. Only Thomas Wolfe’s fictionalized version of the event lays bare the mob mentality of the whites, only Thomas Wolfe suggests that we are all complicit in Harris’s crimes, and only Thomas Wolfe asks where and how a man like Will Harris/Dick Prosser is created.”

These events are made possible by a mini-grant from The NC Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (www.nchumanities.org), awarded to Buncombe County Public libraries. They are cosponsored by the Buncombe County Library System and with community partners The Friends of Buncombe Libraries, The Urban News, Mountain Lit, and The Friends of Mountain History.

 

Free Lecture/Discussion


Thomas Wolfe

Register for Race, Truth, and Fiction in Thomas Wolfe’s “The Child by Tiger” at any Buncombe County Public Library. Free copies of the short story will be available for participants. For more information call the Pack Memorial Library, (828) 250-4740.

Part 1: Tuesday, November 27

“African American Survival Mechanisms in Asheville” with Dr. Darin Waters, History Department, UNC Asheville. Held at 6:30 p.m. at the YMI Cultural Center, 39 S. Market St., Asheville.

Part 2: Thursday, November 29

“An Unfound Door: Thomas Wolfe and Race” with Ms. Joanne Mauldin, Thomas Wolfe Scholar. 6:30 p.m. at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville.

Visit the display at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, 52 N. Market St., Asheville. Phone (828) 253-8304.