Thomas Wolfe grappled in frustrated and demonic fury with what he called “the strange and bitter miracle of life,” a miracle which he saw in patterns of opposites. The elements of life and of art seem to have existed for him as a congeries of contradictions, and he could not understand a thing until its negation had been brought forth. The setting down of these opposites is the most obvious single characteristic of his work, the significant parts of which are four vast novels, two collections of short stories, and an essay in criticism — all fragments of an incomplete...