How Did Thomas Wolie Die?
The cause of his death — September, 35
years ago — had never been questioned
until now.
Ki
/
JAMES MEEIIW
(Curator of the Thomas Wolfe Collection. Pack Memorial Library )
Thirty-five summers ago. in June
1938. North Carolina's great writer
Thomas Wolfe decided to treat him¬
self to a vacation in the Far West,
which he had never seen. Wolfe was
then 37 years old and a giant of six feet
six and 250 pounds. Two great novels
were in back of him (the classic "Look
Homeward. Angel” in 1929 and "Of
Time and the River" in 1935). Before
setting out on the trip Wolfe delivered
a huge manuscript of over a million
words to his new publisher, Harper and
Brothers, for which he was paid an ad¬
vance of $ 1 0,000.
Happy that the work of several years
was now finished, buoyed by financial
security and anticipating a grand time
in the West, Tom Wolfe had everything
to live for. Critics were hailing him as
the man who would someday write the
Great American Novel.
Three months later. Thomas Wolfe
was dead. He succumbed on Sept. 15,
1938 of a disease diagnosed as tuber¬
culosis of the brain. In an editorial
the New York Times echoed the
thoughts of many at that time: "The
stamp of genius was on him. . . his first
book proclaimed the fact, and those
which followed confirmed it. He might
have lived to become the best Ameri¬
can novelist of his generation." In
1940, after two posthumous Wolfe
novels had been published, the literary
critic of the same august newspaper
stated plainly that "Thomas Wolfe’s
early death was the greatest loss to
American letters in our time.”
Wolfe's brief yet turbulent life was
full of mystery, paradox and ambiguity.
Since his death oceans of ink have de¬
scribed his great appetite for life, his
mammoth capacity for work and his
titanic ambition to "get all of America
down on paper." And since then almost
everything about Tom Wolfe has
proven controversial. He has been
praised as the great prose-poet of 20th
century America and damned as a ver¬
bose, formless adolescent who needed
IB
a brilliant editor to make his work
readable. His relationships with his
home town o{ Asheville, the state of
North Carolina, his friends and pub¬
lishers have all become fertile topics for
both the pro and anti-Wolfe forces.
But amid all the controversy one fact
has never been questioned — that he
died of tuberculosis of the brain. Now,
however, that too has been challenged,
and a startling new theory of what
killed Thomas Wolfe has been added
to the great store of lore and legend
which his life and works have inspired.
Desert Fever
The author of this new theory is Dr.
Michael L. Furcolow. a nationally-
known professor of medicine at the
University of Kentucky Medical
School. After a lengthy study. Dr. Fur¬
colow has concluded that Thomas
t
ft
Wolfe, pictured at the Univenity of Cotorodo,
in 1935 (picture! ore from the Thomai Wolfe
Collection, Pock Memorial Librory > .
Wolfe died not of
ТВ
of the brain but
of a fungus disease called coccidioido¬
mycosis (coke-oy-doh-my-ko-sis), also
known popularly as desert or valley
fever.
Furcolow notes that prior to his fatal
illness Tom Wolfe had been on an auto
tour of the western National Parks with
two Oregon journalists. Ray Conway
and Ed Miller. The trip lasted from
June 20 to July 2. 1938, during which
the trio logged almost 5,000 miles
while visiting eight National Parks.
Furcolow believes that sometime be¬
tween June 22 and 24 Wolfe picked up
the microscopic germ of desert fever
("coccidioides immitis") in the area
around Bakersfield, California and the
Mojave Desert. (This has long been
known as the highest-incidencc region
for coccidioidomycosis in the world.
Indeed, during World War II, U.S.
armed forces training in this area often
complained of a strange, flu-like illness
which was later diagnosed as desert
fever).
Dr. Furcolow is one of the leading
U.S. authorities on fungus diseases, and
has been a consultant to the U.S. gov¬
ernment in his specialty. He states that
coccidioidomycosis or desert fever is
one of several serious fungus diseases
which affect humans. They are caused
by fungi or molds which arc microsco¬
pic in size and are borne on dust par¬
ticles. When inhaled, they plant them¬
selves in the lungs and their spores
multiply. Depending on the patient's
resistance, they can either be shaken
off like flu in a few days or else develop
very serious complications, one of
which is a fatal meningitis of the brain.
This is what happened to Tom Wolfe,
Furcolow believes.
Whisky Bottle Incident
The doctor asserts that desert fever
has an incubation period of from one
to two weeks before the patients feels
any symptoms. He then feels generally
THE STATE. SEPTEMBER 1973
