lysses (Holman 14).
One of the prime influences on Wolfe's life and his writing was Asheville, North Carolina, where he had lived as a child and which served as the backdrop for his novels:
Cosmopolitan and provincial Asheville gave Wolfe his background, furnished the mores of his novels, and gave him his subjects and his characters. Perhaps Asheville and his mother provided him with his tradition and his constant provincialism, his desire to come home again. With its tales of far-off wonders, as described by the tourists, the town and the blood of his father gave him his wanderlust. There were reasons for his being torn, attracted, and repelled. It was his very nature and the nature of his town and of his family (Watkins 33).
Wolfe finds that his childhood in this town provides him with ample mat
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