Personality
Could his genius writing and behavior have been a by-product of his brain disease? Did anyone ever find what the disease actually was?
shareIt was actually tuberculous; at least that is what I have always read.
You can carry TB without getting sick, that is why they used to do the arm prick test to see if people had a reaction. I had never heard of it settling in the brain until the first time I read about Wolfe’s death. I have never heard of it since.
One the one hand, this was 1930s science and maybe there would be a different diagnosis today? On the other hand, he was at Johns Hopkins and they were the best, which is why Wolfe was sent there in the first place.
I have wondered about his mannerisms and actions potentially being related to the illness as well. Yet, if you read Look Homeward Angel, Eugene Gant (by Wolfe’s own admission, is himself) struggles with outbursts, flailing, and stuttering from early childhood.
Genetically speaking, his family was also very colorful and given to outbursts; Wolfe’s parents are worthy of a movie themselves. They were very well known around Asheville (the real life Altamont) for their more eccentric, sometimes erratic behavior long before Wolfe ever became a famous writer. Based on what I know about the father, he would probably be diagnosed as Bipolar today. Given that, I believe the behavior likely had nothing to do with the disease, until maybe the end. (Clearly – I am not a doctor, that is just my thought process as an historian and lover of literature).
I also mentioned in another thread that several of the descendants of the Wolfe family have Tourette Syndrome, and that is also a working theory for the unique speech and body language, not just for Thomas but others in the family as well. (I got that info from a lecture about 4 years ago).
Meningeal tuberculosis is frequently present in persons with an immunological disorder such as HIV or AIDS and in organ transplant recipients. Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV and as of 2011, CDC estimated 6% of all TB cases and 10% of TB cases among people aged 25–44 occurred among people who were HIV-positive. Bottom line, it's far more prevalent than one would be led to believe and the effects on personality and behavior is greatly increased with meningeal tuberculosis.
shareThank you for the insight.
I had always associated TB with the lungs only, and the first time I heard that Wolfe had died from TB that had settled in the brain it really threw me.
It can effect a lot of organs. I find your comments about Tourette's Syndrome interesting. It has a very strong genetic basis, too. Apparently, if a parent passes the gene on to a child, the child may not have any symptoms of the disorder. If a daughter inherits the gene, there is a 70% chance that she will have at least one of the signs of TD. On the other hand, if a son inherits the gene, there is a 99% chance that he will have at least one of the signs of TD. Not a happy family trait!!
shareYour comment reminds me of another inherited trait - SEX. If your parents never had it chances are good that you'll never get it either.
..*.. TxMike ..*..
Sex isn't an inherited trait, it's a learned behavior. 😁
share... But if your parents never had it ...
... But if your parents never had it ...
Discussion moot? share
reaction to exchange between TxMike and RalphDeCat:
I promise not to be a jerk like leh-86986. Elsewhere in this thread, he tried to derail the exchange about medical information so we could return to the art of the cinema. That is dumb because we all live in these things called bodies, so we better pay attention to information about them.
RalphDeCat is correct about the effect of a brain abnormality on human behavior and personality. It happens.
On the good ole web site called Facebook, I found an example from Marilyn Voneiff Opitz where she discusses her really weird brother.
I'm pasting below what Marilyn posted to my Facebook account on November 7, 2016. She wonders if I'm one of her brother's friends in whom he confided a long time ago. I'm not. To the best of my knowledge, I never met Marilyn or her brother.
Watching the movie Genius made me think of him. Alright then, let's "time travel," so to speak, to Marilyn using her iPhone on November 7, 2016. It's one long paragraph. I'm not breaking it up.
I'm just now seeing these messages from you. For whatever reason, FB app for iPhone that I usually use 99% of the time, doesn't show me messages from non-friends. Yes those articles are interesting. Not really sure what kind of old beef you may have w/my family members (your name doesn't ring a bell w/me), & not sure of what you know of my brother's accident/near suicide attempt w/the train in 1972-were you there? Were you one of the friends he confided in? I don't think he "dared a train to cut off his foot". What happened was the result of a young person who'd been very lost on many levels, in a dysfunctional family that wasn't able to heal properly for many reasons back then, nor has it ever been able to heal properly from things that happened after his accident. Living w/his disability wasn't easy for him as a teen, nor has it been easy for him for the past 40 years. And the domino effect of multiple tragedies that happened within our family after his accident, I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy.
And RalphDeCat's details and statistics tell us what about Thomas Wolfe? Maxwell Perkins wasn't a physician or a medical researcher. His job was to edit the hundreds and hundreds of pages that Wolfe insisted be included in whatever book they were working on. Their working relationship provides important plot points in the movie Genius, which is supposed to be the basis of this message board.
Wikipedia says the following about the decline of Wolfe's health at age 37:
"In July [1938], Wolfe became ill with pneumonia while visiting Seattle, spending three weeks in the hospital there. His sister Mabel closed her boardinghouse in Washington, D.C. and went to Seattle to care for him. Complications arose, and Wolfe was eventually diagnosed with miliary tuberculosis of the brain."
Nuff said.
And *this* particular thread in this message board is about his brain disease and the effects on his personality. Don't be obtuse. A thread can take any direction the participants want to take it. What are you? The thread monitor? It's called flexibility. Look it up and practice it, don't be a jerk.
share[deleted]
Two weeks from now, all the IMDb message boards will shut down. You can find the announcement posted near this message board. RalphDeCat will no longer be able to make his creepy comments. They demonstrate his bad social skills.
Maybe his upcoming loss will force him to "hit bottom," as Alcoholics Anonymous members say. When RalphDeCat and other creepy commentators use bad social skills repeatedly, they are like alcoholics drinking. IMDb pulling the plug is like a workplace supervisor firing an employee whose drinking affects job performance.
When you click on RalphDeCat's comments going back many years, you find some particularly creepy ones on the message board for an actress named Karyn Kupcinet. She died 53 years ago. Soon IMDb will be doing a favor to her memory. May she rest in peace. Ditto for Thomas Wolfe. Forget how he died and may he rest in peace.
And if you want to research it, you will find that wendelbakerwb is yet one more in a long series of troll accounts, each newly registered at the time, that have stalked me all over these message boards (and in the past, on Wikipedia, for which she was permanently banned) over more than 10 years for some insane, obsessive vendetta she has cooked up in her psychotic imagination. She just had to trot this all out for posterity's sake before they shut down the message boards since she had given it up for over 3 years until now. Interesting how she lays the groundwork to give away a trail to track if one would even give a crap about her obsession. Other account names here include cindytrells and ReelDreamEntertainment, among others. On Wikipedia she used User:UCLA Young Research Library, User:Debbiesvoucher, User:Dooyar, User:Downonme, User:Earththings, User:Hi There, User:My account now, User:Newcastleind, User:Nyannrunning, User:Onittles, User:Seth4u2nvcs and at least 15 different IP number edits. She words things now as if it is something that even approaches occupying my conscious mind, but she's so wrong, she's pathetic. It hasn't crossed my mind AT ALL in the past 3 years, and only in response to posts she made directly in response to something I wrote for the 7 years before that. I don't care one iota about the loss of the message boards here, I rarely if ever look at them these years, so she's the one who is going to feel the loss, since by checking quickly, I can see she doesn't really back off stalking people and things on here still. Farewell, little person. Don't let the message board door hit you in the ass when it swings shut on you for the last time. Sad, pathetic, obsessive little person.
shareThe thread is about personality, the discussion of a brain disorder is a logical offshoot.
When you want to win an argument, or utilize a phrase such as, "Nuff said," you want to consider citing a reference with more credibility than Wikipedia.