That "Mother-Spoiled Glut of Oily Fat": John Skally Terry in Thomas Wolfe's Life and Work (Critical Essay‪)‬

In addition to reading and studying the literary works of Thomas Wolfe, both scholars and fans enjoy discovering more about Wolfe's relationships with others, especially his mother and other family members, his lovers, his editors, his literary agent, and some colleagues and friends. One friend who has been known about casually and condemned roundly is John Skally Terry. Some facts about Terry are generally known: Terry and Wolfe were both students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), they both later lived and taught in New York and spent time together socially, Terry edited the 1943 edition of Thomas Wolfe's Letters to His Mother, and he is the model for the character Jerry Alsop in Wolfe's posthumous novel The Web and the Rock. But perhaps the best-known fact about Terry is that after Wolfe's untimely death in 1938 Terry was expected to write a biography of Wolfe but did not. This last fact inspired Edward Aswell to write--in a letter to Elizabeth Nowell dated 29 October 1953--his colorful characterization of John Terry, alias Jerry Alsop, as