What has become to be known as, The October Fair, was a large manuscript-in-progress. Actually, it was a collection of fragments, chapters, sketches and short novels. Running about one and a quarter million words, it filled five thousand pages and was organized into over two hundred chapters. In May 1938, Mr Wolfe gave his book to his new editor, Edward Aswell, at his newly signed publisher, Harper and Brothers. Thomas Wolfe died five months later. Mr Aswell cut 50 chapters and proceeded to re-arrange, blend and splice together various pieces with new lines to create three novels. R W B Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Edith Wharton, called the heavy-handed editing of The Web and the Rock a "profoundly misleading hybrid". - AsNotedIn