Like its sequel, You Can't Go Home Again (and also The Hills Beyond) it was extracted by Edward Aswell from a larger manuscript after Wolfe's death.

Although Esther is very supportive of Monk and even tries to help him get his lengthy novel published, their relations are tempestuous; resenting his dependence on her, he storms off to Europe.

During his travels in Europe, he is torn between what he calls the desires of his Mind and his Body and finally becomes conflicted with the inspiration of foreign lands and the recollections of his youth.

"[1][2][3][4] 'That is the good time because it is the time the sunlight came and went upon the porch, and when there was a sound of people coming home at noon, earth loaming, grass spermatic, a fume of rope-sperm in the nostrils and the dewlaps of the throat, torpid, thick, and undelightful, the humid commonness of housewives turbaned with a dish-clout, the small dreariness of As-They-Are mixed in with humid turnip greens, and houses aired to morning, the turned mattress and the beaten rug, the warm and common mucus of the earth-nasturtium smells, the thought of parlors and the good stale smell, the sudden, brooding stretch of absence of the street car after it had gone, and a feeling touched with desolation hoping noon would come.

[7] Kirkus Reviews described The Web and the Rock as a further example of Wolfe's "utter inability to select and discard, his obsession with himself and his actions and motives and emotional turmoils" coupled with his "queer streak of genius", resulting in a "turgid outpouring of his own emotional life, put into fictional form" which demonstrates "the same weaknesses, even more sharply emphasized, and the same sense of power that made his earlier work memorable".