You Can't Go Home Again

This is yet another matter regarding whether one can return home. When I was young, my father severed our ties with both sides of the family. It was only very recently, a year or two ago, that I began seeing my mother's two sisters. I've been invited to a birthday celebration for one of them this weekend, where I would encounter a large number of my mother's relatives, practically all of them. Should I go? Every time I contemplate this, I can't help but tell myself "You Can't Go Home," yet perhaps you can? Maybe? If, in effect, you suddenly see all these people with whom you might have spent your life but didn't, is that similar to going home? I don't know....Does it function that way? Or will I simply feel that I should have left things as they were.

I’ve always been aware of the truth that you can’t go home again. However, as I’ve spent more time in Adelaide, my hometown, over the past few months than I have cumulatively since I first left in the mid-eighties, I’ve discovered it to be even more painful than I anticipated. For the first time in so many years, I’ve started taking buses again and regressing to childhood, sitting at the back, as if a young love is going to miraculously appear beside me and…

I’ve begun going to the shopping centre near my mother again, and just stepping into the place makes me want to weep. I don’t want to, please don’t make me go in there, I keep telling my mother. It’s too big, I get lost, since I can’t explain to her why. It, like the buses, is a time machine that transports me right back to my teens, right back to that intoxicating time when everyone in the world loved you and you didn’t even notice, right back to a time when, in the tree of analysis, you made a decision that determined your life from that point, but you are back there again, and this time, perhaps, you could make that other decision and maybe…

If you desire to be in the place where you are right now, if that is where you want to be, then everything that preceded it, even the miserable, even the messed-up-what-on-earth-were-you-thinking-about, every single bit of it has led you here.

So, I’m considering spending a few months with my mother, simply moving back to Adelaide for a few months. Why not? I’m living out of a suitcase anyway, and she’d have a great time, and there really isn’t a reason it should cause me pain. I love going for visits, it’s just a long visit, but. Usually, I don’t take a bus there. I never set foot in the shopping centre. You can’t go home, this won’t be going home because it can’t be. I shouldn’t be afraid of this, should I.

I don't get it.

Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again" (YCGHA) has a 4.04/5 rating on Goodreads and is around 4/5 on Amazon. I'm baffled as to why. This book, which can hardly be called a novel, is a disjointed, meandering, and overly verbose effort. It's full of self-importance and navel-gazing.

Unless the majority of readers simply love an abundance of adjectives, I suspect most rate this book highly because it's a "classic." Giving it a high score implies that you "get it" because you're the type of person who "understands classics." I make no such claim, and I don't hold literary critics in particularly high regard. So, I'm comfortable stating that I didn't enjoy this book.

I thought YCGHA was about a writer whose bestselling book, drawn from his own life, angers his old friends who feel their lives have been exposed. (I'm considering similar projects myself and thought this might offer some perspective.) However, this is only the plot of about 10-15% of the 638 pages. And if "plot" implies "resolution," then it's the wrong word to use here. Wolfe and his alter ego, George Webber, don't see any of their stories through to the end. The same goes for other stories in the book, like the detailed description of a Manhattan party and the life and family of Fox Edwards. These go into great detail about characters who disappear a few pages later and never reappear. As a novel, it's a mess, and no first-year creative writing student would get away with it.

The point of the book, perhaps, isn't the stories where "characters do things" - that's for the common folk to read. Wolfe uses this book to pontificate on the changes in 1920s and 1930s America. No doubt, this was a period of significant change, with urbanization alone radically altering the face of America. Wolfe offers some interesting descriptions of the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression (although less than I would have liked). The images of celebration and despair are among his best passages, even if they don't lead to any action. The problem is that Wolfe's "analysis" is shallow and self-absorbed. His insights are along the lines of "Businessmen are gamblers! Lawyers are dishonest! The good old days were better!" and his predictive commentary isn't much more incisive. Yes, the changes to America (and the world) were significant, but they weren't for the worse. The world is a better place now than it was then, including morally. Wolfe comes across more as a "kids these days" guy than a chronicler of a period of upheaval.

I suppose Wolfe's appeal lies with lovers of beautiful language, which YCGHA has in some stretches. There are some well-crafted sentences, usually at their best when they're short and to the point. For example, "Anyone is happy who confidently awaits the fulfillment of his highest dreams." and "And women— well, they were women, and there was no help for that." However, Wolfe overreaches when he tries to discuss the human condition and the role of the artist within it (and he loves to talk about the artist). At his worst, he's so wordy that I think even William Faulkner would have told him to get to the point and Ernest Hemingway would have murdered him outright. Beginning writers are taught "show, don't tell." Wolfe, not being a beginner, reserves the right to tell whenever it suits him. He'll explain in great detail the thoughts and features of individual characters, groups they observe, and entire nations, rarely bothering to justify his conclusions.

There is some good language here, but it comes at a high price. My experience with this book is best summed up by a more efficient quote from the video game Road To The World Cup 1998: "A dull, goalless draw here, and it couldn't have ended soon enough as far as I'm concerned."

A masterpiece is a work of outstanding artistry, skill, and significance. It is a creation that stands out from the ordinary and leaves a lasting impression on the viewer, reader, or listener. Masterpieces can take many forms, such as paintings, sculptures, novels, poems, or musical compositions.

What makes a work a masterpiece is subjective and can vary from person to person. However, there are some common characteristics that are often associated with masterpieces. For example, a masterpiece may have a unique and original style, a profound and thought-provoking theme, or a high level of technical proficiency. It may also have the ability to evoke strong emotions and connect with the audience on a deep level.

Masterpieces are not only important for their artistic value but also for their historical and cultural significance. They can provide insights into the time and place in which they were created and can serve as a record of the human experience. Many masterpieces have endured throughout the ages and continue to be studied, admired, and appreciated by people all over the world.

At page 454, I am abandoning this text, at least for a while.

*You Can't Go Home Again* is an extremely influential work, particularly within American literature. I constantly had to remind myself that what seemed "old hat" or clichéd to me was, in reality, quite innovative. The passages that reminded me of Kerouac were actually the ones that inspired Kerouac. This work contains some exceptionally beautiful and moving passages. For example, in my recent reading, the suicide scene at the Admiral Drake hotel in Brooklyn stood out. I especially loved its narrative shift, where the narrator focuses on a minute detail like the name of the hotel from which the victim jumped to his death and begins to address Sir Francis Drake directly, attempting to explain the history of modernity through this single event. In other words, it reveals the "story" behind the "news".

This is Wolfe's strength. He can look at individuals and seemingly unique events that pique his literary interest and conduct an analysis of these singularities in a way that makes them universal. The guy selling tobacco and newspapers on a lonely street corner, the pompous actor throwing an extravagant party during the stock market crash, the unmarried sister whose oddness cements her spinsterhood, the impoverished author living in squalor in the basement of a brownstone in Brooklyn; each of these characters embodies "America" and the struggle we call "life" in the America of the late 1920s and early 1930s. For this, I give Wolfe a three-star rating.

However, what Wolfe does not understand is brevity. Admittedly, my favorite works of literature are often large-scale novels like those of Joyce, Pynchon, and Dickens. What I require from a text, ultimately, is either insight in theme or plot, whether it's completely innovative or just a universal problem presented in a "new" light, or fabulous writing, whether it's original, quirky, or just solid. If a text has an abundance of even one of these traits, I'm generally satisfied. Of course, my favorite texts, such as *Ulysses*, *V.*, and *Bleak House*, contain a delightful combination of all of them.

In my opinion, Wolfe does not possess much of any of these traits. Thus, in my view, *YCGHA* is ultimately long, boring, and inconsequential. He is certainly eloquent when writing about his home in Asheville, NC, and he provides marvelous descriptions. However, his writing as a whole is nothing out of the ordinary; in fact, it's rather plain.

Moreover, he's really not very insightful. When, in the text, George Webber proudly claims that he is not an intellectual, it's all too obvious that he is serving as the mouthpiece for Wolfe himself. It's not that writers need to be endowed with a monstrous intellect, but if one's writing is commonplace and unappealing, I at least hope that reading their plain script will prove affectingly insightful. Sadly, I did not find this to be the case here.

The book indeed contains some truly beautiful moments.

However, in order to discover them, one has to endure an endless sea of detailed descriptions of minutiae.

Every single scene is so densely packed with details that it gives the impression that the author's main objective in penning this novel was to refine his skills in conveying the aesthetics of a situation and the thought processes of his characters.

Undoubtedly, he is an eloquent writer with a flawless eye for detail.

Nevertheless, in my personal opinion, the excessive description detracts from the overall story, which progresses at an excruciatingly slow pace.

If you have a penchant for beautiful language or relish stories that are presented as if you are looking through the lens of a camera, then you will most likely fall in love with this book.

But if you are in search of a novel that moves forward with pace and tension, and whose characters you can become invested in well before page 295, then you might want to think twice before deciding to read this one.

Thomas Wolfe (NOT TOM WOLFE!), hailing from Asheville, NC, holds a special place in my heart. I purchased this book while in Asheville, and later that very day, still in the same city, I was struck down with appendicitis. Thus, this book has a unique association for me.

Anyway, I began reading this book during my recovery and just now completed it. I guess it was around May 15th when I started, and now it's September 4th, so that's roughly 110 days. With the book being 704 pages long, that means I read almost 7 pages a day. Hm.

My point is that this is an extremely long book, yet I have never read with such feverishness, eager to have more of the landscape revealed to me. It is a complex scene that he weaves, of growing, of learning, of feeling and expressing feeling, and also of being critical of what one sees. It's about America, what it is and isn't, and what we ought to believe it can be. It's about honesty, vision, perception, and courage.

It's hard to put into words. It's really, really good. The language feels complete, as if he paints everything there is. In that sense, it's Proustian, but also Emersonian.

Maybe it's too soon to say any more, but this book comes highly recommended!

You Can't Go Home Again is a work that emerged under the editorship of Edward Aswell of Harper & Brothers. Wolfe left him a manuscript that filled an eight-foot-high packing crate, containing thirty-five notebooks and various outlines and summaries related to his future projects. Wolfe passed away months later, and Aswell was left alone to sort through the mass of unfinished material, a task that took him three full years.

I have read elsewhere that so many different people at Harper's were involved in working on the manuscript that it became impossible to reconstruct the original.

So, what readers encounter is the version "arranged" by Aswell.

Indeed, Aswell faced significant criticism for "overediting" Wolfe's final work. Noticing substantial ellipses between the two novels derived from the mountain of material, Aswell wrote eighteen pages of additional text, which he published in italics to bridge the gaps in the existing content. Aswell defended his actions, stating that after Wolfe's death, he had to do his best to give the novels form and order based on the internal evidence.

The letter to Foxwell Edwards (Maxwell Perkins) at the end of the novel details the experiences and conclusions that shape the novel itself.

The letter describes a turning point in Wolfe's development, where he turns outward and the world enters his consciousness. It refers back to the brilliant writing in Book Four about Wolfe's years writing in Brooklyn.

However, if readers find that the book lacks cohesiveness and reads more like a collection of brilliant vignettes, this is the reason.

Wolfe is my new favorite author, until I encounter another of his works that disappoints or discover something better by someone else.

Just imagine if Proust were American and not so delicate, still highly observant but not a victim.

Or envision a great British author with an equally powerful command of language, yet unconcerned with class, the Queen, and what is considered proper.

Think about Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky exploring the depths of humanity without the need to learn Russian or rely on a translator.

So, aside from that, if you desire each chapter to resemble a truly excellent short story with great character development and psychology, you should read this. However, if you require a really cool plot, there are apparently good superhero movies you can watch to satisfy that urge.

Oh, and did I mention that he passed away before the USA entered WWII at the age of 38, yet he almost predicted the entire 20th century? This was during a time when America was proclaiming "Making America Great Again (TM)" and either thinking Nazis were cool or believing the Soviets had it all figured out. Wolfe. Wolfe.

No wonder Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson (who borrowed "Fear and Loathing" from him), Sinclair Lewis, Ray Bradbury, and others couldn't get enough. Even Faulkner, a contemporary, was in awe (though I still haven't read anything good by him).

Ok. Behold The Man. This is it, until further notice. Also, apparently he wrote while standing on top of a refrigerator, which is undeniably cool. And his books were often thousands of pages long until his editors intervened. I'm eager to get my hands on an uncut version.