Thomas Wolfe: You Can't Go Home Again

You Can’t Go Home Again is the story of George Webber, a young man from a small southern town who writes a novel—Home to Our Mountains—the title of which, at first glance, seems to contradict that of Tom Wolfe’s.

George publishes his book toward the beginning of You Can’t Go Home Again, and afterward he's ostracized from his hometown of Libya Hill for his portrayal of it in his book. A large part of the remainder of You Can't Go Home Again is devoted to the time between George’s first and second book, while he travels, and learns to reconcile the meanings behind the titles of the two narratives—his own fictionalized title, and Tom Wolfe’s. But You Can’t Go Home Again is concerned with much more than the life of George Webber—his career begins with the great depression, and the second novel is published close to the outbreak of World War II, events which Wolfe works to directly relate to events in the novel. Because ultimately, You Can’t Go Home Again is a novel concerned more with ideas than characters like George Webber, who only serve as stages for Wolfe to orate from.

I began You Can’t Go Home Again with high expectations. The title itself is haunting and sad, and before I point out what I see as major barriers between the novel and the reader, here’s a striking passage from the book:

You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of “the artist” and the all-sufficiency of “art” and “beauty” and “love,” back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

Even as I transcribed the above passage I caught myself thinking that I was about to be too hard on the novel, and that it was inspiring and beautiful in ways that a lot of novels don’t have the ambition or patience to be. Because this is a wonderful piece of writing. It’s electric, and it rings true from the loss of childhood to the collapse of old forms and systems, be they political, economic, or personal. But while the novel was often interesting, and had beautiful passages (though few as powerful as this one), it was absolutely clogged with meaningless dialogue (slowed further by the half-dozen types of dialect Wolfe writes in) between unimportant, one trick characters, and clogged with an endless repetition of ideas and phrases. What people like Faulkner termed genius, to me felt like indulgence. Between pages three-hundred and four-hundred, I had to force myself onward with the illusory promise of some final pay-off for what I was slugging through. A significant chunk of the novel is spent rephrasing the title in ways less poetic, and much more tedious—fine, I can’t go home again. Could this have been said in two hundred less pages? (Don't worry, the book would still have been close to 400 pages.)

Now, I’m certainly not against length, or following rabbit trails, but what’s sad is that Wolfe’s characters, from George Webber on down to the bell-hops who get chapters to themselves, never become more than card board cutouts. Here’s the aspiring artist. Here’s a rich New York Jew(ess). Here’s a door-man. Watch out! He’s a union fella, and he don’t like no commie’s who don’t show up ta meetins’!

Though George flitted close to humanity in spots before Wolfe returned hom to an archetype, I never really found myself engaged by any of the characters , let alone emotionally attached. And while there's an argument to be made that the power of this novel, the gas that makes the great wheels turn is ideas, well—Wolfe himself choose to link his ideas to characters, presumably so that readers would care. And I didn’t.

So while I was able to appreciate the fleeting moments of wonder, ultimately, the novel failed for me. And while the passage above was epic and inspiring, it wasn’t worth the hours I spent dragging my slow way toward the end.

I was going to read Look Homeward, Angel next, but I don’t think I will. I’m afraid I’ve already read the most beautiful passage.