You Can't Go Home Again

After reading three books (ranging from 80 to 200 pages each) in the span of about a week, I got challenged to read one that might take more than just a couple of days. I obliged. And just a month and three weeks later, I've finished this massive epic novel, You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe. Whew.This book came to me in a box with six other books (two of which were read as noted above), all with little neon green post-it notes attached. Some notes gave a three- or four-word summary, some a reference to why the sender thought I might enjoy it. The note attached to this particular book: "My favorite book." 

For the details of the book, you can read it yourself. As for what I got out of it, I'm happy to share. The title of the book is anything but true. You most certainly can go home again. But what you find there is never going to be what you remembered. We tend to go to extremes when we think about our pasts--we glorify or vilify whatever we remember and use it all to our advantage or disadvantage, whichever works best in the moment. The looking back, in and of itself, makes it difficult to move forward. So we spend a lot of time turned around, looking at the past analyzing it and figuring out where we went wrong, all the while we stand still, looking back at something that will never be again. It's not that there's no importance in looking back and figuring out what the hell happened back there, but there's something to be said for not pulling off the road in order to do so. Especially for something that no longer exists, save inside our minds.

There are parts of this book that are written so eloquently and truthfully about life and the way we go through it (albeit written in the 1930's), and the way we use our egos to maneuver through this piece and that and ultimately sacrifice the things we want for the things we think we ought to have. It's these portions that made me contemplate my own ego in this capacity. The idea that I have a past but don't use it against my future in order to "succeed." The idea that I have a future and don't discard my past in order to bypass the trickery of achieving a future at all. The idea that what happens in my reality is not only my reality, but a portion others' as well. That my world not only affects my self and my ego, but that it has effects on all mankind, even if I should choose not to believe so. That what goes on in the world is not just something happening some place else, but that this is all our home, my home and ought to be looked on with familial care. That just because what happens "over there" doesn't affect me over here, it has a great impact on the world in which I choose to live. That my existence, while mostly lived in the solitude of my own head (and briefly spilled out onto the pages of the internet via private journal or public blog), is not just my own (in part, because of these things). There is more to me than just what I see. And just what I say. And just what I remember. Because every time I try to go back where I once was, it is always someplace different, and thus, so am I. And that became clear to me as I read this book, in all its glorious 704 paperback pages. 

This feels a little cut off, but that's really all I have to offer right now. I'm trying this thing where I post what I have to post instead of saving draft after draft after draft because it's just not right quite yet and then sits there for three weeks or four months before I delete it because it's no longer relevant. And there you have it. 

Just one more thing: I wonder what makes this book anyone's "favorite book"? Not because I think it can't possibly be, but because the things that become our favorites become so because they've touched us in such a way that can never be forgotten. I cannot say that this is my favorite book, but it's touched me in such a way to see that it's possible.