Novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote a lengthy novel called You Can't Go Home Again, which was highly acclaimed when published in 1940, after his death at the age of 38. It was required reading in my American Literature course at New York University, but frankly I only read excerpts and relied on a synopsis in the event of a test. This obviously was a reflection on me and not on one of the literary giants of the 20th century.
Actually, I was always intrigued by the meaning of the title, if not the 720-page novel (in paperback), for in my youth I always assumed that you could always go home again. The fact that Wolfe had been an English instructor briefly at NYU (way before my time), who came from the mountains of North Carolina, who died young, and who had a lengthy love affair with a married woman 19 years his senior, all added to my interest in him.
I kept reading excerpts of his book, in pursuit of what he meant that after literary success and years in New York and Europe, he couldn't go home again, back home to the mountains of North Carolina and his roots.
It was disappointing to learn that the meaning of the title resulted from the autobiographical content of his novels, and that the people back home that he wrote about felt that they had been unflatteringly exposed. Not only were his books banned from the local library, but he even received some death threats. Truly, he felt that he couldn't go home again.
The book's title evidently became a worn out saying and cliché. I recall that there was a newspaper story about former residents of the World Trade Center area in New York who had difficulty moving back to the locale in the aftermath of September 11, and the newspaper's headline was: "You Can't Go Home Again."
I have another interpretation of the title. The home of your childhood and youth is a series of countless incidents and memories, and when looked back upon with the passage of time, things are seen and recalled from a different perspective.
What you lived through at the age of 9, for example, does not seem to be the same when you look back at it at age 19 or 39 or 59 or whenever. The homes that many people grew up in and thought were big, for instance, usually look much smaller when revisited.
Whether the "home" was a college dorm or your first apartment or whatever, those "homes" don't appear to be the same when you revisit them.
Relatively recently, I took my wife on a short journey to Shamokin, a small, former coal mining town in Pennsylvania, where I was born and where I lived part of my childhood with my sister and brother in-law. My sister's former apartment was unoccupied when we visited Shamokin, and I got permission to go into the apartment to look around.
As my wife noted, when somebody goes back home again, some memories are good as well as bad. As a young boy, I thought the apartment was large and well kept, but now it looked small and not well kept.
We also took a short journey to New Haven in Connecticut, and my wife showed me the house where she had lived as a child and teenager. We also passed the elementary school that she had attended, and she explained how much smaller it was than what she had remembered in her mind.
I remember years ago going to a Yankees-Mets game with our daughter, who still lives on Long Island in New York. We drove past the home on Long Island where we had lived for more than 20 years before my wife and I moved to New Jersey.
There were immediate flashbacks that lingered, almost as if memories were being rewound and then fast-forwarded in blurring clashing sequences that overlapped.
My wife and I have lived near water most of our lives, be it in Connecticut or New York or New Jersey. Basically, it was and is always the same water and sand and beach and sky – and our yesterdays and tomorrows blend into each other because our lives are composed of innumerable memories.
The thought that things change as you age and look back is an elusive matter. You can always go home again because all your previous "homes," even including some unpleasant memories, always dwell in your heart.
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