You Can’t Go Home Again (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Wolfe
- First Published: 1940
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Love or romance, Authors or writers, Writing, 1930’s, Novelists, England or English people, Adultery, Truth, Creative process, Ambition, Germany or German people
- Locales: Manhattan, NY, Brooklyn, NY, London, England, Berlin, Germany
From among the several million recorded words that Wolfe wrote during his career, the phrase that concludes one work and was chosen as the title for this novel has been probably the best-known of all the expressions he ever used. The adage “you can’t go home again” evidently was suggested first by Ella Winter, the widow of the writer Lincoln Steffens. This phrase seems apt, not on the most obvious literal level but rather in the sense that, in the flux of time and life, old ties and associations cannot remain the same, unchanged. Once they have been outgrown or cast off, old ways...
[The entire page is 1479 words long]
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