You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

  "I kno-o-w! And that was the part she didn't like. She didn't seem to know what I was talking about--said it was immature and not sound, and gave me a 'C'."

  "Oh," says Fox absently, thinking all the time with an immense satisfaction of the spirit: "What a girl this is! She has a fine mind. She--she understands things!"

  "You see, darling," Fox whispers gently, coming back to Miss Allen, "it's not their fault. These people do the best they can--but--but they just can't seem to understand," he whispers. "You see, Miss Allen is an--an academic kind of person--I guess, kind of an old maid, really," he whispers, with an emphatic movement of the head--"and that kind of person, darling, just wouldn't be able to understand what Whitman and Mark Twain and Keats are like...It's--it's a shame," Fox mutters, and shakes his head, his eyes troubled with regret--"it's a shame we've got to hear about these people first in--in schools--from--from people like Miss Allen. You see, darling," Fox says gently, his face cocked sideways, his good ear pointing towards the girl, his language simple as a shoe, his face keen, shrewd, thoughtful, and absorbed, and radiant as a blade of light, as it always is when interest and reflection hold the wise serpent of his brain--"you see, darling, schools are all right, really--but the Thing they do is different from the Thing that Keats and Whitman and Mark Twain do...People like that really have no place in schools. A--a school," Fox whispers, "is an academic kind of place, you see--and the people that you find in schools are academic people--and these other kind of people--the poets," whispers Fox, "are not academic people--they're--they're really against what the academic people do--they are people who--who discover things for themselves," Fox whispers, "who burst through and make another world--and the academic people cannot understand them--so that's why what the academic people say about them is--is not much good," Fox whispers. For a moment he is silent, then shakes his head and mutters in a low tone of profound regret: "It's a pity! Too bad you've got to hear about it first in schools--but--but just do the best you can with it--get what you can from it--and--and when those people"--whisper mixed with understanding, pity, and contempt--"have gone as far as they can go, just forget about the rest they tell you."

  "I kno-o-w! But, really, daddy, when Miss Allen starts drawing charts and diagrams upon the blackboard, showing how they did it--it's--it's aw-w-full I can't be-e-ar it--it just makes everything so,--te-er-rible!...Oh, daddy, let me go!" She squirms to free herself again, her tender features tortured with self-consciousness. "Please, daddy! I've got to! I'll be late!"

  "How are you going?"

  "But naturally, the way I always go."

  "By taxi?"

  "But of course not, I take the str-e-e-t car."

  "Oh...What street car?"

  "The Lexington A-a-a-venue."

  "Alone?" says Fox in a low, grave, troubled tone.

  "But, of course, daddy!"

  He looks at her sternly with a sorrow-troubled face, and shakes his head.

  "But what's wrong with taking the str-e-e-t car? Oh, daddy, you're so-o--" she squirms, looks off indefinitely, her face touched by a smile of agonised embarrassment. "Please, daddy! Let me go-o-o! I tell you I'll be late!"

  She pushes a little to release herself, he kisses her, and lets her go reluctantly.

  "Good-bye, darling"--low, hoarse, tender, troubled with grave solicitude. "You will take care, won't you?"

  "But, of course!" A little agonised laugh. "There's nothing to take care." Then, suddenly, in a timid little voice: "Good-bye, daddy"--and she is gone, swiftly, silently, like fading light.

  Fox, hands upon his hips, with a look half-trouble and half-tenderness, follows her with sea-pale eyes until she has gone. Then he turns back to the table, sits down again, and picks up the paper.

  News.

  * * *

  29. "The Hollow Men"

  Fox picks up the paper and settles back to read it with keen relish. The paper is the Times. (He read the Tribune late last night: waited up for it, would not miss it, has never missed it, could not sleep if he had not read it.) Morning now, Fox reads the Times.

  How does he read the Times?

  He reads it the way Americans have always read the paper. He also reads it as few Americans have ever read the paper--with nostrils sensitive, dilating with proud scorn, sniffing for the news behind the news.

  He loves it--even loves the Times--loves Love unlovable--and don't we all? Ink-fresh papers, millions of them--ink-fresh with morning, orange juice, waffles, eggs and bacon, and cups of strong hot coffee. How fine it is, here in America, at ink-fresh, coffee-fragrant morning, to read the paper!

  How often have we read the paper in America! How often have we seen it blocked against our doors! Little route-boys fold and block it, so to throw it--and so we find it and unfold it, crackling and ink-laden, at our doors. Sometimes we find it tossed there lightly with flat plop; sometimes we find it thrown with solid, whizzing whack against the clapboards (clapboards here, most often, in America); sometimes, as now in Turtle Bay, servants find just freshly folded sheets laid neatly down in doorways, and take them to the table for their masters. No matter how it got there, we always find it.

  How we do love the paper in America! How we do love the paper, all!

  Why do we love the paper in America? Why do we love the paper, all?

  Mad masters, I will tell ye why.

  Because the paper is "the news" here in America, and we love the smell of news. We love the smell of news that's "fit to print". We also love the smell of news not fit to print. We love, besides, the smell of facts that news is made of. Therefore we love the paper because the news is so fit-printable--so unprintable--and so fact-printable.

  Is the news, then, like America? No, it's not--and Fox, unlike the rest of you, mad masters, turns the pages knowing it is just the news and not America that he reads there in his Times.

  The news is not America, nor is America the news--the news is in America. It is a kind of light at morning, and at evening, and at midnight in America. It is a kind of growth and record and excrescence of our life. It is not good enough--it does not tell our story--yet it is the news!

  Fox reads (proud nose sharp-sniffing with a scornful relish):

  An unidentified man fell or jumped yesterday at noon from the twelfth storey of the Admiral Francis Drake Hotel, corner of Hay and Apple Streets, in Brooklyn. The man, who was about thirty-five years old, registered at the hotel about a week ago, according to the police, as C. Green. Police are of the opinion that this was an assumed name. Pending identification, the body is being held at the King's County Morgue.

  This, then, is news. Is it also the whole story, Admiral Drake? No! Yet we do not supply the whole story--we who have known all the lights and weathers of America--as Fox supplies it now:

  Well, then, it's news, and it happened in your own hotel, brave Admiral Drake. It didn't happen in the Penn-Pitt at Pittsburgh, nor the Phil-Penn at Philadelphia, nor the York-Albany at Albany, nor the Hudson-Troy at Troy, nor the Libya-Ritz at Libya Hill, nor the Clay-Calhoun at Columbia, nor the Richmond-Lee at Richmond, nor the George Washington at Easton, Pennsylvania, Canton, Ohio, Terre Haute, Indiana, Danville, Virginia, Houston, Texas, and ninety-seven other places; nor at the Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, Wilmington, Delaware, Cairo, Illinois, Kansas City, Missouri, Los Angeles, California, and one hundred and thirty-six other towns; nor at the Andrew Jackson, the Roosevelt (Theodore or Franklin--take your choice), the Jefferson Davis, the Daniel Webster, the Stonewall Jackson, the U.S. Grant, the Commodore Vanderbilt, the Waldorf-Astor, the Adams House, the Parker House, the Palmer House, the Taft, the McKinley, the Emerson (Waldo or Bromo), the Harding, the Coolidge, the Hoover, the Albert G. Fall, the Harry Daugherty, the Rockefeller, the Harriman, the Carnegie or the Frick, the Christopher Columbus or the Leif Ericsson, the Ponce-de-Leon or the Magellan, in the remaining eight hundred and forty-three cities of America--but at the Francis Drake, brave Admiral--your own hotel--so, of course, you'
ll want to know what happened.

  "An unidentified man"--well, then, this man was an American. "About thirty-five years old" with "an assumed name"--well, then, call him C. Green as he called himself ironically in the hotel register. C. Green, the unidentified American, "fell or jumped," then, "yesterday at noon...in Brooklyn"--worth nine lines of print in to-day's Times--one of seven thousand who died yesterday upon this continent--one of three hundred and fifty who died yesterday in this very city (see dense, close columns of obituaries, page 15: begin with "Aaronson", so through the alphabet to "Zorn"). C. Green came here "a week ago"----

  And came from where? From the deep South, or the Mississippi Valley, or the Middle West? From Minneapolis, Bridgeport, Boston, or a little town in Old Catawba? From Scranton, Toledo, St. Louis, or the desert whiteness of Los Angeles? From the pine barrens of the Atlantic coastal plain, or from the Pacific shore?

  And so--was what, brave Admiral Drake? Had seen, felt, heard, smelled, tasted--what? Had known--what?

  Had known all our brutal violence of weather: the burned swelter of July across the nation, the smell of the slow, rank river, the mud, the bottom lands, the weed growth, and the hot, coarse, humid fragrance of the corn. The kind that says: "Jesus, but it's hot!"--pulls off his coat, and mops his face, and goes in shirt-sleeves in St. Louis, goes to August's for a Swiss on rye with mustard, and a mug of beer. The kind that says: "Damn! It's hot!" in South Carolina, slouches in shirt-sleeves and straw hat down South Main Street, drops into Evans Drug Store for a dope, says to the soda jerker: "Is it hot enough fer you to-day, Jim?" The kind that reads in the paper of the heat, the deaths, and the prostration, reads it with a certain satisfaction, hangs on grimly day by day and loses sleep at night, can't sleep for heat, is tired in the morning, says: "Jesus! It can't last for ever!" as heat lengthens into August, and the nation gasps for breath, and the green that was young in May now mottles, fades and bleaches, withers, goes heat-brown. Will boast of coolness in the mountains, Admiral Drake. "Always cool at night! May get a little warm around the middle of the day, but you'll sleep with blankets every night."

  Then summer fades and passes, and October comes. Will smell smoke then, and feel an unsuspected sharpness, a thrill of nervous, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure. C. Green doesn't know the reason, Admiral Drake, but lights slant and shorten in the afternoon, there is a misty pollen of old gold in light at noon, a murky redness in the lights of dusk, a frosty stillness, and the barking of the dogs; the maples flame upon the hills, the gums are burning, bronze the oak leaves and, the aspens yellow; then come the rains, the sodden dead-brown of the fallen leaves, the smoke-stark branches--and November comes.

  Waiting for winter in the little towns, and winter comes. It is really the same in big towns and the cities, too, with the bleak enclosure of the winter multiplied. In the commerce of the day, engaged and furious, then darkness, and the bleak monotony of "Where shall we go? What shall we do?" The winter grips us, closes round each house--the stark, harsh light encysts us--and C. Green walks the streets. Sometimes hard lights burn on him, Admiral Drake, bleak faces stream beneath the lights, amusement signs are winking. On Broadway, the constant plaze of sterile lights; in little towns, no less, the clustered raisins of hard light on Main Street. On Broadway, swarming millions up to midnight; in little towns, hard lights and frozen silence--no one, nothing, after ten o'clock. But in the hearts of C. Greens everywhere, bleak boredom, undefined despair, and "Christ! Where shall I go now? When will winter end?"

  So longs for spring, and wishes it were Saturday, brave Admiral Drake.

  Saturday night arrives with the thing that we are waiting for. Oh, it will come to-night; the thing that we have been expecting all our lives will come to-night, on Saturday! 'On Saturday night across America we are waiting for it, and ninety million Greens go moth-wise to the lights to find it. Surely it will come to-night! So Green goes out to find it, and he finds--hard lights again, saloons along Third Avenue, or the Greek's place in a little town--and then hard whisky, gin, and drunkenness, and brawls and fights and vomit.

  Sunday morning, aching head.

  Sunday afternoon, and in the cities the chop-suey signs wink on and flash their sterile promises of unborn joy.

  Sunday night, and the hard stars, and the bleak enclosures of our wintry weather--the buildings of old rusty brick, in cold enclosed, the fronts of old stark brown, the unpainted houses, the deserted factories, wharves, piers, warehouses, and office buildings, the tormented shabbiness of Sixth Avenues; and in the smaller towns, bleak Main Streets, desolate with shabby store fronts and be-raisined clusters of lamp standards, and in the residential streets of wooden houses (dark by ten o'clock), the moaning of stark branches, the stiff lights, limb-bepatterned, shaking at street corners. The light shines there with wintry bleakness on the clapboard front and porch of a shabby house where the policeman lives--blank and desolate upon the stuffy, boxlike little parlour where the policeman's daughter amorously receives--and almost--not quite--gives. Hot, fevered, fearful, and insatiate, it is all too close to the cold street light--too creaking, panting, flimsy-close to others in the flimsy house--too close to the policeman's solid and slow-creaking tread--yet somehow valiant, somehow strong, somehow triumphant over the stale varnish of the little parlour, the nearness of the street, the light, the creaking boughs, and papa's tread--somehow triumphant with hot panting, with rose lips and tender tongue, white underleg and tight-locked thighs--by these intimacies of fear and fragrant hot desire will beat the ashen monotone of time and even the bleak and grey duration of the winter out.

  Does this surprise you, Admiral Drake?

  "But Christ!"--Green leaves the house, his life is bitter with desire, the stiff light creaks. "When will it end?" thinks Green. "When will spring come?"

  It comes at last unhoped for, after hoping, comes when least expected, and when given up. In March there is a day that's almost spring, and C. Green, strong with will to have it so, says: "Well, it's here"--and it is gone like smoke. You can't look spring too closely in the eye in March. Raw days return, and blown light, and gusty moanings of the wind. Then April comes, and small, soaking rain. The air is wet and raw and chilled, but with a smell of spring now, a smell of earth, of grass exploding in small patches, here and there a blade, a bud, a leaf. And spring comes, marvellous, for a day or two--"It's here!" Green thinks. "It's here at last!"--and he is wrong again. It goes, chill days and greyness and small, soaking rains return. Green loses hope. "There is no spring!" he says. "You never get spring any more; you jump from winter into summer--we'll have summer now and the hot weather before you know it."

  Then spring comes--explodes out of the earth in a green radiance--comes up overnight! It's April twenty-eighth--the tree there in the city backyard is smoke-yellow, feathered with the striplings of young leaf! It's April twenty-ninth--the leaf, the yellow, and the smoke have thickened overnight. April thirtieth--you can watch it grow and thicken with your eye! Then May the first--the tree's in leaf now, almost full and dense, young, feather-fresh! The whole spring has exploded from the earth!

  All's explosive with us really, Admiral Drake--spring, the brutal summer, frost, October, February in Dakota with fifty-one below, spring floods, two hundred drowning along Ohio bottoms, in Missouri, in New England, all through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee. Spring shot at us overnight, and everything with us is vast, explosive, floodlike. A few hundred dead in floods, a hundred in a wave of heat, twelve thousand in a year by murder, thirty thousand with the motor-car--it all means nothing here. Floods like this would drown out France; death like this would plunge England in black mourning; but in America a few thousand C. Greens more or less, drowned, murdered, killed by motor-cars, or dead by jumping out of windows on their heads--well, it just means nothing to us--the next flood, or next week's crop of death and killings, wash it out. We do things on a large scale, Admiral Drake.

  The tar-smell in the streets now, children shouting, and the smell o
f earth; the sky shell-blue and faultless, a sapphire sparkle everywhere; and in the air the brave stick-candy whippings of a flag. C. Green thinks of the baseball games, the raw-hide arm of Lefty Grove, the resilient crack of ashwood on the horsehide ball, the waiting pockets of the well-oiled mitts, the warm smell of the bleachers, the shouted gibes of shirt-sleeved men, the sprawl and monotone of inning after inning. (Baseball's a dull game, really; that's the reason that it is so good. We do not love the game so much as we love the sprawl and drowse and shirt-sleeved apathy of it.) On Saturday afternoon, C. Green goes out to the ball park and sits there in the crowd, awaiting the sudden sharpness and the yell of crisis. Then the game ends and the crowd flows out across the green turf of the playing-field. Sunday, Green spends the day out in the country in his flivver, with a girl.

  Then summer comes again, heat-blazing summer, humid, murked with mist, sky-glazed with brutal weariness--and C. Green mops his face and sweats and says: "Jesus! Will it never end?"

  This, then, is C. Green "thirty-five years old"--"unidentified"--and an American. In what way an American? In what way different from the men you knew, old Drake?

  When the ships bore home again and Cape St. Vincent blazed in Spaniard's eye--or when old Drake was returning with his men, beating coastwise from strange seas abreast, past the Scilly Isles towards the slant of evening fields, chalk cliffs, the harbour's arms, the town's sweet cluster and the spire--where was Green?

  When, in red-oak thickets at the break of day, coon-skinned, the huntsmen of the wilderness lay for bear, heard arrows rattling in the laurel leaves, the bullets' whining plunk, and waited with cocked musket by the tree--where was Green?

  Or when, with strong faces turning towards the setting sun, hawk-eyed and Indian-visaged men bore gun-stocks on the western trails and sternly heard the fierce war-whoops around the Painted Buttes--where, then, was Green?