In this blog post, as we read ‘You Will Never Return to Your Hometown’, we’ll explore the process by which a man transforms into a writer, the change he undergoes after breaking with the past to gaze upon a broader world, and the profound questions the work raises about humanity and society.

Why We Read Thomas Wolfe’s Life and Works Together

While reading ‘You Will Never Return Home Again’, I found myself exploring Thomas Wolfe’s life as well. This is because his works possess characteristics that set them apart from other literary works. He based nearly all of his works on his own real-life experiences. Moreover, he did not limit himself to a single specific event from his life; rather, he drew upon his entire life as the subject matter for his works. Consequently, I came to view his works, in a sense, as a kind of autobiography.
Thomas Wolfe was born on October 3, 1900, in Asheville, North Carolina, as the youngest of eight siblings. Asheville was a rural town with a population of about 50,000, surrounded by densely forested mountains. His father, William Oliver Wolfe, was a stonemason who carved and sold tombstones, but he loved literature and was a romantic soul who recited famous lines from plays and poems. In contrast, his mother, Julia, a schoolteacher, had a keen business sense; she ran her own boarding house and took a keen interest in real estate. It can be said that his father’s influence played a significant role in Wolf’s early exposure to books and the development of his literary sensibilities.
In 1920, at the age of twenty, Wolf graduated from the University of North Carolina and, with his mother’s financial support, enrolled at Harvard University to continue his studies in playwriting. While in college, she wrote plays and worked as an editor for the college newspaper. Most impressive of all was her immense volume of reading. It is said that she read as many as 20,000 books from her college years through the following decade. It seems clear that this extensive reading served as the foundation for her creative work.
After earning his master’s degree from Harvard University in 1922, Wolfe taught English and creative writing at Washington Square College, part of New York University. It is said that when he returned students’ assignments, his comments were often longer than the students’ actual writing. Although he took several leaves of absence, he continued in his position as a college lecturer for seven years. During that time, she traveled to Europe twice, and it was during her second trip, while staying in London, that she began writing a novel. She had made several attempts to sell her plays on Broadway but was repeatedly rejected on the grounds that they were too long, so she shifted her focus to writing novels.
Upon returning from her 1925 trip to Europe, Woolf met Aline Bernstein and fell in love with her. Twenty years older than Woolf, she was a theater set designer and a married woman with two children; her husband was a successful stockbroker. The two shared a romantic relationship for the next five years. Rather than a purely sweet relationship, it was a tumultuous romance marked by frequent arguments, but she had a profound influence on Woolf’s writing career by encouraging her and providing financial support.
Afterward, Wolfe continued a life of teaching by day and writing by night. Sometimes he would stay up all night. Those were grueling days during which he smoked three packs of cigarettes and drank as many as twenty cups of coffee a day, and when he felt hungry, he would usually make do with beans. After entrusting a massive manuscript—so large that it took three people to carry it—to a literary agent, he set off once again on a trip to Europe. The novel’s original title was ‘Oh, the Things We’ve Lost’.
The book was published eleven days before the 1929 U.S. stock market crash began. The person who recognized the novel’s true value—after it had been rejected by several publishers—and published it was Maxwell Perkins, president and editor of Scribner’s. Perkins, who was the most prominent editor and publisher of the time, was also working with Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Perkins decided that the massive manuscript could not be published as is, so he and Woolf began the process of cutting and restructuring the novel, focusing on the protagonist. After eight months of editing, revising, and restructuring, the novel was published under the title ‘Look Homeward, Angel’. As Wolf met with Perkins frequently, she came to regard him as a spiritual father, and Perkins—who had five daughters of his own—cherished and loved Wolf as if she were his own adopted son.
‘Look Homeward, Angel’ caused a tremendous sensation as soon as it was published. Day after day, newspapers were filled with praise and acclaim announcing the arrival of this new novel. Edward Aswell, a critic and the head of Harper & Brothers, observed that two extraordinary events occurred in the fall of 1929: one was the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression in the United States, and the other was the publication of ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ by an unknown author named Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe’s distinctive panoramic descriptions and writing style, which evoked a lonely and melancholic atmosphere, became wildly popular among aspiring writers in the 1930s. This was a phenomenon similar to how young aspiring writers in the 1920s had enjoyed imitating the “Jazz Age” scenes depicted by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
However, ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ elicited a completely different reaction from the residents of Asheville, Wolf’s hometown. The residents believed the novel was a direct portrayal of their hometown and were outraged that it denounced and exposed the decadence and depravity of their hometown and its people. Wolf, who was living in New York, was inundated with blackmail and threatening letters, and some even filed lawsuits against him for defamation. One woman even sent a letter stating that, while she did not condone the death penalty, she would not object if Wolfe were dragged into the town square, hanged from a tree, and subjected to every conceivable form of punishment. Wolfe did not set foot in her hometown for the next eight years.
Now able to live solely on her royalties, Wolfe resigned from her university teaching position in 1930 and, in May of that year, received a Guggenheim Fellowship and set out on another trip to Europe. It was during this trip that she ended her relationship with Aline Bernstein. At the time, ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ was on the bestseller lists in both Britain and Germany, and Woolf had become a celebrity.

A New Agony for a Successful Author

Returning to New York in the spring of 1931, Woolf rented a room in a basement in South Brooklyn and devoted herself to writing a new novel for four years. She completed an epic novel twice the length of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ and on par with Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’. After reviewing the manuscript, Perkins predicted the book would be a major commercial success but recommended deleting significant portions. Woolf revised the novel according to his advice and published the full-length novel ‘The Years and the River’. This took place in the winter of 1935. In the meantime, she had also published two novellas and a collection of short stories; it can truly be said that she threw herself into writing novels with a life-or-death determination.
‘The Years and the Rivers’ was a tremendous commercial success, just as Perkins had predicted. However, once again, the residents of Asheville were just as outraged as they had been when ‘O Angel, Look Upon Your Hometown’ was published. Paradoxically, this time it was because the novel did not feature any of their stories at all.
After publishing ‘The Years and the River’, Wolfe parted ways with Perkins’ Scribner publishing house and joined forces with Edward Aswell’s Harper publishing house.
This may have been a reaction against Perkins’ overly strict editorial approach, or it may have been the result of Wolfe’s sensitivity to some critics’ claims that her success was due to Perkins’ editorial skills.
After publishing ‘The Years and the River’, Wolfe set out on another trip to Europe, spending a particularly long time in Germany, where she experienced firsthand the tyranny of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Upon her return, she serialized “I Have Something to Say to You,” a piece denouncing the tyranny of Hitler’s Nazi regime, in ‘The New Republic’. While the series was running, all of Woolf’s books were banned by German authorities, and she was placed on the list of individuals barred from entering Germany. Parts of “I Have Something to Say to You” were later incorporated into ‘You Will Never Return Home’ after her death.
In early 1937, eight years after the publication of ‘O Angel, Behold Your Homeland’, Woolf visited her hometown of Asheville for the first time. That would be her last visit to her hometown during her lifetime.
In 1938, after submitting her massive novel ‘Spiderwebs and Rocks’ to Aswell at Harper & Brothers, Woolf set out on a recuperative trip to the American West. In July of that year, while traveling in Seattle, she contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized for three weeks; her condition worsened as complications led to symptoms of tuberculosis. Her sister came to her aid and had her transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, but Wolfe passed away without regaining consciousness. It was just 18 days before her thirty-eighth birthday.
Before losing consciousness completely, he sent a letter of gratitude to Perkins. In it, he wrote that it was thanks to Perkins that he had come to understand the meaning of writing and life, and that this had enabled him to continue writing novels. His remains were transported on the K19 train back to his hometown of Asheville, where he was laid to rest at Riverside Cemetery alongside his parents and relatives. Upon Wolfe’s passing, ‘The New York Times’ wrote that our era had lost the most cherished and promising genius of our time. Wolfe was an author who, during his lifetime, had published only half of his four major works. At the time of his death, he had already handed over two completed novels to his editor: ‘Cobwebs and Rocks’ and ‘You Will Never Return Home’, the latter of which we have read.
Looking back, all of Woolf’s works draw on her own life as their subject matter. This holds true for all four of her major novels. ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ depicts her own childhood as the protagonist and author, while ‘The Years’ chronicles the period from when she left her hometown to attend Harvard University through her travels in London and Paris. ‘The Web and the Stone’ depicts the protagonist’s early success as a writer and her acceptance into New York’s high society. And her final novel, ‘You Will Never Return to Your Hometown’, portrays the protagonist returning to New York after traveling through Europe to live as a full-time writer.
Published in 1940, two years after Woolf’s death, ‘You Will Never Return Home Again’ felt like a work that not only brought her literary world to a close but also marked the end of her life. Moreover, in this work, “as I burned the last of the year’s candles in the night, something spoke to me. I did not know where the voice came from, but in the darkness, that something said: ‘That I would die. That for the sake of greater knowledge, you would lose the land you know. That for the sake of a greater life, you would lose the life you now enjoy. That for the sake of greater love, you would leave the friends you love. That you would discover a land more comforting than your homeland and greater than the Earth…’” It felt as though he had written this work as if leaving his own last will and testament.
The author, who had lived a life of enlightenment and transformation by observing, feeling, and writing intensely throughout his life, seemed not only to have foreseen his own death but also to have accepted even that death as a new beginning—a transformation into a greater life.
“You Will Never Return to Your Hometown” begins with a scene in which the protagonist, George Weber, returns to New York from a trip to Europe. George Weber is Thomas Wolfe himself. He had fled to Europe to end his relationship with his lover, Esther Jack, but upon returning to New York, he resumes his romance with her. Then, shortly thereafter, something astonishing happens: the manuscript he had left behind catches the eye of Foxhall Edwards, and it is published by James Rodney Publishing, where Edwards serves as editor. It was the moment George’s dream of becoming a successful writer came true. It seemed only natural that he would be overjoyed and happy.
Like all Americans, George had long yearned for material success. Therefore, the fact that the people back home now believed he had succeeded—or at least was on the path to success—made him happy. The reputation of the publishing house that had agreed to publish his book played a decisive role in convincing them of his success. Everyone knew that publishing house, and people who ran into him on the street would say, “So, I hear your book is being published by James Rodney Publishing?”
Those words conveyed not only congratulations on getting his book published but also the implication that he was lucky to have secured a spot with such a prestigious publisher. George could read in the villagers’ eyes the message: “You’ve made it.” He was no longer that strange young man chasing the futile dream of becoming a writer. He was already a writer. Not only was he an author, but he was an author on the verge of publication—and a distinguished one at that, set to publish with James Rodney Publishing, a house renowned for both tradition and prestige.
He was happy. Nothing could have relieved the resentment he’d been harboring in his heart quite as effectively as this sense of success. Now, all resentment and hostility had vanished from George, and he no longer wished to fight with anyone. For the first time, he felt he’d made the right decision to return to his hometown.
The fact that George Weber was publishing a novel—and, moreover, with a prestigious publisher like James Rodney—signified a kind of material success not only to the people of his hometown but also to George himself. George had long yearned for that success. First and foremost, it carried the same meaning as succeeding as a businessman or a lawyer. George is happy. After all, even an author is, first and foremost, a human being. He, too, is someone who pursues success and fame just like any ordinary person.
However, gaining fame as a writer carries a different meaning than succeeding as a businessman or lawyer. A businessman or lawyer can enjoy the success they’ve achieved while maintaining their life exactly as it was before. Of course, it requires tremendous effort, and they may experience failure or face ups and downs, but their identity doesn’t change significantly before and after success.
However, achieving success and gaining fame as a writer is different. It signifies a kind of metamorphosis—a transformation from an ordinary person into an artist. It means becoming a person who is entirely different from before, not only outwardly but also inwardly. And to achieve such a complete transformation—and, moreover, to live a life in which that transformation continues—one must engage in constant self-denial, introspection, and self-awareness. Paradoxically, the greater a writer’s fame becomes, the more one enters a path of excruciating self-abuse. It is, in a sense, embarking on a path of self-imposed torment.
Of course, there may be exceptions. There may be great writers who continue to produce outstanding works without such horrific self-abuse. But the path Thomas Wolfe chose was not one of those. Above all, for him—who drew on his own life and experiences as material for his work—it would have been impossible to write new works unless he constantly renewed himself.
In that sense, ‘You Will Never Return Home’ is the story of George Weber’s rebirth as a writer, and at the same time, the story of an individual who lived a life of constant self-renewal. McHarg was a figure who demonstrated that achieving great fame as a writer means embarking on precisely such a path of self-imposed torment.

What Does It Mean to Be a Writer?

McHarg began to fall apart again even before he crossed the River Thames. Amid the disappointment and emptiness that followed his great success, he spent several weeks frantically rushing about—moving from place to place, meeting people, and throwing himself into new adventures—in search of something he himself did not know. He never paused for a moment in this impossible quest, nor did he rest along the way. Yet, in the end, he found nothing. And he was still searching. If this were gambling, it would be as if he were “going all in” every single moment.
Lloyd McHarg was a renowned American author. He had recently published a new novel, and as soon as it came out, the public showered it with rave reviews, hailing it not only as the crowning achievement of McHarg’s illustrious writing career but also as a monumental work of great national significance. He had achieved tremendous success and fame.
But he was unable to enjoy that success at all. While he might have appeared to be basking in fame and success on the surface, in reality, he had driven himself to the point of utter exhaustion. This was because he had to find something new. And George Weber—no, Thomas Wolfe—is following exactly in McHarg’s footsteps. He has chosen a path that sets him apart from ordinary people as a novelist, yet it is an exceedingly difficult path that requires him to abandon even his self-awareness as a novelist.
When his friend Randy asked if he had ever written a perfectly successful work, George Weber cited Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’, Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, and Mark Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’. Of course, he says, one cannot call them perfect successes—because such a thing cannot exist. But he believes they merely made mistakes worth making; they simply fired their bullets a little farther. They did not become crippled by vanity, nor did they don the shackles of self-consciousness. Vanity and self-consciousness are the very root causes of failure, and he says he has committed precisely such failures.
So what is the remedy he needs? George says it is to use himself to the fullest, to use everything he has, to squeeze himself dry. If he makes himself a character, he must observe and portray himself exactly as he is, without any reservations. He must depict not only the good but also the bad, not only the true but also the false. He must portray himself as he would portray another person, without allowing false individuality, vain arrogance, or unnecessary emotions to interfere. In short, he must “kill the wounded satyr.” He argues that one must find a way to write prose that is faithful to the facts yet truer than the facts themselves—prose that starts from concrete experience yet can be universally applied—and suggests that this might just be the greatest novel.
It struck me that this passage could well be seen as Thomas Wolfe’s theory of the novel: writing a novel composed of self-denial, introspection, awakening, and exploration. But that path does not open easily. It is not a path where answers are readily given; rather, it is a path made up of the very act of exploration itself.
Consequently, this novel is filled with a wide-ranging array of questions—so many that they sometimes seem disjointed. It feels as if a person whose mind is brimming with countless thoughts and worries is pouring it all out into their diary. What does it mean to be a writer? Can an artist and a person living an ordinary life coexist? From these fundamental questions to a deep exploration of the blind real estate speculation frenzy that swept through his hometown, reflections on American corporations and high society in the mid-1930s; criticism of the social and intellectual circles swept up in frivolous trends with all seriousness gone; reflections on and critiques of contradictory social structures; and even reflections on the causes and significance of the U.S. stock market crash—the work is brimming with multifaceted questions and the author’s own answers and reflections on them.
There is likely no need to examine all of this content one by one. However, it struck me as significant that these critical questions and reflections were not merely criticism for criticism’s sake, but rather a search for new beginnings and transformation.
There is a scene that vividly illustrates the meaning of this transformation. When a cicada emerges from the ground and enters the final stage of its life, it initially looks less like a winged insect and more like a fat, dirty worm. It struggles to climb up a wooden pillar. Its movements are awkward, as if it has not yet learned how to use its legs properly. Once it barely reaches the middle of the tree trunk, it clings to the bark with its front legs. Then, suddenly, there is a popping sound, and the insect’s back splits open sideways, as if it had been sealed with a zipper. The life inside slowly begins to push its entire body—including its torso and head—outward.
Slowly, very slowly, the insect completes this amazing process and crawls out into the sunlight, leaving behind a lifeless brown shell. As it stretches its body, its color changes like a chameleon’s, and wings begin to sprout from both sides of its back. The wings unfold rapidly, and finally, the iridescent, transparent wings catch the sunlight and shimmer like a fairy’s. All these changes unfold right before our eyes. Its wings begin to flutter delicately, and the fluttering gradually speeds up. Then, suddenly, accompanied by a metallic buzzing sound, it cuts through the air and takes flight. Thus, this newly born creature enters a new world to live a new life.
Reading this scene, I could feel even more clearly the meaning of “metamorphosis” as portrayed in this work.

Having broken with the past, where should a human being go?

Metamorphosis signifies a complete break with the past and a new rebirth. Thus, the novel’s title, ‘You Will Never Return to Your Hometown’, struck me as meaning that one cannot go back to the past once that break has been made. In particular, the author views the 1929 stock market crash in the United States as a manifestation of precisely such a metamorphosis. This struck me as a rather strong expression of optimism.
America in the fall of 1929 was like a cicada. One world was coming to an end, and a new world was beginning. On October 24, a sudden, deafening sound that shook the heavens and earth rang out from within the marble buildings on Wall Street in New York. It was the crack of the stock market crash. It was the sound of the old shell enveloping America—a shell that had already outlived its purpose—shattering and cracking along its back. And from within that shell, the living entity that had been undergoing a painful, gradual transformation—the true America, which had always been that way and must remain so—began to reveal itself.
As that America emerged into the bright light, it staggered and limped, dazed by the sudden exposure. This was because it had been confined for so long. America had long been in a state of suspended animation, yet it had preserved its vitality within, patiently awaiting the next stage of its transformation.
But the people did not realize this. They were unaware of the stark reality: “You will never return home again.” They did not know what part of America had come to an end, nor what had begun anew. Moreover, no one could know what this new beginning would entail. As America’s changing face and the uncertainty of the future were compounded by the failures of its leaders, fear and despair grew even greater, and before long, famine spread throughout the streets.
Yet, even amid all that, there was one thing that was certain: no one could see it clearly, but America was still America. No matter what new form emerged within it, America remained America—just as a caterpillar transforms into a cicada, and that transformation itself is the cicada’s very identity.
George Weber himself undergoes precisely such a transformation. George, like everyone else, was gripped by confusion and fear. In some ways, his confusion and fear were even more intense than those of others, because his personal crisis was compounded by the world’s overarching crisis. At that very moment, George was also experiencing both an end and a new beginning.
It was the end of “love.” But it was not the end of “loving.” It was the beginning of “being recognized” in the world. But it was not the beginning of “fame.” And above all, just as a cicada is reborn from a larva into a cicada, George was reborn from an aspiring writer into a writer.
His book was published in early November. However, the event he had so eagerly awaited brought results completely different from what he had expected. In the process, he learned many new things he had not known before. But it took him a long time to realize that his own transformation was closely linked to the greater changes taking place in the world around him.
Viewed this way, this novel can be seen as a record of the process by which a transformed writer observes and learns about the world through fresh eyes. The first half, in particular, can be read as the journey of an aspiring writer—who had been pursuing the fame of being a writer—finally being reborn as a writer. Just as a cicada is reborn and takes flight, George, too, takes flight. When you look at the world from a high vantage point, your perspective broadens, and you see things you couldn’t see before. As George views the world through his newly born eyes, he gradually comes to understand more clearly the meaning of the phrase, “You will never return to your hometown again.”

Things That Can Never Be Reclaimed

The phrase “You shall never return to your homeland” carried multiple implications for George. He could never return to his family, nor to his childhood, nor to romantic love. He could not return to the dreams of his youth, which had been directed toward glory and fame. Nor could he return to a life of wandering, or to his past life of fleeing to Europe or other countries.
He could not return to lyricism, nor to “song for song’s sake,” “art for art’s sake,” or aestheticism. He could not return to his youthful ideal of the “artist,” nor to the days when he was satisfied with nothing but “art,” “beauty,” and “love.” He could not return to the ivory tower, nor to the town square in the countryside. I cannot turn my back on all the world’s struggles and conflicts and return to a hut on Bermuda.
I cannot return to the father I lost, nor to the father I have searched so hard to find. I cannot return to a hometown where someone might help me, save me, and lighten my burden. I cannot return to old forms and systems that seem to endure but are, in fact, constantly changing. I cannot return to the escape routes of time and memory. All of this meaning was encapsulated in a single sentence: “You will never return home again.”
Eyes that have broken with the past—eyes that gaze upon the entire world from on high—naturally lead to a new reflection on humanity as a whole. And this, in turn, leads to questions about the political deception and violence sweeping the present world, questions about the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler, and questions about the search for a healthy America.
The image of humanity portrayed in this work is extremely complex. Humans lose one-third of their lives to sleep and devote another third to hard labor. They spend one-sixth of their lives moving through the streets, weaving in and out among people, pushing and shoving just to get by. So how much time remains to gaze at the tragic stars? How much time remains to gaze upon the eternal land? How much time remains to live for glory, to compose a great song? In a life that devours and absorbs everything, only the briefest of moments—the very few we can barely cling to—remain.
Yes. This is what it means to be human. We are beings like moths that gnaw away at time, foolish creatures conscious only of a fleeting moment, and counterfeit beings breathing a hollow, barren breath. But if a god were to descend upon this desolate, ruin-strewn land and see nothing but the ruins of cities built by humans, if he were to discover only a few traces carved by human hands upon broken planks, if he were to see a single wheel left standing alone in the barren desert, a cry would burst forth from the hearts of the gods.

“They lived. They were here.”

This is even more evident when we look at what humans do. Humans needed words to bake bread, and so Jesus came. They needed songs to sing on the battlefield, and so Homer came. They needed words to curse their enemies, and so Dante, Voltaire, and Swift came. They needed clothes to cover their hairless, fragile flesh, and so they made Solomon’s garments, the robes of great kings, and silk garments for young knights. Humankind needed walls and roofs to shelter the body, and so the Château de Blois was built. Temples were needed to appease the gods, and so Chartres Cathedral and the Abbey of Fontaines-Aves were built. Humankind, created to crawl across the earth, invented the wheel, built massive engines to run on rails, sent great wings soaring through the air, and set massive ships adrift on the raging sea.
Humans carry on with their lives even amidst the numb futility of the universe. This is because they possess a single faith and conviction: the faith in life itself—which is humanity’s glory, victory, and immortality. Because humans love life, they hate death. That is why humans are great, glorious, and beautiful. And that beauty endures.
Living beneath the indifferent stars, humans write about what their meaning is amidst the stars. They live even amidst fear, toil, anguish, and ceaseless turmoil. Even if blood bubbles up like foam from their wounded lungs with every exhalation, they love life more than they fear the end of their breath. Even as they die, human eyes burn beautifully, and long-held yearnings shine all the more intensely within them. Even while enduring such arduous and meaningless suffering, humans still wish to live.
Therefore, it is impossible to mock the human being. For it is precisely from this powerful faith in life that this insignificant being has created love. At its best, humanity is love. Without humanity, there would be no love, no hunger, and no desire.
Yet humans are beings who embody both the worst and the best. They are weak and insignificant creatures who, like other animals, live out their allotted days before dying and being forgotten—yet at the same time, they are immortal. This is because the good and evil committed by humans survive even after their death. If so, why must living humans conspire with death? Why must they, consumed by greed, blindly feed on the blood of their brothers to fatten themselves?
Based on a celebration of life itself, this work examines the evil within human society.

Can humans change the evil in the world?

In Wolf’s view, Hitlerism was a resurgence of age-old barbarism. The foundations of Hitlerism did not appear suddenly, nor were they limited to the German people. Nor do they belong exclusively to any one race. It is a legacy universally inherited by humankind, and traces of the barbaric spirit—that terrifying aspect of human nature—can be found everywhere.
It sometimes appears in disguise and other times openly under its own name. It may have its own distinct name, like Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin, and it can also exist in various forms in the United States.
Wherever ruthless people conspire to achieve their own ends, wherever the law of the jungle prevails, it can take root and grow at any time.
This disease is a disease of the human soul. And Wolfe believes that this disease can be cured. I felt that this was precisely where the writer Thomas Wolfe found his place.
It is while observing the situation in a distant, exotic country engulfed in extreme upheaval and chaos that he first realizes just how sick America has become. And he comes to understand that this illness is similar to the one afflicting Germany—which had become a terrifying place at the time—and that it is, in fact, a sickness of the soul.
He agrees with his German friend’s statement that there is no hope for Germany and that there is no way to stop it other than death, destruction, and total ruin. However, he believes that even if the United States is suffering from the same illness as Germany, its illness is not yet fatal and does not appear incurable. He argues that if the United States, like Germany, fears to face its terrors head-on, fails to scrutinize what lies beneath, neglects to examine the root causes, and refuses to speak the truth about them, it will become just as desperate as Germany—or even more so.
Yet the United States is still young—a new frontier where humanity’s hope remains alive. It is different from Europe, which is old, weary, and plagued by countless chronic ailments. The United States still has resilience and can easily heal its ills. It must, however, learn—by any means necessary—not to fear the truth. Only the searchlight of truth, which has been extinguished in Germany, can purify and heal the suffering human soul.
Not everyone needs to agree with the author’s diagnosis and solution. Yet I am deeply moved by the sight of a young writer who ceaselessly poses questions in the face of such suffering. His eyes neither blaze with anger nor are they lost in despair. While refusing to turn away from suffering, he looks toward the future, holding onto a deep trust in humanity and a sense of hope. I found myself longing for that intense yet healthy perspective. This is because such a perspective is hard to find around us these days.
And the question posed by George Weber at the end of the book—as he parts ways with Foxhall Edwards, whom he has regarded as his spiritual father—lingers long after reading this work. It is a question we must constantly ask ourselves to live meaningful lives, yet one we often forget.
Foxhall Edwards believes that humans are bound by the fate of birth, aging, sickness, and death, and that we must accept it. He believes that humans are surrounded by all manner of monsters—fear and cruelty, tyranny and power, poverty and wealth—that we ourselves have created, and that we cannot help but become their prey; furthermore, he believes these elements will remain a permanent part of human existence.
George understands what he is saying. However, he does not agree. He states that even if old forms of oppression are overthrown, new, ominous, and evil forms of oppression will emerge, and he cannot agree with the view that the imbalances in the world—between evil and power, between subjugation and freedom, between deprivation and abundance, and between privilege and discrimination—are a curse imposed on humanity and the fundamental conditions of human existence.
He says that while he respects Foxhall Edwards as a kind and gentle man, he has never met anyone so fatalistically resigned to his fate. In his actual life and actions, he cannot bear to see someone wasting their talent or abusing their life by failing to do what they ought to do. If he believes someone is worth saving, he tries with all his might to save them, and he devotes every effort and all his patience to pulling those who have fallen into the abyss of failure back out.
Every time he slips and fails in his attempt to pull them out, instead of resigning himself to defeat or regretting his efforts, his eyes light up as he declares that it is not yet time to give up—that he absolutely cannot abandon them. Therefore, Foxhall’s resignation cannot be described as mere resignation, for it is accompanied by determination, perseverance, and courage. In that sense, he is the most unfamiliar yet the most familiar, the most winding yet the most straightforward, and the simplest yet the most complex being.
Considering his efforts to save everything that can be saved, it would be unfair to say that he passively accepts all the hardships and injustices of this suffering world. He faithfully carries out his efforts to save and heal whatever can be saved and healed. However, he silently accepts what cannot be healed. While he risks all manner of danger to save a friend who has recklessly plunged himself into ruin, he accepts a fate as inescapable as death without regret.
It is precisely at this point that a strange paradox exists between George and Foxhall. The root of their conflict lies in the very point where the two seem to stand at opposite extremes, and therein lies the reason they must ultimately part ways.
Foxhall’s philosophy leads people to accept the given order of things as it is, because there is no hope of changing it. Even if change were possible, he feels that the new order would be just as bad as the old one. From the perspective of eternal time, Foxhall or the Evangelist may be right. Humans are born to suffer, to die, and to face a tragic fate. Ultimately, this cannot be denied.
However, as long as we are alive, we must continue to deny what we cannot deny. Humanity may have been created for eternity, but living human beings are created for each day. New evils may arise after today’s life, but what matters to humans right now is the evil of the present.
That is why the belief that human life can and will improve is so important. We need to believe that the great enemies now looming before us—fear and hatred, subjugation and cruelty, poverty and destitution—can be conquered and destroyed. They can never be conquered or destroyed through resigned fatalism. Nothing can be changed by the tragic assumption alone that the world will always remain the same and that evil will always exist.
Is the very belief—that if we eliminate the old evil, a new and more powerful evil will emerge, or that once Pandora’s box is opened, the ugly things inside will pour out endlessly—not itself helping to perpetuate evil?
From the perspective of eternity, Foxhall and the Preacher may be right. But the living exist for the here and now. The truths we must speak, the truths we must see and know, also exist for this very moment. If the enemy approaches us, we must confront it with the courage that comes from the truth within us. And if, after subduing the enemy, a new one appears, we must stand our ground and face it once more.
The idea that affirming this fact and continuing the ceaseless struggle is the essence of human religion and living faith left a powerful impression at the end of this work.

What does it mean to live fiercely?

This is a question for which there can be no single correct answer. Yet, if one is to live a serious life, it is also a question that ultimately forces one to choose one of the options. Or perhaps it is a question that compels one to set out in search of a path different from the two that already exist. As I read ‘You Will Never Return to Your Hometown’, I, too, felt as though I were stepping onto that path of inquiry.
Throughout my reading of this novel, written by Thomas Wolfe in his mid-thirties, I felt a constant sense of tension and, at times, even a shiver ran down my spine. I was overwhelmed by its seriousness and sincerity. I was amazed that he was able to pose such questions in his mid-thirties. I was especially amazed that he posed such comprehensive, concrete, and far-reaching questions directed at both humanity and the world as a whole.
The French writer Victor Hugo declared, while writing ‘The Legend of the Centuries’, that he would sing an epic of the human soul. There are many other authors who have left behind works that reflect on and grapple with humanity and the world as a whole. Tolstoy, author of ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Resurrection’; Thomas Mann, author of ‘The Magic Mountain’; and Hermann Hesse, author of ‘The Glass Bead Game’, are among them.
However, they generally wrote such works in their later years.
Thomas Wolfe, on the other hand, wrote such a work in his mid-thirties. Of course, what does age matter? Moreover, this work was Wolfe’s final work.
William Faulkner said that if Thomas Wolfe had lived a little longer, he would have become the leading figure in American literature. No—he said that even based solely on the works Wolf left behind, he could already be considered the leading figure in American literature. Everyone describes Thomas Wolfe as a “genius.”
I don’t particularly like rankings that label people as “number one” or “number two.” However, when it comes to Wolfe, I want to bestow upon him the title of “number one.” Not because of the label “genius,” but because no one could match his intensity—that is why I want to call him the “number one.”
I miss that intensity. It’s because we’ve forgotten that kind of intensity far too much. It’s also something modern people have forgotten. Where has that intensity gone?
That’s why I don’t want to read the declaration “You Will Never Return to Your Hometown” simply as a break with the past, as Wolf did. Rather, I read a sense of longing in those words. Where has Wolf gone? Will we never see Wolf again?
After reading “You Will Never Return to Your Hometown,” I realize that the “hometown” referred to in the work does not simply mean the place where a person was born and raised. It is the past life we once lived, familiar memories, a time we long to return to, and the world that once protected us. Yet humans cannot ultimately return there. This is because, once we have undergone a transformation, we cannot revert to our former selves.
If so, what matters is not merely mourning the past we cannot return to, but rather the question of what kind of life we will choose after parting ways with the past. This work pushes that question to its limits through reflections on the author’s life, the changes of an era, and the nature of humanity and society.
Thus, even after reading this book, the phrase “You shall never return to your homeland” does not remain a mere declaration of despair. Rather, it feels like a declaration that we must lose familiar ground for greater knowledge, lose our present life for a greater life, part with loved ones for greater love, and set out in search of a land more comforting than our homeland and vaster than the Earth itself.
When we consider Thomas Wolfe’s life and work together, the “transformation” he spoke of was not simply a matter of one person leaving the past behind. It was a process of constantly negating and reflecting on oneself while viewing the world through new eyes. And in that process, it was a matter of asking what it means to be human, how one should live, and whether one should accept the evil in the world as it is or fight against it ceaselessly.
There may be no perfect answer to those questions. But for a living person, what matters is life right now, the evil right now, and the choices we can make right now. That is why, while reading this work, I found myself reflecting at length on the fierce intensity that Thomas Wolfe displayed.
Finally, if you’d like to get a more vivid sense of Thomas Wolfe as a person, you might also consider the 2017 film ‘Genius’, directed by Michael Grandage. This film depicts the true story of Thomas Wolfe and Max Perkins, and you can draw parallels between them and George Weber and Foxhall Edwards from ‘You Can Never Go Home Again’. Jude Law plays Thomas Wolfe, and Colin Firth plays Max Perkins. The film also features appearances by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
After reading ‘You Can Never Go Home Again’, the one thing that stayed with me the longest was, in the end, a single sentence: We cannot go back to the past. So, having bid farewell to the past, where should we go from here? Perhaps this novel, rather than providing an answer to that question, is a work that urges us to live our lives while holding onto that question until the very end.