The Territory

The Territory

Travelling and reading have always gone hand in hand with me. There are some trips that I will always equate with the book I was reading at the time. Right now I’m reading a book about Fela Kuti that I got at the very cool Left Bank bookstore in Pikes Corner in Seattle but that’s not the book that I want to bring out into the territorry yet. I started thinking about good books to take with you on a trip or, in my case as of writing this, tour.
You Can’t Go Home Again is my favorite book from the very cool and interesting Thomas Wolfe. (Not to be confused with Tom Wolfe the journalist who wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) Thomas Wolfe was one of the lesser known of the great writers coming out of Scribners in the early 20th centuary. (A literary Rat pack of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Wolfe among others) YCGHA was published posthumously because Wolfe died unexpectedly of Tuberculosis at 38. YCGHA revolves around it’s protagonist George Webber who writes a book about his family and hometown that sells very well. When he returnes home he finds nothing but resentment and animosity from all of those who were near him for exposing all of them in his book. Their anger makes him leave the town in search of his own self. It takes him around the world and each trip forces the reader to reflect on ones self consistantly and often. YCGHA won’t come easy to a lot of people. It runs 576 pages and I imagine Scribners editor Max Perkins probably cut that down from about a grand. Wolfe wrote so much. All of his books are large enough to be dangerous if thrown at someone. He wrote more than people who got to live out their lives always writing. You will have to have an attention span and a willingness to go with Wolfe when he takes you into extreme exposition and puts a magnifying glass to nuance. But if you will go with him, Wolfe will take you to some revelations that will live with you for the rest of your days. You can find it for cheap at abebooks, amazon or ebay.

“You can’t go home again”

“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.” -Thomas Wolfe
“If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested”- Thomas Wolfe