You Can't Go Home Again - Thomas Wolfe

The semi-autobiographical story of a novelist dealing with the trials of writing and publishing is really a vast, thorough examination of America (circa the stock market crash of 1929) - an America of which New York City is most certainly the epicenter, for good or bad. It is full of detailed, real characters, from elevator operators to aristocrats, all of whom collectively form the great beast of America - and in the midst of it all is George Webber - observing, living, and trying to capture it all in words. The novel begins with Webber waiting for the publication of his first novel, which is based on his youth in a small Nebraska town - when it comes out he experiences an unexpected backlash from the people he had fictionalized. Facing such animosity and ostracism, that he 'can't go home again,' as the title suggests. But in reality, the novel goes far beyond that event. It takes the reader though the theme of being unable to return to something past, destroyed, or otherwise left behind is recurrent. The perspective shifts from close inspection of the protagonist to broader examinations of his surroundings, and the style changes throughout, depending on need, giving it an energizing (and intentional) inconsistency. Wolfe's language is dense, descriptive, and highly analytical - somewhere between Fitzgerald and James Baldwin - but distinctly his own. Having said that, the book is a bit overwritten, perhaps due partially to its immense ambitions, and at times the author's own analysis is too prevalent, but it is nonetheless an important piece of American literature.

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4 out of 5
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For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

In his tale of the Spanish civil war, Hemingway stretches out a period of three days into nearly epic proportions. He does so not by tedious glamorization but through a sincere and brutal study of war and all its paradoxes. His characters breathe with intensity and a sense of purpose - for the short time shown they live in the present, and that alone gives validation to their existence. The story focuses on an American mercenary fighting with the Spanish rebels. A special mission takes him to a mountain camp, where the unstable leadership threatens to hinder his task. The language is typical Hemingway - terse and confident - and the dialogue is strange and almost poetic, even at its most vulgar moments ("I obscenity in the milk of thy...!" curse his characters). Through the constant moral struggles of the American and the group of makeshift soldiers, Hemingway gets to the harsh truth of war - that even if killing is necessary one must never believe in it. This is a beautiful, honest book.

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4 out of 5
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