On favorites, and America's everlasting dream
At my age, I've outgrown the notion of "favorites." (Can we outgrow it as a society too? People sometimes ask my toddler to name her "favorite" color. I know they mean well, but she always seems so stumped by the question, but I don't want to encourage her to conjure a fake answer. She's two! All colors are awesome.)
That said: I'm currently re-reading Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again, which I decided was my favorite novel when I read it one slow sunburned summer at age 19 or 20. And I have to say, it's still got it.
An excerpt:
I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me—and I think for all of us—not only our own hope, but America’s everlasting, living dream. I think the life which we have fashioned in America, and which has fashioned us—the forms we made, the cells that grew, the honeycomb that was created—was self-destructive in its nature, and must be destroyed.
I think these forms are dying, and must die, just as I know that America and the people in it are deathless, undiscovered, and immortal, and must live. I think the true discovery of America is before us. I think the true fulfillment of our spirit, of our people, of our mighty and immortal land, is yet to come. I think the true discovery of our own democracy is still before us. And I think that all these things are certain as the morning, as inevitable as noon.
