N (exactly)P - You cant go home again

[matthew cissell]

There is something in Wolfe that reminds me of Pynchon.

>From the end (Credo) of You Can't Go Home Again:

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
fulfilment 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. I think I speak for most men living when I say that our
America is Here, is Now, and beckons on before us, and that this glorious
assurance is not only our living hope, but our dream to be accomplished.

I think the enemy is here before us, too. But I think we know the forms and
faces of the enemy, and in the knowledge that we know him, and shall meet
him, and eventually must conquer him is also our living hope. I think the
enemy is here before us with a thousand faces, but I think we know that all
his faces wear one mask. I think the enemy is single selfishness and
compulsive greed. I think the enemy is blind, but has the brutal power of
his blind grab. I do not think the enemy was born yesterday, or that he
grew to manhood forty years ago, or that he suffered sickness and collapse
in 1929, or that we began without the enemy, and that our vision faltered,
that we lost the way, and suddenly were in his camp. I think the enemy is
old as Time, and evil as Hell, and that he has been here with us from the
beginning. I think he stole our earth from us, destroyed our wealth, and
ravaged and despoiled our land. I think he took our people and enslaved
them, that he polluted the fountains of our life, took unto himself the
rarest treasures of our own possession, took our bread and left us with a
crust, and, not content, for the nature of the enemy is insatiate--tried
finally to take from us the crust.

I think the enemy comes to us with the face of innocence and says to us:

"I am your friend."

I think the enemy deceives us with false words and lying phrases, saying:

"See, I am one of you--I am one of your children, your son, your brother,
and your friend. Behold how sleek and fat I have become--and all because I
am just one of you, and your friend. Behold how rich and powerful I am--and
all because I am one of you--shaped in your way of life, of thinking, of
accomplishment. What I am, I am because I am one of you, your humble
brother and your friend. Behold," cries Enemy, "the man I am, the man I
have become, the thing I have accomplished--and reflect. Will you destroy
this thing? I assure you that it is the most precious thing you have. It is
yourselves, the projection of each of you, the triumph of your individual
lives, the thing that is rooted in your blood, and native to your stock,
and inherent in the traditions of America. It is the thing that all of you
may hope to be," says Enemy, "for"--humbly--"am I not just one of you? Am I
not just your brother and your son? Am I not the living image of what each
of you may hope to be, would wish to be, would desire for his own son?
Would you destroy this glorious incarnation of your own heroic self? If you
do, then," says Enemy, "you destroy yourselves--you kill the thing that is
most gloriously American, and in so killing, kill yourselves."

He lies! And now we know he lies! He is not gloriously, or in any other
way, ourselves. He is not our friend, our son, our brother. And he is not
American! For, although he has a thousand familiar and convenient faces,
his own true face is old as Hell.

Look about you and see what he has done.


ciao

mc
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