Thomas Wolfe Says You Can't Go Home

To: The New Jersey Board of Tourism
Re; Jon Bon Jovi's Song

The Bon Jovi song entitled "Who Says You Can't Go Home?", currently being used as the theme song of the New Jersey tourist board, has a fairly simple answer. It was the early 20th century novelist Thomas Wolfe who said that you can't go home. Actually, the title of his classic book is You Can't Go Home Again. The word "again" is the key to Wolfe's whole philosophical statement, so that Mr. Bon Jovi might want to consider re-titling his song, "Thomas Wolfe Says You Can't Go Home Again." Just a thought. Nobody says that you literally can't go home, it's just that home - at least "home" as you are likely to remember it - is a fleeting or lost thing that exists in your heart and your memory, not in the objective facets of the geographical location in which you grew up. You probably get the idea. Why the New Jersey tourist board would want to remind visitors of these notions is not entirely clear to me. Anyway, in case you were wondering, that's the answer to your question - next time you might want to check out Google or something.