If I had a dime for every time a writer flogged that old Thomas Wolfe gem, You Can’t Go Home Again, I’d be able to buy my hometown and evict everyone I dislike. Whether it’s emphatic agreement with Wolfe’s axiom or a contrary insistence that you can, indeed, go home again if you want, there’s nothing at all innovative about revisiting Wolfe’s assessment of the pitfalls of personal history.

With his new novel, The Book of Joe, Jonathan Tropper attempts to twist the wisdom a bit. His story makes the case for a new argument: sometimes you have to go home again, even if you don’t want to. It’s a subtle shift, one that is ultimately not all that convincing, and we’re left wondering if maybe Wolfe was right after all and that everyone should just stop trying to second guess him.

Like the protagonist of Wolfe’s novel, the hero of Tropper’s book, Joe Goffman, has written an immensely successful autobiographical novel. Goffman’s book includes unflattering portraits of the residents of Bush Falls, the small Connecticut town where he grew up. These days, an immensely successful novel is inevitably translated into a Hollywood film, and Goffman’s book was made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kirsten Dunst. The citizens of Bush Falls, including Goffman’s own family, are not happy about the exposure, and Goffman instantly becomes persona non grata in his own hometown. That probably wouldn’t matter much to him - his bestseller and subsequent movie deal have made him rich - if it weren’t for the fact that his father’s sudden serious illness forces Goffman to return to Bush Falls and face the wrath of those he has maligned in print.

Bush Falls is an amalgam of every Hollywood small town clichÈ ever exposed on film. The town worships at the altar of the local high school basketball team, and athletics call the shots at every level of the town’s social structure. The coach is a bitter sadist who has no use for anyone uncoordinated or unable to give 110 percent, and he wields more power than the corrupt politicians and police who do his bidding. During Goffman’s adolescence in the 80s, his life was made miserable by thuggish jock psychopaths who are still around when he returns - and they’re not very happy with what he wrote about them in his book. From the moment he sets foot inside the city limits, Goffman is subjected to abuse, both verbal and physical, and only his deep feelings of guilt and depression keep him hanging around. Well, that and the fact that his terminally ill best friend from high school is back in town, too, and his high school sweetheart is now the editor of the local newspaper. If she weren’t mad at him over the book, maybe, just maybe, he could win back her heart. First, however, he must face up to his own limitations and attempt to repair his long-standing estrangement from his father.

If this all seems somewhat familiar it’s probably because you’ve seen a movie or television program about a small town just like Bush Falls and a goofy prodigal son like Goffman. Or maybe you’ve seen a movie about a small town held under the thumb of a sadistic coach and/or a corrupt sheriff. Or maybe you’ve seen a movie about a guy who returns to his hometown in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his father and rekindle a romance with his childhood love. Or maybe you’ve seen dozens of movies that pursue all of these themes. If so, you won’t be surprised by anything in The Book of Joe. This is not much more than a Hollywood trifle in print that never rings true.

Why, for example, does everyone want to beat up the rich and famous Goffman, but no one wants to be his friend in order to cash in? That would be, of course, a much more credible reaction of a small town to the return of a homegrown celebrity. No matter what he had written in his book, Goffman would, in the real world, be greeted with the first annual Joe Goffman Days parade, and everyone would be clamoring for a starring role in his next book/movie.

The Book of Joe is well-written and funny, and it is structured nicely. The narrative switches back and forth between Goffman’s current visit to Bush Falls and the events of his high school years (although these flashbacks appear to be, by virtue of their being set in a different typeface, excerpts from Goffman’s best-selling novel, it turns out that they are not), and some of the novel’s most satisfying moments come in the story of the younger Joe. Aside from the faddish overindulgence in pop cultural references - we have, once again, Nick Hornby to blame for a novel that quotes far, far too many Bruce Springsteen songs - Tropper does a decent job of evoking the ridiculously bland era that was the 1980s. The story, from beginning to end, is never less than mildly entertaining and inoffensive.