Writers' Spaces

The winner of Priscilla Paton's WHEN THE HOUSE BURNS is Sandra Benson. Sandra, contact juliaspencerfleming@gmail.com for more info! 

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'll have much more to say (and photos to share!) about my fabulous trip to Key West and spending time with Lucy and Hallie later in the week, but today I want to share some thoughts on visiting Ernest Hemingway's Key West studio for the second time. The Hemingway House is fascinating for its history and memorabilia, and of course the famous cats, but it's the separate studio in the back that I connected with so deeply that I couldn't wait to see it again. 

Years ago I visited Jane Austen's home in Chawton, Hampshire, and I marveled at the small parlor where she wrote, seldom alone, surrounded by the busy comings and goings of the household. If there was some magic in that room, I felt it doubly in Hemingway's studio. Here I am, taking a selfie in the mirror in the room's entrance, maybe hoping a little of that fairy dust would rub off on me. I imagined papers piled beside the typewriter, books piled on the floor, the keyboard clacking with work in progress. 

On leaving, I was compelled to order a copy of Hemingway's Letters, Vol. 2 of 6, the Paris years. It was waiting for me when I got home, and I immediately came across this quote. Hemingway, writing to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1925, says, "It certainly is funny how your head…can go most of the time like a frozen cabbage and then it can give you hell when it starts going. Have been so pleased to find it still functions." He was writing The Sun Also Rises, the novel that propelled him to fame. There's something comforting about knowing that such a renowned writer had the same struggle with stopping and starting, and that something amazing came from it. 

And to top it off, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS was playing on my flight home.

Dear Reds, have you been inspired by a space where another writer lived or worked? 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes. Yes yes yes. The Mount, in Lenox MA, where Edith Wharton lived and wrote. It is from a completely different time, socially and culturally,and the atmosphere and aura were unchanged when we visited, .and the gardens were  transporting. It’s so–elegant, and contained, and everything was precisely where it was supposed to be, and filled with history and almost-stressful precision and manners.  And she is my absolute idol as a writer. Unmatched! One of the things I hope to adopt for myself is that Wharton apparently wrote in bed, and then dropped her handwritten pages on the floor for the secretary to pick up and transcribe. Wonder if I could somehow make that happen?   

I WISH I had taken a photo of myself in her mirror. Brilliant idea. I will do it this summer.

RHYS BOWEN: The writing space that I crave is Agatha Christie’s Greenway. It is my ultimate fantasy house, an elegant Georgian on the banks of the River Dart in a wonderful setting. Agatha had a desk with that view and also all those grounds to wander in while she talked her way through plot points.  I might choose to write in the boat house if I lived there so I had peace and quiet. But would I work well with some much to look at out of the windows?  And Hank, I too would like a secretary to take my scribbles and type them up. Luckily I dont write by hand as John can’t read my handwriting!

LUCY BURDETTE: Debs, you know how much I love that little Hemingway office and in fact, the entire house and grounds on Whitehead Street in Key West. The office is separate enough from the house that I bet I could get a lot done there. (Well, I’d have to turn off the Internet too…)

Hank, I already do most of my writing in bed, though it’s all in the computer. I wouldn’t dream of dropping pages on the floor. My sweet John would not even notice them and the animals would rip them to shreds. I also visited EW’s home a few years back–it’s gorgeous!

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, such a good question! I have visited the Hemingway house in Key West (back when I was in high school - before I knew I wanted to be a writer). At the time, I viewed it from my 17 year-old “Dude was a total misogynist but at least he loved cats” perspective. Hub and I have deep debates about Hemingway and his regard of women and Hub has worn me down into reconsidering my stance. I don’t believe he was a misogynist so much as a product of his time. Anyway, I also adore Edith Wharton and thanks to Hank am now planning to visit her estate. I’ve never seen it - what an oversight!

As for other authors’ spaces, I have to say on my bucket list to visit are P.E.I. - Lucy Maude Montgomery’s stomping grounds and I want to visit Christie’s Greenway as well. I did the Austen Centre in Bath but would love to visit Chawton. Growing up in CT, the author’s home I remember most clearly is Mark Twain’s house in Hartford via many school field trips. Not sure why I don’t live in such a glorious abode (it has a turret, billiard room, and conservatory!) but here we are. 

HALLIE EPHRON: I haven’t been to many famous authors’ abodes, but the Hemingway House was certainly memorable. Love the cats. And his office. And the surrounding brick walls that keep it separate from the boisterous rest of Key West, making the property feel like its own Secret Garden. And when we visited Prince Edward Island I felt as if I were channeling Lucy Maude Montgomery and catching a glimpse of Anne of Green Gables around every corner. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had already started my writing career when we made a weekend trip to Lexington and Concord. Ross was definitely there for the Revolutionary history, but I was dazzled by the wonderfully restored homes of the Transcendentalists, America’s forerunner of the Bloomsbury Group.

The Alcott Family’s homes, The Old Manse, the Thoreau-Alcott House, and Louisa May Alcott’s own Orchard House, feel as if philosophy and art and writing and political activism are seeped into the very walls. (They’re also, for those of us in old New England houses, excellent guides to the sort of wall treatments, paint colors and decor were authentic to that time.) You can also see Emerson’s house and spaces where Hawthorne worked. I left feeling almost dizzy with the concentration of world- and literature- changing talent that had sat inside those houses and strode the tree-lined paths between them.

DEBS: Of all the places mentioned, Greenway is the one I'd most like to visit. I'm envious, Rhys!

READERS, have you visited famous authors' homes? And did any magic linger?

A Midsummer Night's Dream Revisited

RHYS BOWEN: Tomorrow night will be midsummer night and I found myself thinking of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays—one of the comedies I actually found funny.

We had to study one Shakespeare play each trimester at my school. We had to read them in class and I remember how painful it was to sit and listen classmates struggling with language we just didn’t understand. The comedies were worst. At least with the tragedies we knew that someone would get stabbed or poisoned in the end. 

We could appreciate Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. But those comedies. What was funny about them?

It wasn’t until I was working in BBC drama and a friend was stage manager for the Royal Shakespeare Company that I was backstage at a Shakespeare comedy AND the audience was laughing out loud. Roaring with laughter. Because the actors understood what they were saying, all the clever play on words and naughty double entendres.  Obviously our straight laced school mistresses either didn’t understand it themselves or didn’t want us to understand.

So I’m wondering, Reds, were there any books you hated in school and came to love and appreciate later in life? Or were there any subjects you couldn’t stand in school that later became passions for you? I didn’t like history the way it was taught, all dates and battles. But now I make my living writing about it, taking readers to historical periods.  Maybe if they’d given me historical fiction to read, I’d have been a history buff back then. So fess up, Reds…

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  They MADE me read Ethan Frome in High School. I cannot tell you how much I hated it. Later in lIfe, I fell in love with Edith Wharton, and the romance with her continues. It was just wrong place, wrong time.

Our Town was also wrong place wrong time. I thought it was RIDICULOUS, stupid and sappy. Now I cannot even think about it without crying. Dickens, too. who I now love, but we all shared the Cliffs Notes about Nicholas Nickelby.

I always loved Shakespeare, from moment one, even though they started with Julius Caesar, which is a silly one to get kids to like.
And you are so right about teaching history, Rhys. It's a STORY, a great story, with compelling characters and fascinating motivations and incredible action and outcomes.  If they would only teach it that way.

HALLIE EPHRON: Believe it or not, my first attempt to read an Agatha Christie novel ended in abject failure. Summer of high school, I had not a clue why my mother loved her books. Later, of course, we connected in a serious way.

And for my 16th birthday my mother gave me a copy of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and I could not see at all what she was going on about. It was several decades before I got back to it and, listening to it as a book on tape, I loved it. Then I waded into Mrs. Dalloway... I had to read it out loud to myself in order to stick with it. Dense prose. Serpentine sentences.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Why do they start kids on Julius Caesar, I ask you? At least teenagers could understand Romeo and Juliet!  I don't remember reading a single thing in high school English that I liked. Hated The Old Man and Sea. Hated Gatsby (although I read Tender is the Night on my own and did like that one.) HATED Of Mice and Men. Hated The Grapes of Wrath. If I hadn't been a voracious reader before high school, I would never have read another book.

What have I come back to? Read/reread many Dickens novels while researching In a Dark House--loved them. Rediscovered Hemingway when I ran across A Moveable Feast a few years ago, although I still can't bring myself to reread The Old Man and the Sea. Fell madly in love with Shakespeare when I saw Ken Brannagh's version of Henry V (muhltiple times...)

So, should I give Edith Wharton a try?

HANK: Definitely, Debs! Try CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. I loved it! And HOUSE OF MIRTH. Which is way too sad, but fabulous.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Debs, DEFINITELY give Edith Wharton a try! I can't remember any books I didn't like in high school or college — but that's good, right? Oh, wait — James Joyce's ULYSSES. Never really figured that one out... LOVED Shakespeare because the first play I read in school read was MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. So funny! I remember the TV show Moonlighting was popular at the time and I pictured Cybil Shephard and Bruce Willis as Beatrice and Benedick.

RHYS: So do share, everyone... have you ever come to love a book or play you once hated?