There are many ways to show our devotion to an author besides reading his or her works. Graves make for popular pilgrimage sites, but far more popular are writers' house museums. What is it we hope to accomplish by trekking to the home of a dead author? We may go in search of the point of inspiration, eager to stand on the very spot where our favorite literary characters first came to life—and find ourselves instead in the house where the author himself was conceived, or where she drew her last breath. Perhaps it is a place through which our writer passed only briefly, or maybe it really was a longtime home—now thoroughly remade as a decorator's show-house.
In A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses Anne Trubek takes a vexed, often funny, and always thoughtful tour of a goodly number of house museums across the nation. In Key West she visits the shamelessly ersatz shrine to a hard-living Ernest Hemingway, while meditating on his lost Cuban farm and the sterile Idaho house in which he committed suicide. In Hannibal, Missouri, she walks the fuzzy line between fact and fiction, as she visits the home of the young Samuel Clemens—and the purported haunts of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Injun' Joe. She hits literary pay-dirt in Concord, Massachusetts, the nineteenth-century mecca that gave home to Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau—and yet could not accommodate a surprisingly complex Louisa May Alcott. She takes us along the trail of residences that Edgar Allan Poe left behind in the wake of his many failures and to the burned-out shell of a California house with which Jack London staked his claim on posterity. In Dayton, Ohio, a charismatic guide brings Paul Laurence Dunbar to compelling life for those few visitors willing to listen; in Cleveland, Trubek finds a moving remembrance of Charles Chesnutt in a house that no longer stands.
Why is it that we visit writers' houses? Although admittedly skeptical about the stories these buildings tell us about their former inhabitants, Anne Trubek carries us along as she falls at least a little bit in love with each stop on her itinerary and finds in each some truth about literature, history, and contemporary America.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The phenomenon of visiting writers' houses as a form of literary homage has existed for centuries, as literary enthusiasts have toured the homes of Shakespeare and countless other writers to connect, become inspired, or pay tribute. Trubek (Writing Material) offers an amusingly jaundiced eye towards this notion by visiting the homes of several writers, from of Louisa May Alcott to Hemingway to Poe, in an attempt to discover what draws people in and what connection they might be able to experience from this much remove. The end result is an interesting jaunt through American literature and the American preoccupation with fashioning (and profiting from) sacred spaces, coupled with genuinely fascinating little-known biographical information about iconic authors. Trubek is brutally honest (and occasionally funny) about what does and does not feel meaningful, and her travelogue is well-written and quick. While she does seem to harp on the same themes again and again, occasional moments of genuine emotion make it worth the trip. Trubek does a great job of following a succinct formula and readers in search of an objective look at writers' houses worth visiting will find this a useful guide. (Oct.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
"Ms. Trubek is a bewitching and witty travel partner. " --Wall Street Journal
"a slim, clever bit of literary criticism masquerading as smart travel writing" --Chicago Tribune
"amusing and paradoxical" --Boston Globe
"a restlessly witty book" --Salon.com
"A blazingly intelligent romp, full of humor and hard-won wisdom...[Trubek] crisscrosses the country in search of epiphanies on the doorsteps of some of our more important writers." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
"a slim, clever bit of literary criticism masquerading as smart travel writing" --Chicago Tribune
"amusing and paradoxical" --Boston Globe
"a restlessly witty book" --Salon.com
"A blazingly intelligent romp, full of humor and hard-won wisdom...[Trubek] crisscrosses the country in search of epiphanies on the doorsteps of some of our more important writers." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
Named one of the seven best small-press books of the decade in a column in the Huffington Post
"Why do people visit writer's homes? What are they looking for and what do they hope to take away that isn't sold in the gift shop? This memoir-travelogue takes you from Thoreau's Concord to Hemingway's Key West, exploring the tracks authors and their fans have laid down over the years. Trubek is a sharp-eyed observer, and you'll wish you could have been her travel companion."—Lev Raphael, Huffington Post
"A remarkable book: part travelogue, part rant, part memoir, part literary analysis and urban history, it is like nothing else I've ever read. In wondering why we look to writers' houses for inspiration when we could be looking to the writers' work, Trubek has—with humor, with self-deprecation, even with occasional anger and sadness—reminded us why we need literature in the first place."—Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
"An antic and intelligent antitravel guide, A Skeptic's Guide to Writer's Houses explores places that have served as pilgrimage sites, tokens of local pride and color, and zones that confound the canons of literary and historical interpretation. With a gimlet eye and indefatigable curiosity, Anne Trubek peers through the veil of domestic veneration that surrounds canonized authors and neglected masters alike. In the course of her skeptical odyssey, she discerns the curious ways in which we turn authors into household gods."—Matthew Battles, author of Library: An Unquiet History
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More About the Author
Anne Trubek is the co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology (http://www.rustbeltchic.com) and author of A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses. A professor at Oberlin College, her website is http://www.annetrubek.com
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By C. Ebeling
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you've come to this book because you enjoy literary tourism--visiting writers' house museums or paying homage at gravesites--prepare to have your hat handed to you by Anne Trubek after she's poked her fingers through it. My advice: let her do it, because as much as she might spoil your fun at first with academic posturing, she adjusts her own attitude the more she travels to various house museums. Stick with the book and with Trubek, who writes lucidly with candor and a personableness that grows with the narrative, and you gain a new perspective on how house museums can or cannot satisfy the impulse to get closer to a writer.
The first point Trubek makes is that the attraction of literary pilgrimages is irrational. Think about it. Can you explain the benefit in concrete rather than emotional currency? We can't get any closer in person because the writer is typically deceased. Staring at the little desk or table where the writer worked does not explain how the world and characters that inspire your devotion were created there. And then, some houses have been corrupted by inauthentic or incomplete restorations, or, like Twain's childhood neighborhood, Hannibal, MO, have been Disneyfied to reconstruct the sentimental memories of the fiction, not the writer's reality. Some are contradictions of the writer's wishes. Trubek hits her stride with the Concord, MA tour of the homes of what Susan Cheever has called "American Bloomsbury." The fate of Louisa May Alcott's house and memory is a cautionary mess of misunderstanding fans and social politics. The chapters in which she visits the Poe houses, the ruins of Jack London's Beauty Ranch and the Paul Laurence Dunbar house in Dayton are also strong and help form a better idea of how and why such properties can matter.
The first point Trubek makes is that the attraction of literary pilgrimages is irrational. Think about it. Can you explain the benefit in concrete rather than emotional currency? We can't get any closer in person because the writer is typically deceased. Staring at the little desk or table where the writer worked does not explain how the world and characters that inspire your devotion were created there. And then, some houses have been corrupted by inauthentic or incomplete restorations, or, like Twain's childhood neighborhood, Hannibal, MO, have been Disneyfied to reconstruct the sentimental memories of the fiction, not the writer's reality. Some are contradictions of the writer's wishes. Trubek hits her stride with the Concord, MA tour of the homes of what Susan Cheever has called "American Bloomsbury." The fate of Louisa May Alcott's house and memory is a cautionary mess of misunderstanding fans and social politics. The chapters in which she visits the Poe houses, the ruins of Jack London's Beauty Ranch and the Paul Laurence Dunbar house in Dayton are also strong and help form a better idea of how and why such properties can matter.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I am, perhaps, an ideal reader for A Skeptic's Guide. I'm a passionate reader with an advanced degree in English Literature and have actually visited many of the homes the author focuses on in her book, including Jack London's, Ernest Hemingway's. and, of course, what she calls "The Concord Pilgrimage" - Edith Wharton's, Herman Melville's, and Louisa May Alcott's.
The question she poses is why did I - or for that matter, any reader - tour these house museums? Anne answers, "There is something curious and ultimately insatiable about visiting a dead writer's home. It has something to do with pilgrimage, the hushed aura of sacredness; it has something to do with history; one life preserved. It has something to do with loss, and objects as compensation for loss. And it has something to do with the way literature works, with the longing created by the fact that words separate writers from readers yet create an ineluctable intimacy between the two..."
Whew! She's got THAT right. And then she adds, "They (the homes) are teases; they ignite and continually frustrate our desire to fuse the material with the immaterial, the writer with the reader."
Some, of course, do it better than others. Mark Twain's Hannibal is one that does NOT get it right; "Hannibal is not a postcard of iconic American sweetness, not a Rockwell painting." The "snugness and smugness" of the town reveal nothing about Samuel Clemons, who had a delicious sense of irony. Nor is it possible to find Walt Whitman in Camden, an old, forgotten house in a depressing, urban blighted town.
Anne Trubek fares better in Concord: "over two hundred published writers call this small town home." And she totally connects with Paul Laurence Dunbar's house in Dayton, Ohio - "full of the longing that I am seeking in these small museums."
Overall, Anne finds some truth in each about literature, history, urban blight, and today's America...even if she doesn't always find connection with the author. There are times when I felt she verved from her stated mission, focusing more on the history of the writer instead of the writer's homes, or when she arrived with preconceived conclusions about the house. All in all, though, Anne brings an indefatigable curiosity, a sense of humor, and a researcher's skill to her undertaking.
The question she poses is why did I - or for that matter, any reader - tour these house museums? Anne answers, "There is something curious and ultimately insatiable about visiting a dead writer's home. It has something to do with pilgrimage, the hushed aura of sacredness; it has something to do with history; one life preserved. It has something to do with loss, and objects as compensation for loss. And it has something to do with the way literature works, with the longing created by the fact that words separate writers from readers yet create an ineluctable intimacy between the two..."
Whew! She's got THAT right. And then she adds, "They (the homes) are teases; they ignite and continually frustrate our desire to fuse the material with the immaterial, the writer with the reader."
Some, of course, do it better than others. Mark Twain's Hannibal is one that does NOT get it right; "Hannibal is not a postcard of iconic American sweetness, not a Rockwell painting." The "snugness and smugness" of the town reveal nothing about Samuel Clemons, who had a delicious sense of irony. Nor is it possible to find Walt Whitman in Camden, an old, forgotten house in a depressing, urban blighted town.
Anne Trubek fares better in Concord: "over two hundred published writers call this small town home." And she totally connects with Paul Laurence Dunbar's house in Dayton, Ohio - "full of the longing that I am seeking in these small museums."
Overall, Anne finds some truth in each about literature, history, urban blight, and today's America...even if she doesn't always find connection with the author. There are times when I felt she verved from her stated mission, focusing more on the history of the writer instead of the writer's homes, or when she arrived with preconceived conclusions about the house. All in all, though, Anne brings an indefatigable curiosity, a sense of humor, and a researcher's skill to her undertaking.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is hard to sum up, because it does so many things at once, and does them so well. In marvelous prose, funny and thoughtful and brainy, Trubek delivers a book that's part biography, part travelogue, part narrative, part personal essay, and part scholarly musing. That's a lot of parts to add together, and they add up to quite an achievement.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A witty personal tour of American literary shrines
What I like about this book is that it is hard to classify...Though carefully researched and full of specifics, the book is most worth reading for the wry, intelligent, witty side... Read more
Published on April 26, 2011 by David Garnes
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the Trip
This is an intelligent user's guide to literary pilgrimage. Trubek is an effective writer and she tells the stories of the houses she visits in vivid detail. Read more
Published on January 25, 2011 by Elizabeth Bennet
5.0 out of 5 stars
A unique blend of memoir, travelogue, and literary work analyzing the...
To follow in the footsteps of another is what many do for inspiration. "A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses" is a unique and humorous guide to the house museums of famous authors... Read more
Published on January 13, 2011 by Midwest Book Review
3.0 out of 5 stars
Skeptic to skepticism
I think I may vaguely remember Ms. Trubek; her name and face seem familiar. I am the director (and founder) of the Robert Frost Stone House Museum in Shaftsbury, VT. Ms. Read more
Published on December 23, 2010 by Carole Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Who knew?
I have zero interest in old houses, especially old houses important because they once housed rich and/or important people. Read more
Published on October 31, 2010 by Maureen Ogle
