Customer Reviews

A Writer's House in Wales (National Geographic Directions)

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In her writing career, Jan Morris has wrestled with centuries of history, mighty empires, great cities, historic expeditions, timeless cultures, and much more. And yet, for her entry in this series of 'travel' books, she leads us into one of the most magical and affecting places of all ... her own home.

This is an informal, light-hearted, and quick read (just two sessions in my Writer's Hammock in Seattle). And yet, it's also deeply moving. Morris describes all the facets of her converted stables -- a house in Wales, a Welsh house, a writer's house, and finally, a writer's house in Wales -- while meditating on life, death, history, culture, and the nature of friendship and hospitality. There's a lot packed between these covers!

As a book person myself, I responded most strongly to Morris' tour of her library -- a space chock full of art, music, and, of course, books. 'I have never counted the books in my own library,' she writes, 'but I would guess there are seven or eight thousand here, packed tight in their long white bookshelves, upstairs and down. I love them all, whatever their subject, whatever their condition, whatever their size. I love walking among them, stroking their spines. I love sitting on a sofa amongst them, contemplating them. I love the feel of them between my fingers, and I love the smell of them...' (pp. 101-2). She waxes just as lyrical about her kitchen, the stones of the exterior walls, the exposed wooden beams overhead ('marinated, so to speak, in age and hauled up here to my house to bless us all, like incense in a church' [p. 43]), the smell of smoke in the air, the view of the sea, even the poachers who steal onto her land to fish from her stretch of the river.

This book is like a hymnal. And while Jan Morris fans may be the readers most immediately attracted to it, anyone who responds strongly to a sense of place and a writer's connectedness to it will savor the hospitality and companionship of a warm and welcoming person in an equally welcoming home.

Jan Morris is a superb travel writer. She's been everywhere--Manhattan, Australia, Venice, Candada, Trieste, etc. etc.--and brings an open-minded, generous view to places near and far. After declaring last year that she was done writing, out she comes with "A Writer's House in Wales" a love poem to her own corner of the world.

Wales is rocky, hilly, wild and smack up against the Atlaantic. Its people, among the oldest of Britain's many peoples, hve clung to their language, their rocky shores, their magic for centuries against the many Saxon, Norman, and English incursions. One hopes they can withstand the latest onslaught of modern "culture".

Morris waxes eloquently about her centuries old house--once a stable--which she preserves. It is strangely modular from the heart of the house downstairs kitchen where neighbors stop to gossip and the postman drops in to leave the mail (once catching Morris descending her stairs in the buff!) to the entirely separate library and study where she does her work.

The house is delightful. The grounds overgrown and magical. Morris worships--at least metaphorically--the ancient god Pan and the book reflects that: a sensuality and sensibility that are natural, druidical and incredibly appealing. This is a quick delightful read, wherein you gain insights into a wonnderful land and a unique individual. Take the trip!

I assume the famous writers commissioned or invited by National Geographic had a severe limit on how much they could wax eloquently upon their workaday retreats-- what a profession that allows them to live as if on holiday while making a living. Unlike many of those listed in the "Literary Travel Series," Jan Morris tells of her native land. Her ability to convey the rugged appeal of the landscape, the barbed intricacy of its language, and the gruff welcome of its inhabitants makes this brief account brisk, vivid, and accessible.

She takes us, after a quick summary (you can read her "[The Matter of] Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country" for splendid, if somewhat impassioned, detail) of the nation's history, into her home, Trefor Morys, near the River Dwyfor, between the Cardigan Bay and Snowdon/ Yr Wyddfa, not far from the home not only of poet R.S. Thomas but of the chimerical red dragon fighting the white Saxon dragon in the vision of Merlin. Morris tells, efficiently and powerfully, of the appeal of mountain fastnesses, flowing tributaries, and rain-soaked slate. She captures the smells and the woods around the converted 18c stable house she shares with her partner, and where they live surrounded by mementoes of their children. One small disappointment: I do wish, given the revelations of "Conundrum" in the 1970s about her sex-change, that Morris had given more domestic context for what must have been a fascinating family to raise given such conditions, but she, except for a casual aside to the operation, remains reticent. Three decades on, a further update on her situation in this domestic haven would have been a welcome addition to this restrained, carefully composed memoir-of-sorts.

As is her right: the tour takes us into the kitchen, the book-lined workroom, and then the forested glades. In its damp, overgrown, cozy, and ramshackle state, Trefor Morys (complete with ancient Rolls Royce about which I'd have liked to know more too) stands as a reification of Morris' love for her land. She tells of the gravestone she and Elizabeth will share: "Yma mae dwy ffrind, Jan & Elizabeth Morris, Ar derfyn un bywyd." Here are two friends---at the end of one life. Also, as she imagines their spirits haunting the manse as much as any before them have, she writes another text for the house itself. "Rhwng Daear y Testan a Nef a Gwrthrych/ Mae Ty yr Awdures, yn Gwenn, fel Cyslltair." "Between Earth the Subject and Heaven the Object Stands the House of the Writer, Smiling, as a Conjunction." What an tribute to a house and its writer! Morris, certainly one of our best travel writers, has in one of what may be her last of thirty (her count) or forty (blurb) or so books, given her witty and engaging salute to a house that, even if we cannot sign its guest-book as thousands seem to have been lucky enough to do, we can visit and imagine from afar on another armchair adventure in her fluid and measured prose style.

When I lived in London, I used to escape a few weekends a month; one of my most frequent travels was to Wales. I grew to love the Wye Valley Walk, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow, St. David's, and points south. Unfortunately, I didn't make it north nearly as much, but those times I did gave me an even deeper experience of the country, almost as if the further one got from the center of the English, the more the Celtic spirit came alive. Jan Morris' small book (small in format and in actual word-count, not in impact) gives me a greater appreciation for the places where I've been, and a deep longing to return now with fresh insights and new intentions of what to see, and what to sense.

Jan Morris is a well-known writer on various topics to do with travel, literature, culture and history. Her eloquence is brought to a high pitch in this slim volume meant perhaps to whet the appetite for those who would travel, as the text is part of a National Geographic series. However, one travels not just to a place and not just to a time, but to a new venue of the spirits. Morris describes the spirits that live in the wood of the house, along the path, in the river, and in the hills. `I like to think of Trefan woods as a haven for all wild and lonely creatures.... Because of course there are ghosts around Trefan Morys - ghosts of uchelwyr, ghosts of farmhands, ghosts of poets, of poachers, of birds and wild beasts and cattle hauled from the mire. I often see figures walking down my back lane who are not there at all, like mirages, and who gradually resolve themselves into no more than shadows.'

The country and countryside is featured, but the highlight is the house itself, and perhaps primary to the old creaking house full of spirits and character is the kitchen. Quoting G.M. Hopkins, Jan Morris discusses the centrality of the kitchen in the Welsh household --

That cordial air made those kind people a hood
All over, as of a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
Will, or mild nights the new morsels of Spring...

Of course, this is something that many around the world can relate to in that so many people live in the kitchen even though it is rare that it is also a sleeping room (it used to be the central fire for the house in days prior to central heating, and thus all would bundle together in the cozy atmosphere). Around the kitchen the rest of the house revolves in stages, loaded with books and memories that bring to the front many stories that Morris shares - and in doing this, she keeps faith with the Welsh tradition of storytelling as history making and culture preserving.

The Welsh language, too, gets a nod here. Morris admits to being of small Welsh, enough to appreciate but not enough to plumb the depths of the folk-brilliance, as she describes it, but obviously has a real feel for the language in both its meaning and its spoken form - there is something about the spirit of the language that can be felt as it is spoken even when one doesn't know the words: `Far from being a jabber, it is a poetical language par excellence, as lovely to listen to as it is to read - and as irresistible too, at least to romantics like me, in its intimations of defiance, rootedness and immemorial age.'

The identity and pride of the Welsh is unquenchable, according to Morris, and nonetheless threatened by modernity in ways that no foreign dominance could ever achieve; the subtle ways in which culture is lost are addressed here in many indirect ways, perhaps the best way to fight the subtle slide into a homogenised Euro-culture. There is a melancholy about it, but there is glory to it, and there is an eternality to it. All of this is captured by Morris. The book could be easily read in one or two sittings, and while I found myself wanting to drink deep and swift of the words, I would put it down, realising it was a rare treasure soon lost. This is a book to be savoured.

Over the years I enjoyed several books by Jan Morris. I also have a desire to know somewhat more about Wales. Finally, I found three or four other books from the National Geographic Directions series to be well worth my reading time. So when I saw this book offered on remainder, I bought it without hesitation and, as a change of pace, read it yesterday.

It turns out that, a la the title (no deception here), the focus of the book is indeed Jan Morris's house, which she has dubbed Trefan Morys. It is where she has written about thirty of her books. The reader is told about the history of the building (it originally was built in the 18th-century as the stables for a large estate) and its occupants (including, at times, many bats), and then is given a tour of the house, centering primarily on the kitchen and Jan Morris's large library.

Relatively brief passages, here and there, are devoted to Wales, its history, and its staunch patriotism (some would say provincialism), and to the Welsh character and language. For me, those were the more interesting passages. One thing the book is NOT is a travelogue of Wales.

My assessment: not enough Wales, too much house, and too much Jan Morris. The book is essentially a trifle. At the remainder price I paid, I have no complaints, but I would feel mildly cheated had I paid $20 for it.

I really had no idea what I was going to get out of this book, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Being something of an Anglophile, I know far less about the rest of the UK. I've spend very little time there (though I used to live on the English side of the Welsh border), and much of it remains a mystery to me. This little volume did a nice job of giving a snapshot of the Welsh countryside.

This book has no real narrative or plot. It is, as it sounds, a writer musing about her house in Wales, looking at how it fits in to Welsh history and into the countryside that surrounds it. The reader gets a good dose of Welsh culture. This is not the sort of book that can be read in one sitting. I read a few pages every night, and though the volume is short, it took me awhile to finish. Though the author is writing about her home, this is very much travel writing, in that it allows the reader to escape to a totally different place, and experience part of that world. For me, this was a rambling, amusing, and pleasant way to pass some time.

While most travel journals are written by tourists (travelers if you must) who have either just become acquainted with the town they are writing about or have adopted it as their own. This travel book is unique (along with the rest in the National Geographic Directions series) in that it is by an author who has lived there all her life. That said, when I first read about the concept of these books, I thought they would be novels that were set in the writer's home town. In that way, the write could show us the town, but not have to do it in such a dry travelogue way. Still very interesting and worth the read, but I felt it could have been done in so much more of a literary and fantastic manner.