Over at Writers’ Houses, Ann Napolitano writes about visiting Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home:

…the obvious assumption would be that something sinister had happened to Flannery during that period to alter her, or force her to grow up too quickly. But, as the tour guide assured me, and as I’d learned from my own research, that simply wasn’t the case. Flannery had, on the whole, a happy childhood. She simply did away with the trappings of childhood as soon as possible. She became herself earlier than most of us do. The vision of a fierce five-year Flannery pleases me, but it also rings true. The true Flannery could never be denied, not even by childish impulses.

Source: writershouses.com

On the Maine farm, White wrote that he found himself “suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens … a time of enchantment.” In his writing shed, White said he was a “wilder” and “healthier man.”

The cabin is plain and encloses only what a writer truly needs: the urge to communicate something, the means to record words, and solitude. There is the woodburning stove White used during the cold winter months, and in a very old Abercrombie & Fitch box, now used as a shelf, are a pair of loafers that were there before the new tenants moved in, a box of sharpened pencils, and an old tin can full of rusty paperclips.

Mira Ptacin in her new guest post, up now: The Way Life Should Be: The House of E. B. White

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 5 In this week’s round up: more shake ups at the Poe House in Baltimore, Poets.org interviews James Merrill’s biographer, Langdon Hammer, and J.K. Rowling puts her house up for sale (showing us that, for her, a secret door is completely common). Click through for more. Special thanks to Michelle Legro for the photo of Victor Hugo’s bedroom.
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The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 5

In this week’s round up: more shake ups at the Poe House in Baltimore, Poets.org interviews James Merrill’s biographer, Langdon Hammer, and J.K. Rowling puts her house up for sale (showing us that, for her, a secret door is completely common). Click through for more.

Special thanks to Michelle Legro for the photo of Victor Hugo’s bedroom.

Source: writershouses.com

It happens all the time, and where it gets quite interesting is in your own house, because what leaps out at you is so often conjoined with your preferences and your history. Here, the conscious and the subconscious, intent and accident, will and grace, often intersect. In some respects the writer’s house is like an artist’s model. She is chosen, she is posed, but like all elemental beauties, hers is beyond your design and therefore a continuing source of elevation and surprise.
Mark Helprin - Bumping Into the Characters - NYTimes.com

Source: The New York Times