chaucer

When Fiction Reading Meets Nonfiction Travel

Posted by

90

At the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. (2013 photo by me.)

In the Northern Hemisphere, today is the first day of summer – the season when many people travel. And that traveling can be literature-related in certain ways. I’ll discuss some of my experiences, and then ask about yours.

In my post on another topic last week, I mentioned the Pantheon in Paris and Westminster Abbey in London, both of which contain the tombs of famous authors and/or “memorials” honoring them. These writers include, among others, Chaucer and Charles Dickens in Westminster and Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and Emile Zola in the Pantheon. Sobering, unforgettable visits for fiction lovers.

Speaking of Zola and Dumas, I was in the south of France in 2007 accompanying my French professor wife Laurel to a Zola conference she was speaking at in Aix-en-Provence. Another speaker was Zola’s great-granddaughter, Martine Le Blond-Zola.

During that trip, Laurel and I also visited Marseille – from where we took a boat to the Chateau d’If island prison immortalized in Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas used a jail cell there as the model for the one in which his Edmond Dantes character would be wrongly incarcerated for years.

On an earlier European trip, I visited the London house where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839 – during which time he finished The Pickwick Papers and wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

Also while in London back then, I went to the Madame Tussauds wax museum – where the figures I most remember were of the three Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) sitting together.

Back in the USA, I’ve visited literature-related sites such as the Herman Melville “Arrowhead” house and museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (where the author lived from 1850 to 1863 and wrote works such as Moby-Dick) and the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut (where the author lived from 1874 to 1891 and penned novels such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn).

In addition, I toured the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis while attending a conference in that city.

And I’ve traveled to other conferences and gatherings in which speakers included novelists Tom Clancy, Lisa Scottoline, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, and others. (I didn’t go to see those writers per se; they happened to be among the speakers.)

Getting a literary experience while visiting somewhere can be more indirect. For instance, when I spent several days in St. Petersburg many years ago I didn’t see anything specific about Fyodor Dostoevsky but thought about Crime and Punishment’s setting as I walked around the Russian city. And I once stayed in a Terre Haute, Indiana, hotel where there was a lobby display about famous local Theodore Dreiser of Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy novels renown.

I have the vague recollection that I wrote about this topic years ago, but couldn’t locate that possible post in an online search. I’ll add that frequent commenter here Michele indirectly gave me the idea for today’s post when she mentioned a recent New York Times article about literary travel; that story (below) took a different approach than I did.

Any personal literature-related travel experiences you’d like to share?

Misty the cat says: “So THIS is where Anne Tyler wrote her 1995 novel ‘Ladder of Years’!”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which contains great library news and laments the long delay of a much-needed forensic audit of my town’s deficit-ridden school district — is here.

Spring is for Jogging and Kitty Blogging

Posted by

85

Misty the cat here again with my every two-month guest post, which gives Dave a break to search 24/7 for The Golden Bowl. That’s a Henry James novel as well as a circular dish I want for an elite food and drink experience.

Another novelist with the same last name, E.L. James, wrote Fifty Shades of Grey. I never read it, but, as you can see in the photo atop this post, I was recently amid five shades of gray — including the color of the not-golden bowl I’m eyeing that contains liquid that’s either milk or Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White minus the woman. (Photo by my adult female human Laurel Cummins.)

What am I, Misty the cat, reading now? I just finished T is for Trespass as I continue to work my way through Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries starring private investigator Kinsey Millhone, whose last name rhymes with Milk-Bone. (Shout-out to my dog readers, including Snoopy the Easter Beagle.) As you might know, the late Grafton didn’t allow her book series to be adapted for the screen because she had formerly worked in that business and distrusted it. Heck, Hollywood even had nowhere-near-tall-enough Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher before the physically massive Alan Ritchson more appropriately got the role in the current TV iteration of Lee Child’s thrilling book series. Ritchson IS Reacher, which creates ID confusion for the actor at airports.

While I almost always read fiction, I’ve been periodically perusing Rebecca Romney’s nonfiction book Jane Austen’s Bookshelf — which Dave received as a December holiday present from his sister-in-law Sheila Cummins. (I, Misty the cat, was gifted a $700,000 Lamborghini by Dave…in my dreams.) Romney focuses on the 1700s-born female authors who inspired Austen and why some of those excellent/pioneering writers are barely known today. These authors include Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. All of whom are also known for founding the crack law firm Burney, Radcliffe, Lennox, More, Smith, Inchbald, Piozzi, Edgeworth, and Dora the Explorer. I want that firm in my corner when I’m on trial for purchasing a Trump pardon with catnip crypto.

Besides T is for Trespass, other novels I had Dave borrow from the library last month were Pearl S. Buck’s Sons (The Good Earth sequel I just started reading), Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (which I’ll be rereading) and Jamaica Inn, and Peter May’s The Blackhouse. All will be mentioned in future posts, with credit at that time to those who recommended two of those books. I would’ve visited the library myself, but it’s hard for a cat to drag books home when they’re no longer printed on yarn.

Speaking of high-tech things like knitting, it has been suggested that I comment on Artificial Intelligence’s relation to literature — especially after the Shy Girl novel was recently pulled by a major publisher for reportedly including lots of AI-generated content. But I’m no AI expert, which contrasts with my deep knowledge of 14th-century automobiles. Curiously, Chaucer only featured one Lamborghini in The Canterbury Tales; maybe he was more into mass transit. Dave does periodically receive seemingly AI-generated emails offering marketing help for his books — for a not-small fee, of course. Dave looked in his wallet, consulted with George Washington and other notables pictured on American currency, and was advised to…get a roomier wallet. With a kitchen so those long-dead notables can eat.

In conclusion, I’ll mention that I’m now an older cat (10) who recently starting doing three things to keep myself healthier: eat a prescription diet, get a monthly arthritis shot, and read fiction by writers who had also been medical doctors — among them Khaled Hosseini, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Anton Chekhov. Anton even appeared on the TV series Scrubs.

As I fend off a lawsuit claiming Chekhov did NOT appear on Scrubs, Dave will reply to comments.

Misty the cat says: “My favorite comedy trios are The Marx Brothers and The Pine Cones.”

My and Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about “No Kings” rallies and more — is here.