Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Six books that draw visitors to their authors' home towns

Oberlin professor Anne Trubek's new book, A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers' Houses, has been hailed as "a remarkable book: part travelogue, part rant, part memoir, part literary analysis and urban history."

At The Week magazine she tagged six books that draw visitors to their authors' home towns.

One title on her list:
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles,” Whitman writes. At his house museum in Camden, N.J., visitors go to see Whitman’s boot soles, to see his stuff. Whitman’s poetry tries to bridge the divide between the material and spiritual worlds. Writers’ houses, monuments to the imagination, do the same.
Read about the other books on Trubek's list.

--Marshal Zeringue