This essay exploring Arthur Rimbaud’s influence on Jim Morrison is included in my most recent book The Modern Salonnière. The 34 other essays in the book…
View More Jim Morrison Irreverent ScribeTag: The Literary Adventurer
I call myself The Literary Adventurer because when I travel to cities such as New York, Paris and London, I am continually following the paths of my literary heroes.
I hit upon the title The Literary Adventurer when I was roaming London in search of the buildings famous writers had called home. Among them on this particular trip was Oscar Wilde, Henry James and George Eliot. During trips to Paris, the list has included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Rainer Maria Rilke, Natalie Barney and Edith Wharton. And in Venice, it was Peggy Guggenheim’s world I sought as I read her biography surrounded by the lapping water she glided across in her gondola.
Though she is not as well-known as a writer as she is an art collector, her salon, which drew all manner of literati, was a sought-after experience. But she was a tough cookie and she would ostracize practically the entire roster of Beat poets who visited Venice, the most disappointed among them Allen Ginsberg. Gregory Corso and William Burroughs actually made it through the gate, but only once for Burroughs and he was not invited back because he made an off-color remark about a certain part of Guggenheim’s anatomy. It’s historical meanderings like these of writers who came before me that fascinate me when I’m embarking upon a literary adventure.
Anguished in Amherst
This essay channeling Emily Dickinson in Amherst is included in my new book The Modern Salonnière. The 34 other essays in the book feature similar…
View More Anguished in AmherstThe Personality of Place
So, this is how it feels to experience a medieval Tuscan village that has existed on a hillside in some form for almost 1000 years!…
View More The Personality of PlaceEudora Welty Finds Her Voice
When a writer begins to grapple with how to mine the outside world for inspiration, the process can be challenging. In her memoir, One Writer’s…
View More Eudora Welty Finds Her VoiceA Backward Glance on rue de Varenne
The narrow sidewalks push their black iron batons up out of the ground to protect the buildings hemming them; the rain turns the cobblestones to…
View More A Backward Glance on rue de VarenneArchitecture with Heart in Bordeaux
In the preface to the book Grand Bordeaux Châteaux: Inside the Fine Wine Estates of France, Philippe Chaix describes discovering Bordeaux as a bewitching act: on…
View More Architecture with Heart in BordeauxThe Architecture of Tango
I envy the pencil being held carefully between her fingers, the rasping sound the sharpener makes as a thin layer of wood peels away from…
View More The Architecture of TangoTouching Literary History
I will once again be touching literary history soon, as the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University reopened yesterday following a 16-month…
View More Touching Literary HistoryCelebrating Shakespeare
Celebrating Shakespeare The 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death is April 23rd, the date he passed in 1616 at the age of 52 believed to…
View More Celebrating ShakespeareReading Dante in Milan
“I’d like that sunny table near the windows under the beautiful mirror,” he says to the hostess at Le Vrai, pointing to the niche set…
View More Reading Dante in Milan