A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses

This book, a mere 146 pages of text, is jam-​​packed with won­der­fully off­beat infor­ma­tion about a vari­ety of Amer­i­can writ­ers and their homes, now des­ig­nated muse­ums. Trubeck’s pur­pose in writ­ing the book was to “expose not sim­ply Whitman’s house, but all of the writ­ers’ house muse­ums as the frauds I believed them to be.” What she found as she trav­eled and vis­ited many sites was a lit­tle more complicated.

The author points out that vis­it­ing the house of a favorite or famous author should not sur­prise us: “Writ­ers’ house muse­ums have been on the itin­er­aries of the Euro­pean Grand Tour since the six­teenth cen­tury.” The rela­tion­ship between reader and favorite writer is strong. Vis­it­ing the house to see the writer’s chair, quill, pen, type­writer and, soon, PC or lap­top is a kind of posthu­mous lit­er­ary voyeurism.

The Alcott house, home to the March fam­ily of Lit­tle Women, has come to epit­o­mize the Amer­ica fam­ily in ways that would have appalled the strongly fem­i­nist Louisa May. And it’s not the only leg­endary writer’s liv­ing quar­ters whose pub­lic image dif­fers from the real­ity of the writer’s life within its walls. Whose house becomes a museum? Do they gen­er­ate income? When did all this begin? In the end, Trubek debunks lit­er­ary myths, but comes to terms with the devo­tional sojourns of read­ers for whom read­ing the book is not enough. Trubeck’s intended exposé enter­tains, enlight­ens and enchants.

The Skeptic’s Guide is a nat­ural for any book club in the greater Bay Area. There are numer­ous authors’ houses for us to visit. Jack London’s Glen Ellen prop­erty would make a spec­tac­u­lar day trip for an adven­tur­ous club or a quick trip by BART to Jack Lon­don Square in Oak­land, where you could peek into one of London’s favorite water­ing holes. Joaquin Miller‘s bun­ga­low in Joaquin Miller Park in Oak­land is also nearby and there is the Stein­beck coun­try of Sali­nas. How could a club go wrong with a visit to the John Muir home in Mar­tinez? Danville has O’Neill’s Tao House; if poetry is your thing, and you’re headed down to Stein­beck coun­try, go a bit far­ther and visit Robin­son Jef­fers’ Tor House in Carmel. Lit­er­ary bus tours are avail­able for the mys­tery lov­ing book clubs and I’m sure a Google search could pro­duce a few oth­ers. Check out the Beat poets’ envi­rons of San Fran­cisco. For those of you who can’t get to Mark Twain’s East Coast home, you can head up to Vir­ginia City and rest your foot on a few bar rails famil­iar to Twain in his jour­nal­ism days.

At the end of her book, Trubek has included a list of writ­ers’ homes open The Skeptic’s Guide to Writ­ers’ Houses is a bit of a travel book, museum rants and raves and just gen­er­ally a lot of fun.