Wherever You Set Your Foot

I've been revelling in the amazing literary past and present of Western Massachusetts lately. Last week, the Tuesday class and I went to a reading at the wonderful Odyssey bookstore in South Hadley MA. Elinor Lipman this time, and her engaging, funny presence. (Her new book is The Family Man). This week, a reading on Thursday by a debut writer, Emily St. John Mandel. Almost every week there is a reading or other literary event nearby. The colleges are rife with writers doing readings and workshops.

Also, the literary landscape is crazy here. When I lived in Cummington, I was on a ridge that boasted three National Poet Laureates. My housemate was Rick Reiken (The Odd Sea, Lost Legends of New Jersey, check him out). Wilbraham, my current place of residence, was oft visited in the 1920's by none other than the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, who based one of his most famous stories on Wilbraham Mountain. Elinor Lipman and Anita Shreve make their homes nearby. Then of course, there are the usual suspects -- Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton. And not far down the road in Hartford, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain plyed their pens. Up the way in Brattleboro, Rudyard Kipling wrote the Jungle Book. So it seems as if everywhere I set my foot, a literary giant of the past stepped before me. We are rich in writers, and we'll be taking advantage of it with summer field trips, for sure, while we attempt to join the ranks of famous Western Massachusetts writers.

What I am reading:
Pastures Of Heaven, by John Steinbeck. If all works out, I'll be moving to California sometime in the future, to the area around Monterey and Salinas, where Steinbeck set his literaary giant feet. I would recommend this book, his first, for its outrageous, odd California Gothic tales. It's fun to go to the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, if you get the chance. They have the camper he travelled around in writing Travels With Charley, even.

Drood, by someone whose name I've forgotten. But I'll let you know. It's a monster, over 700 pages.