I first discovered Anne Trubek's marvelous exploration of writers' homes-turned-museums through her piece the Oxford American on Thomas Wolfe's former Asheville residence. More than a summation or overview, Trubek takes as her starting place the way that Wolfe's memory is and isn't conveyed, and goes on to an especially nuanced questioning of the significance of Wolfe's work (genius? indulgent? both? something else?).
That article is part of an ongoing trek: she is the author of A Skeptic's Guide To Writers' Houses, a book coming soon from the University of Pennsylvania Press. (Does the publication of it indicate an invitation to come tour Trubek's own house? This is yet to be seen.) Today, we're privy to another part of her journey: she visits Langston Hughes' Cleveland home, which may or may not become a tourist destination.
She writes:
It is tempting to cheer the potential Langston Hughes museum in Fairfax as a development that would honor a writer, preserve the cultural legacy of the neighborhood, and bring in tourist dollars. But investing in writers' former homes is not a development tactic with a great track record. There are about 55 writers' houses open to the public in America. Most are owned by civic organizations, and many lose money. ...
Even thriving cities and neighborhoods have a hard time turning writers' homes into sustainable tourist draws. ... And the past few years have taught us all the fundamental irrationality of real estate. Just as a literary classic can become pulp, a penthouse can become a vacant foreclosure. There are no sure bets.
... So although it seems churlish, even as a Cleveland civic booster and English professor I cannot get behind a fundraising campaign for the Hughes museum. ... What if we redirected our energy, I wondered, to reading Hughes rather than restoring his house? His books are plentiful and inexpensive. How much would it cost to give every resident of Fairfax a book or every classroom a set of, say, Poetry for Young People? Not as much as the deferred maintenance on the house where Hughes briefly boarded.
... It may be time to stop thinking of restoring houses as the answer to depopulating cities and to start thinking about the advantages of less costly forms of development, like reading books. ...
Huddled in that attic room eating rice and hot dogs, I suspect Hughes knew, too, that the world of the imagination offers more than property, more than the city.
I see Trubek's point, and I'm tempted to agree with her wholly. But I feel a reluctance simmering in me too. I like writers' houses. I like to visit them. I like the material celebration of the life of the imagination, of creating spaces for people to move through rooms and imagine the imagining that happened there.
Whether or not writers' homes are money-makers with legions of people streaming through the doors day after day (and they unquestionably are not) is not necessarily the only measure of their worth. As Trubek notes, many homes survive on donations and trusts. That seems fine to me. I realize, though, that developers might have irrational ideas on the tourism benefits of fixing up Hughes' Cleveland home and opening it to the public ... but if they do open it up, if it serves as a point of pride in a neighborhood and city, if it leads more people to Hughes' writing, if it broadcasts a message that 'this, too, is where artists create,' then I am thrilled it is there. And I'll no doubt day-trip on over there to check it out for myself.
About the Image: Theodore Roethke Home Museum in Saginaw, Michigan. It offers community programs and tours.
Writers' houses look as creative as their owners, obviously. Writers also apply their creative juices in designing their own homes. Even if some of us are not writers, we can still make our homes look good. In styling my own home, I thought out-of-the-box. I used pink refrigerators, bright green walls for my kitchen, a hot pink bedroom, and steel front doors. It sounds kinda weird, but they look gorgeous!
Posted by: Candie Rossler | February 22, 2011 at 10:41 PM