Making Room for Writers

The Guardian has been doing a series on writers' rooms since 2007. The most recent essay features Jonthan Bate, but there are others of note: Roald Dahl, Martin Amis, Penelope Lively. For a country known for naming their houses, these "portraits where authors create" reaffirms our need for a hospitable home, whether we work in or out of them. For those who aren't lucky enough (the grass is always greener) to work from home consider Estée Lauder's philosophy on the work place: "You spend so much time in the office, you might as well make it like a home."

The Deep Clean

I've been accused of being overly organized. That's why I loose things sometimes. However what I have never been accused of -- not at least since I was a teenager -- is having a dirty house. Messy is one thing (a state of being that one friend says is evidence of a productive person), but filth is another.

As I've mentioned before, I grew up in a family of six kids. While I would have to hunt for the homework mom moved off the kitchen table in a mess of book bags, papers, and other ephemera of youth, our home was always clean. Last week, I spent a few days before my friend's visit doing what my friend Clarissa, who is doing the same thing at her place in anticipation of her dad's arrival, dubbed the "deep clean." It is usually is a day-long, though sometimes longer, affair in which afterwards the house resembles something out of a catalog.

I am thinking about this a lot lately with the arrival of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. In addition to the town rolling out the red carpet, they've brought out the vacuum. While Oxford is one of the more cleaner places I lived, it's especially tidy this week. A clean house, like a clean town makes everyone feel good.

Just one more reason to wash that dish...

In the Pink

A house of this size can be remade in a short period of time. I moved in the middle of August and set to work on reinventing my space with a September 20 deadline in mind. Of course, the interior of a house is alive as much as its structure, so I anticipate some changes over the next year. For now, here she is.

Open House

When, if after moving into a new place you need a little fire to quickly get things in order, throw a housewarming party. It worked for me anyway. Not only did I host a party last Friday, but I welcomed my first out-of-town guest, a friend from Alabama. (So there was even more added pressure to find a place for my 50th pair of shoes.)

According to an etymological website, the origin of the word housewarming comes from the word huswermynge, first mentioned in an English monastic record from about 1150. Back then, it literally meant "heating a house." In 1577 it was believed to be first used metaphorically: "The Shomakers [shoe makers] of London, having builded a newe Hall, made a royall feast for theire frends, which they call their howse warming"

There was no royal feast at Pierce Avenue, just some kitsch food and a handful of friends. A recovering-addict of the dinner party (for which I have little time these days), it took a minute for me to get used to people in my house. Then I remembered how nice it was to hear the person across from me talking. Apparently, the gathering of people in homes is more historical than we realize. Before there were bars, people congregated at the homes of their friends to socialize, not just to party. Homes were the not the private places they represent today. The significance of an invitation into someone's home is a relatively new phenomenon; in the past, it was the only way to conduct business or simply find out about the weather.

Homework with Jack Pendarvis

Jack Pendarvis lives a block over from me. While I probably wouldn't knock on his door to borrow some sugar, I still consider him a neighbor because we live near each other and we socially interact.*

Jack is a writer, in fact, a very good one. He spent a lot of time at home writing his recent novel Awesome, as well as his previous collections of short stories, Your Body Is Changing and The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure. I'm not doing anything new by interviewing Jack about home. In the last two decades at least three books have been written about writers and their homes. Last year, there was even a fictional book by Brock Clarke (The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England) that juxtaposed the words writer and home in its title. Writers worked from home long before there was such a thing as telecommuting.

So why interview another writer? It's possible that our idea of home changes over time. What meant one thing to Faulkner, may mean another to Jack.

MW: Where is "home" for you?
JP: Wherever Theresa is. And some cats.

MW: People seem to exist via their computers. Do you think the idea of
home is over-rated these days?
JP: Homes are nice. I doubt anyone who doesn't have one would say they're overrated!

MW: While you were a John Grisham Visiting Writer last year you lived in the Seymour Lawrence house, which is just down the street from Faulkner's house at Rowan Oak. What was it like living there? You mentioned to me once before that you were relieved to get everything out of storage.
JP: It's strange living in someone else's house. But it's fun going through someone else's stuff!

MW: What do you think makes a home "southern"? Or, is there even such a thing?
JP: I have never been big on this whole "Southern" thing - you know, the thing you have to put in quotation marks. I am Southern. I've always lived here. There are many Southern things I love - particularly some music and some books - but I don't love them BECAUSE they're Southern. I guess what makes our home Southern is all the chicken-on-a-stick bags that drunken college students toss into our yard every night on their way home from somewhere.

MW: Is there something unusual in your household that will never see the light of day at a yard sale?
JP: I like going to yard sales but I'm disappointed if there are no books. Enraged, even! Where are the books??? I don't think I'd ever like to participate in a yard sale on the other end of it, though. I guess I'm a big old hypocrite! It's hard for me to throw things out. When Theresa and I first lived in the same place, she cleaned out a drawer and found candy bar wrappers for candy bars that didn't even exist anymore, that's how old these candy bar wrappers were. And this was after I had told her that I wasn't going to clean out the drawer because I "only save important things."

MW: And finally, can you describe a favorite room in your house?

JP: We bought what we thought of as a dining room table but at some point we realized that it was the tiniest table ever made. It sort of precludes the possibility of a dinner party. But we have grown to love the little table! It sits in the middle of a room and the room echoes because the tiny table does not absorb sound, I guess. I'm no physicist! Well, it looks nice sitting there all tiny. And there are bookshelves looming and some nice paintings in that room, including a slightly ominous but finally comforting "Ghost Dog" by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. Cats like to sit in that room and look out of windows. All in all, a pleasant room.


*Wikipedia

Neighbors

I wonder what my neighbor, Jack Pendarvis, thinks about home?

There's No Place Like Home

According to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy, sociologists have found that people have ten times as many interactions with others at a farmer's market compared to interactions at the supermarket. Oxford is a little different. It's a small town, so I can count on running into at least two people I know at the grocery store. Last weekend, while out at the Taylor Farmer's Market I spoke with more than ten people, and I not just to ask the price of canned okra or fried peach pies.


Just a short walk west things were quieter. There, beside an idyllic community event, was an empty housing development. At a distance, the houses provided an almost Hollywood backdrop for the farmer's market. It called to mind The Truman Show, but it also reminded me of Celebration, Florida, the Disney "imagineered" town near Mickey Mouse HQ. When I started walking around the neighborhood, the eeriness lingered. No one seemed to be living there. Many people were against the development from the start. Finally realized, it's an unusual sight in the center of a quaint, quiet town that's in the middle of nowhere.

How is it that this has happened in the community of Taylor? At breakfast the next day, I heard some theories from a local resident, but since this isn't a blog proffering ill will, I'll leave them out. What I can say -- and what appears to be the heart of the matter -- is that a community's identity has been threatened. Seeing these homes recalled the part in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy's house lands in Oz. Like that house, they don't fit the scene.