Gabriela & Graciela: Two Lovers in Paraty, Brasil
Author: Jorge Amado
If you've ever felt the peculiar desire to be slowly tortured by excruciating and seductive beauty, then take the four-hour Costa Verde bus ride from Rio de Janeiro, along the lush, curvilinear, mountainside road; observe the unending parade of proud, shimmering, aquamarine bays, the countless, corpulent jungle-topped islands, and the ceaselessly plunging tropical coastlines; then check and calculate, through the interminable hours, just how much more of this you will have to take until you finally reach Paraty, the pearl of Brazilian colonial port towns, where you will meet a lover.
Posted on Fri, Jan 02, 2009
James Dickey's Leesburg: The House of Deliverance
Author: James Dickey
The small historic town of Leesburg Virginia certainly doesn't bring forth my atavistic desires and primordial rage, even less so does the stately Glenfiddich house, situated in the middle of the sprawling antebellum lawns and pillared front porches of North King Street. But from 1966-1968, the town, and the small room on the second story above the entranceway, served as the surroundings for James Dickey while he wrote his 1970 masterpiece about man's darker instincts, Deliverance.
Posted on Mon, Dec 22, 2008
A Murakami-esque Day: Banalities & Absurdities in Beijing
Author: Haruki Murakami
It was on the day of empty restaurants that I realized my life had begun to blur with the literature of Haruki Murakami. The whole day felt like slipping through the city as a ghost. My husband and I boarded the subway at the odd hour of 10 a.m., when commuters had already hustled to work and the streets were populated mostly by shuffling elderly people with grocery bags. We went to Xidan, Beijing's financial center, in search of shoes, but after an hour of sensory overload amidst a bazillion bejeweled malls and billboards we were already in need of a beer.
Posted on Sun, Nov 30, 2008
From Turkmenistan to America: How I Found Langston Hughes
Author: Langston Hughes
It was summer in Turkmenistan and the temperature was well over 100 degrees. A breeze blew desert dust into the room through the classroom's open windows. The two dozen or so men and women seated at the room's child-sized desks picked at plates of cookies and grapes as they listened to the boy recite a poem.
"Vaht khappens to a dream deferred?" he began with a thick Russian accent. "Does it dry up like a raisin in zee sun?"
Posted on Mon, Nov 17, 2008
A Protester in China: The Life of Lu Xun
Author: Lu Xun
Despite the nouveau rich careening madly around town in their upscale imported cars and SUVs, Shaoxing, China still retains much of its slow, gentle character. The women, especially, are known for their beauty and gentleness. The people are congenial. It is a good place to live and write.
Posted on Sun, Nov 09, 2008
A 'Moral Pub' Crawl Through James Joyce's Dublin
Author: James Joyce
The sun casts shadows on the marble bar, its sheen worn dull by 120 years of greasy palms and frothy brew. Denudation through inebriation. A glass tips. Beer collects in pools on the bar - the snotgreen sea. Read that somewhere. Can't think about James Joyce without the old stream o' consciousness.
Posted on Sun, Oct 12, 2008
Champagne & Sheep: A Poetic Tour of Wales
Author: Dylan Thomas
Yet, it is a place where, it is said, the people have music in their blood - and poetry in their soul. Author Jan Morris, who has adopted Wales as her home, says being a poet is a characteristic Welsh condition. "The company of poets is the nobility of this nation," Morris has written.
Posted on Thu, Oct 02, 2008
Curious George: From Nazi Germany to Bucolic New Hampshire
Author: Hans & Margret Reys
Few readers realize that had it not been for the indefatigable will of his creators, Curious George would have never existed.. The Reys, both German Jews, escaped Paris at the eleventh hour - hours before the Nazis occupied the city. And they did so by pedaling away on bicycles that Hans had cobbled together out of spare parts. The couple rode for three straight days, and eventually made their way to the Spanish border, where they sold the bikes to pay for train fare to Lisbon. From there they crossed the Atlantic and ultimately arrived in New York City with six children's book manuscripts still in their bags.
Posted on Wed, Sep 24, 2008
J.M. Coetzee's Warring Cape Town
Author: J.M. Coetzee
Perched on the tip of the African Continent, sandwiched between the crash of the Indian Ocean and the roll of the Atlantic, Cape Town exists in a tango of its past, present and future. Often described as capturing the free-spirit attitude of San Francisco circa the 1950s, at first glance Cape Town may seem bohemian and reckless. But at the turn of a corner its apartheid history and resulting current racial and economic struggles continue to be felt.
Posted on Mon, Sep 15, 2008
Going Green: The Artists Inn Residence in Washington, D.C.
Upon entering this circa 1900, spliced town home on Dupont Circle, the "public haunts" of pavement and traffic dissipate, replaced with flowing water, oils on canvas, murals, antiques, and a 1925 Steinway baby grand. It is a 21st century salon, christened in 2007 as the Artists Inn Residence Bed and Breakfast, a multi-disciplinary study in by-gone eras, a tribute to nature and artistic greatness. This, mon ami, is the perfect writer get-away.
Posted on Thu, Aug 14, 2008
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