While I’d love to have the luxury of a pilgrimage to all my literary heroes’ homes, I’m content with the next best thing: an internet tour in pictures. That’s exactly what one gets at the Writers’ Houses site, which has collected dozens of images of famous writers’ homes, sourced mainly from user photos.
(via Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes | Open Culture)
- William S. Burroughs was an exterminator. He really liked that job. He liked the word, too, and published a collection of short stories called Exterminator! not to be confused with a collaborative collection of stories with Brion Gysin called The Exterminator.
- Vladimir Nabokov was an entomologist of underappreciated greatness. His theory of butterfly evolution was proven to be true in early 2011 using DNA analysis.
- Margaret Atwood first worked as a counter girl in a coffeeshop in Toronto, serving coffee and operating a cash register, which was a source of serious frustration for her. She details the experience in her essay, “Ka-Ching!”
- Don DeLillo took a job as a parking attendant when he was a teenager. It was so boring that he became an avid reader, which led him to pursue a career in writing.
- Before writing 1984, George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair) was an officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He shouldered the heavy burden of protecting the safety of some 200,000 people, and was noted for his “sense of utter fairness.”
- Though it’s apparent in reading Joseph Conrad’s work (especially Heart of Darkness) that he lived a large part of his life at sea, it’s maybe less obvious that he spent part of that time involved in gunrunning and political conspiracy.
(via millionsmillions)
How to respond when a writers try to retract beloved poems, novels, and plays
Love this. Object fetishizing the man who gave us Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues and held the materialistic Bovarys of the world in such low regard. Take that Flaubert, we love you.
A Partial Inventory of Gustave Flaubert’s Personal Effects
As Catalogued by M. Lemoel on May 20, 1880, Twelve Days after the Writer’s Death.
In the bedroom on the first floor:
panama hat
top hat
red silk cravat
5 pairs of gloves
19 shirts
2 dressing gowns
5 waistcoasts
7 walking sticks
tobacco jar
two pairs of bootsIn the dining room:
35 champagne glasses
48 porcelain dinner plates
a painting representing Napoléon I
a pocket watch in a gold case engraved with initials ‘GF’
a gold watch chain
a gold signet ring with square stone
a silver spoon and two forks marked ‘N flaubert’
5 oyster-knives with black handles and silver bladesIn the study on the first floor:
Engraving in oakwood frame representing The temptation of Saint Antoine by Callot
Marble clock with bronze figurines, maker’s name ‘Destigny’ engraved on dial
Photographic reproduction of painting entitled Visions
Array consisting of lances, javelins, arrows, mandolin, Basque drum, axe, oriental pipe, cardboard Chinese statuette
Large round table in mahogany
Green woolen tablecloth
One tiger skin, one lynx skin, one bear skin, white
Penholder in the shape of dragon
Bronze inkwell
Three paperknives, one with initials ‘GF’
Two Egyptian lanterns
Unfinished manuscript of work entitled Bouvard et Pécuchet
Creuzer, Religions of Antiquity in 11 vols
Works of Saint Theresa in Migne edition
Works of Walter Scott in 32 vols.
(In the drawer of one of the small bookcases is found the sum of 2515 francs, which sum is deposited with Maitre Bidault to cover funeral expenses, burial charges, and other debts.)
A collage by William Burroughs.
From a rather awesome roundup by Steven Heller: The Visual Art and Design of Famous Writers
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The Significant Objects Tumblr is proudly sponsored by the Significant Objects book: Launch event at The Strand, NYC, July 10, 2012: With Luc Sante, Ben Greenman, Shelley Jackson, Matthew Sharpe, Mimi Lipson, Jason Grote, Annie Nocenti, Joshua Glenn, and Rob Walker. Details here.
Jesmyn Ward was at the tail end of summer break when Hurricane Katrina struck her hometown of Delisle, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast. She was supposed to be back in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to start teaching, “but because I’m always so homesick,” she tells Kurt Andersen, “I thought, ‘I’ll just stay here till the last moment. I’ll stay here through the hurricane, then I’ll drive up to Michigan.’ I totally underestimated the storm.” Ward and her family had to escape a house filling with water so quickly they feared they would drown in the attic.
Great interview on Studio 360.
