Places I'll Remember

Biltmore Estate, springtime

Birthplace of Gone With the Wind, 979 Crescent Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30309

Though I'd gone to North Carolina last month to glean some hints from the instructors at the "Into the Fire" writers' retreat sponsored by Sun Magazine at Wildacres, I also wanted to take advantage of a rare trip to the south to do some sightseeing, as well. I started with two of Asheville's foremost tourist attractions, the incredibly beautiful Biltmore Estate and the light year's humbler former boardinghouse, Old Kentucky Home.

"Dixieland," from Look Homeward Angel

Since my Frequent Flyer return flight had to be booked via Atlanta, I took advantage of that detour to visit the Margaret Mitchell Musuem, located in the modest Crescent Avenue apartment where she lived with her second husband, and where she wrote Gone With the Wind.

Until a few years ago I had never heard of the Biltmore Estate, and I've since learned that several friends here in Southern California have not either. Even though George Washington Vanderbilt began construction on the house and its thousands of acres of property in 1889, and it's often compared to England's Highclere Castle, site of the PBS series, Downton Abbey, we West Coast folks often think of San Simeon, the Hearst Castle, as the epitome of luxurious surroundings. Biltmore Estate belongs to the Gilded Age, that era of rapid economic growth where some families became enormously wealthy.

The success of the Vanderbilt family began with Cornelius, with shipping and railroad empires. The Vanderbilts became one of the wealthiest families in American history. There's another Vanderbilt mansion from the 19th century that I'll someday visit, The Breakers, in Newport, Rhode Island.

In Look Homeward Angel, early 20th century novelist Thomas Wolfe called the boarding house his mother ran "Dixieland." If ever there was a roman a clef, this novel filled the bill. It caused such a stir in Asheville when it was published in 1929. None of the locals believed for one second that a fictional place called Altamont, Catawba, ever existed. They knew it was Asheville, and what's more they could identify nearly everybody in the book. Wolfe even received some death threats, and didn't go home for eight years. By then, the furor had died down, and some townspeople later lamented that no mention of them was made in Wolfe's later novels.

Here's Wolfe's description of what often is called the most famous boardinghouse in fiction:

"Dixieland. It was situated five minutes from the public square, on a pleasant sloping middleclass street of small homes and boarding-houses. Dixieland was a big cheaply constructed frame house of eighteen or twenty drafty high-ceilinged rooms: it had a rambling, unplanned, gabular appearance, and was painted a dirty yellow. It had a pleasant green front yard, not deep but wide, bordered by a row of young deep-bodied maples." —Thomas Wolfe, from Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

Wolfe's life was cut off early. He died in September, 1938, shortly before his 38th birthday. His legacy remains. Here's what Philip Roth has to say:

 “In 1949, when I was sixteen, I stumbled on Thomas Wolfe, who died at thirty-eight in 1938, and who made numerous adolescents aside from me devotees of literature for life.  In Wolfe, everything was heroically outsized, whether it was the voracious appetite for experience of Eugene Gant, the hero of his first two novels, or of George Webber, the hero of his last two. The hero's loneliness, his egocentrism, his sprawling consciousness gave rise to a tone of elegiac lyricism that was endlessly sustained by the raw yearning for an epic existence—for an epic American existence. And, in those postwar years, what imaginative young reader didn't yearn for that?” (Philip Roth)

In 1949, when I was sixteen, I stumbled on Thomas Wolfe, who died at thirty-eight in 1938, and who made numerous adolescents aside from me devotees of literature for life.  In Wolfe, everything was heroically outsized, whether it was the voracious appetite for experience of Eugene Gant, the hero of his first two novels, or of George Webber, the hero of his last two. The hero's loneliness, his egocentrism, his sprawling consciousness gave rise to a tone of elegiac lyricism that was endlessly sustained by the raw yearning for an epic existence--for an epic American existence. And, in those postwar years, what imaginative young reader didn't yearn for that? - See more at: http://www.centerforfiction.org/for-readers/the-book-that-made-me-a-reader-archives/the-writer-who-made-me-a-reader/#sthash.OAImPk03.dpuf

In 1949, when I was sixteen, I stumbled on Thomas Wolfe, who died at thirty-eight in 1938, and who made numerous adolescents aside from me devotees of literature for life.  In Wolfe, everything was heroically outsized, whether it was the voracious appetite for experience of Eugene Gant, the hero of his first two novels, or of George Webber, the hero of his last two. The hero's loneliness, his egocentrism, his sprawling consciousness gave rise to a tone of elegiac lyricism that was endlessly sustained by the raw yearning for an epic existence--for an epic American existence. And, in those postwar years, what imaginative young reader didn't yearn for that? - See more at: http://www.centerforfiction.org/for-readers/the-book-that-made-me-a-reader-archives/the-writer-who-made-me-a-reader/#sthash.OAImPk03.dpuf

In 1949, when I was sixteen, I stumbled on Thomas Wolfe, who died at thirty-eight in 1938, and who made numerous adolescents aside from me devotees of literature for life.  In Wolfe, everything was heroically outsized, whether it was the voracious appetite for experience of Eugene Gant, the hero of his first two novels, or of George Webber, the hero of his last two. The hero's loneliness, his egocentrism, his sprawling consciousness gave rise to a tone of elegiac lyricism that was endlessly sustained by the raw yearning for an epic existence--for an epic American existence. And, in those postwar years, what imaginative young reader didn't yearn for that? - See more at: http://www.centerforfiction.org/for-readers/the-book-that-made-me-a-reader-archives/the-writer-who-made-me-a-reader/#sthash.OAImPk03.dpuf

According to legend, Margaret Mitchell's second husband, John Marsh, encouraged her to write a book while she was recuperating from a long illness. He'd been bringing home stacks of library books to keep her amused, and then made the suggestion that she could better spend her time writing one herself about her hometown of Atlanta. So she did, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1937. I visited the actual apartment, a modest series of narrow rooms, with a bedroom/dining room combination, that also contains Margaret's original desk.

After the success of the novel and the subsequent blockbuster film, Mitchell devoted herself to supporting local charities, becoming penpals with servicemen, and providing medical scholarships for students at Morehouse College, an all-male historically black liberal arts college near Atlanta. She never wrote another novel. She, too, died young, killed crossing Peachtree Street on her way with her husband to a movie. She was 49.

For a poignant yet hilarious take on how Mitchell's novel influenced the direction his own writing took, here's a link to the preface Pat Conroy wrote for the 75th anniversary edition of Gone With the Wind. It's worth reading in its entirety, but here's his secret...Conroy's mom began reading the book to him as a bedtime story when he was only five years old! http://www.npr.org/2011/05/04/135990428/pat-conroy-marks-75-years-of-gone-with-the-wind

It's worth taking the time when visiting the Mitchell Museum to see the two-hour documentary on the making of the movie. Many Mitchell scholars claim that the fuss made over her book and the subsequent movie so overwhelmed her that she lacked the heart to tell another story.

Thomas Wolfe, 1937

Margaret Mitchell