HAUNTS OF THE GREAT

By guest blogger G. M. Malliet

I’m not much of a fan. I don’t collect artifacts or mementos of the famous. I don’t follow celebrities or create Google alerts for the names of people I admire. In fact, I am so out of touch with the Zeitgeist I am often mystified by the feature in the Washington Post called “Reliable Source,” which rather breathlessly lists sightings of celebrities in town to promote their pet causes. Who are these people spotted at, for example, the DC Spy Museum or Café Milano, wearing jeans, a baseball cap, and a button-down shirt? (“Reliable Source” always tells us what the stars are wearing and/or eating, presumably because someone cares.) Notice I don’t give you specific names or examples. I might recognize Brad Pitt if I tripped over him—especially if he had Angelina and the kids swarming around him—but fully eighty percent of the celebs mentioned in this column I’ve never heard of.

 Yes, it is getting to the point where my cluelessness is embarrassing, at least to those in my orbit under the age of thirty. No doubt it’s the first step on that slippery slope to Old Fuddydom.

All this by way of confessing that from the moment I heard Greenway, Agatha Christie’s vacation home in Devonshire, was being opened to the public this year, I knew I had to get there. In fact, I think the phrase “If I have to crawl on my hands and knees” was called into play. Fortunately, there are passenger ferries that can take you to Greenway from Torquay (Agatha’s birthplace) and from other towns along the coast of Devon.   

But it wasn’t that easy to get there by train from Oxford, our starting point, so was it worth it? Definitely. For one thing, the area where she purchased the house and grounds lives up to Agatha’s claim of being “the loveliest place in the world.”

What do we hope to gain from visits to the haunts of the great—or do we hope to gain anything? For my part, the journey helped orient me in terms of Agatha’s life and her stories—places that were mere names are far more meaningful to me now. And yes, I think there was an element of wishing that by standing where she had stood, seeing how she worked and lived, inspiration for another great puzzle of a book like And Then There Were None might come to me. (Still waiting on that.)

Are there any writers’ haunts you’ve been to that have really made an impression, or that you would like to visit one day?

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G.M. Malliet’s Death of a Cozy Writer, previously a Malice Domestic Grant winner, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel of 2008. It has also been nominated for 2009 Anthony, David, and Macavity awards and a Left Coast Crime Award for best police procedural. It won an IPPY Silver Medal in the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category. Kirkus Reviews named it one of the best books of 2008.  The second book in the St. Just series is Death and the Lit Chick (April 2009) and the third is Death at the Alma Mater (January 2010). Malliet and her husband live in Virginia.

Comments

[Paul Lamb]

I've been to the site of Thoreau's cabin, and that was meaningful to me because Walden was in part about the place itself. But beyond that, I don't find myself wanting to see any other writer's haunts. Roth's writing cabin behind his house? Not so much. Murdoch's unkempt house? Nah. To me such places were merely starting points for the writer. Rarely are they the destinations.

As you've noted with Christie's house (one of eight I believed she owned concurrently), the place itself might inform some of her works, and that might be meaningful to me, but beyond that, not so much.

[Shelly Franz]

Ok, you sound way too much like me. I don't care if Brad Pitt or ...(see, I can't even think of anyone else) walks into the grocery store where I work. He wouldn't phase me a bit. However, if Julie Hyzy or Juliet, or Jess Conant-Park walked in, I'd be a puddle on the floor. Not to mention I'd be more likely to recognize them in the first place. My dream trip is to make it to one of the Bouchercons. I can't see myself making a trip to stand outside one of their houses though -I'm sure Jess, Juliet, and Julie are now heaving sighs of relief - *grin* but I can definitely see me being starstruck (or is that authorstruck?) at a con. Hollywood? Nah.

[Leann Sweeney]

Thanks for stopping by our blog! I would LOVE to visit Dame Agatha's home. It's on the bucklet list. But I do have something special--and I'm not one for drooling over celebrities or gathering autographs either. I have a brick from Edgar Allen Poe's NYC home. They were sold for $40 when the house was torn down several years ago. When I'm uninspired, I have been known to place my hand on the brick hoping for a miracle.

[G.M. Malliet]

Leeann - I do envy you having that brick!

Shelly - I think that is the difference. Author celebs are more interesting to me.

Paul - I was forgetting a trip I made years ago through New England that included a visit to Louisa May Alcott's house. Now, that was inspirational.