A Journey Through Literary America
by Thomas R. Hummel and Photography by Tamra L. Dempsey
Monthly archive December, 2009
Seven Days
Former Vermonter Creates an American Literary Journey State of the Arts By Amy Lilly When you read poems or novels, you may wonder how much they reflect the authors’ own experiences — particularly when their work is strongly rooted in a sense of place. Think Willa Cather and the Nebraska plains, or Langston Hughes and the streets of Harlem. For ex-Vermonter and literature enthusiast Thomas R. Hummel, writers’ firsthand experiences of place are fascinating in themselves — and have become the subject of his beautifully produced coffee-table book A Journey Through Literary America. Now settled with a family in California, Hummel grew up in Burlington and earned his bachelor’s in English and German literature at Middlebury College in 1990. It was partly his fond memories of the Queen City that inspired him to look into how this country’s writers experienced the places they wrote about. For the book, Hummel wrote absorbing bios of 26 American writers, four of them poets, whom he chose from an original list of 50 authors “who wrote with a descriptive sense of place.” Photographer Tamra L. Dempsey drove 15,000 miles over the course of a year to shoot the houses, neighborhoods and skylines that helped [...] Read More »
NewPages
LITERARY MAGAZINES & PUBLISHING, ALTERNATIVE MEDIA, LINKS TO GOOD READING Still looking for a holiday gift for that literary person on your list? A Journey Through Literary America is a collaborative work by writer Thomas R. Hummel and photographer Tamra L. Dempsey. The publisher’s site describes the book: “This 304 page coffee table book takes a look at 26 of America’s great authors and the places that inspired them. Unique to this book of literary biography is the element of the photograph. With over 140 photographs throughout, the images add mood and dimension to the writing – and they are often shockingly close to what the featured authors described in their own words.” It is indeed a gorgeous book. Neither the text nor photos dominate, but work well in harmony to create a book that can be browsed for its images or curled up with and delved into for its writing. The content on the featured authors provides commentary about their lives in the places where they lived. Even if you already know the background of these authors, seeing them recounted here in context with the photographs adds a new, warmer sense of story to their lives. The information looks [...] Read More »
Who Says “You Can’t Go Home Again”? Book Signing – Burlington, Vermont
Near the end of the posthumously published You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe muses, through the eyes of his literary alter ego, George Webber “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame…back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” According to a superb website simply called “How Books Got Their Titles,” Wolfe got the title for his novel while having dinner with a friend. He told her how people of his home town of Asheville were really quite put out by his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, going so far as to make threats on his life (even today those feelings have not died. Rumor has it that the fire a couple years ago in the Thomas Wolfe house was set by unforgiving descendants of slighted Ashevillians). His companion commented: “But don’t you know you can’t go home again?” [...] Read More »
Midwest Book Review
Lives up to its title. Illustrated with full-color photography throughout, A Journey Through Literary America is a book for book lovers – surveying great American authors from Ralph Waldo Emerson to John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, E. Annie Proulx, and many more. Each author has a brief biographical profile combined with breathtaking photography of the places they lived or that inspired them to create masterpieces. A wondrous tour ideal for enriching any literary collection – and sure to appeal to armchair travelers as well, A Journey Through Literary America lives up to its title and is highly recommended. Read More »
The 2009 Guadalajara Book Fair (Feria Internacional del Libro)
The Guadalajara Book Fair always opens on the weekend that comes after Thanksgiving—the only sacrosanct four-day unit of off days in my work calendar of the last 12 years. This year was different, however. My family was in Japan, and the company I work for (Toppan Printing) was under great pressure to increase our number of book printing clients in the Mexican and South American markets. So, on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving (a non-Thanksgiving, on which neither stuffing nor turkey nor cranberry sauce passed my lips anyway,) I boarded a redeye flight to Guadalajara, in the Jalisco region of Mexico. I arrived at 5:45 in the morning on a full flight, feeling as though I had been locked in the trunk of a very small car for 4 hours. My hotel (another Holiday Inn Express…but, if I may digress for a moment, you should see the Holiday Inn Express’s in Mexico, which are designed with about 200% more creativity and flair than they are in the United States) wouldn’t take me at 6 in he morning, so I dropped off my bag and walked the 15 minutes to the Guadalajara Convention Center in the stink of the Mexican dawn. [...] Read More »
Rita Dove
What a very beautiful and evocative book! I am pleased — and honored — to be a part of it. Read More »
Shelf-Awareness
Gift Books for the Holidays, Part III This absolutely gorgeous book belongs in every book lover’s library. Beginning with Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, ending with E. Annie Proulx and Richard Ford, Thomas Hummel examines the relationship between place and an author’s identity, writing about 26 authors, with brief biographies and excerpts of their prose. Tamra Dempsey’s photographs are the perfect enhancement to Hummel’s essays. Willa Cather is evoked with golden prairies and a farmhouse in a sunset-red sky; Langston Hughes with brownstones and Bailey’s Funeral Home in Harlem; Raymond Carver with the site of his childhood home in Yakima (“living on a staple of bitterness”) and the Cornerhouse Restaurant and the marina in Port Angeles. Original: http://news.shelf-awareness.com/mv/a1/801347.html Read More »
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