A Journey Through Literary America
by Thomas R. Hummel and Photography by Tamra L. Dempsey
Sherwood Anderson
The Buckeye Book Fair
Akron-Canton Airport: I knew I was not in California when I opened the driver’s side door of my rented Hyundai Accent and saw, laid across the passenger’s seat like a sword, a brand new ice scraper, with broom on one end. For use if needed. Thankfully, I never had to use it. On the way from the airport to my distant hotel, I listened to the radio’s pre-set station, a talk radio station. Clearly local. The talk radio hosts batted around notions of what would happen when their contract with Clear Channel Communications came up for renegotiation. The host was pretty sure they’d be asked to move to a bigger market than Akron/Canton to extend, so to speak, their listening empire. His female sidekick, who followed the role of modern talk radio female sidekicks and enable—which consists mostly of never saying no—wasn’t so sure about that. But she sounded willing to believe. The commercials came. And after that they played “name that bitch,” which consisted of playing a sound clip from some recent woman in the news, and then guessing who it was. This day’s clip was Anna Kournikova. Is this what passeth for talk radio in the smaller markets? [...] Read More »
Indiana to Ohio
The next day we saw the most we had seen of Chicago—in our rear view mirror. By mid-morning we had passed Garry, Indiana—the birthplace of Michael Jackson and by midday we stopped in South Bend (home of Notre Dame) for a bathroom and exercise break. The dominance of football was obvious from our entry into the city. The lanes of the public highway were marked (permanently, it seemed) with the parking lanes for the football stadium (VIP, Season Tickets, etc.). We found a spot in a quiet park by the river (the one that bends south, I presume). It was a beautiful fall day, the wind gusting and sending leaves floating down from the trees. It was something I was sure Felix had never seen before. I tried to get him to appreciate them but he was more concerned with running around, and the big dog we passed. The park had an old cabin that had belonged to the first resident of South Bend. It was locked and deserted. So were the public bathrooms. We moved on. It was one of the longest days of the trip. We lost an hour as we passed into East Coast time. [...] Read More »
Santa Barbara Independent
America’s Places in Literature It’s the Journey, and It Is the Destination Maybe it’s these “tough economic times” we keep hearing about, or Ken Burns’s latest documentary on our country’s greatest idea, or even the fervent debate on health-care reform: but it feels like everyone is eagerly trying to define America. Not the United States, or the U.S.A but America, in its glorious, romantic connotation. I’m not sure writer Thomas Hummel and photographer Tamra Dempsey attempted a definition in their new project titled A Journey Through Literary America, but they certainly succeeded in living, and capturing, one of America’s defining features: the journey itself. One dog named Sherpa, two years, and 20,000 miles after embarking upon the oldest of American traditions, they’ve created a beautiful coffee-table book that combines a stirring narrative of America’s literary heritage with fantastic, sweeping photographs of places that inspired American authors. “For the last 12 years, I’ve been thinking about a coffee-table book that hasn’t been done,” said Hummel, who came up with the idea for the book. “While I was reading American Pastoral, I realized Phillip Roth had some vivid descriptions of places in Newark, and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do [...] Read More »
Sherwood Anderson
Clyde “Winesburg” Ohio It was pitch dark and my motel, with its faux colonial columns seemed to be surrounded by empty space when I arrived that night from Lorain, Ohio. I was somewhere near Sandusky. That night I heard the sounds of several freight trains running past, and heard the mournful sound of the whistle. I had forgotten how much I loved that sound. We used to live close enough to the train tracks in the South End of Burlington, Vermont to hear the Central Vermont freight trains that rumbled by. The next morning I breakfasted at the continental buffet. I sampled from many of these “added bonuses” in my journey through Literary America. This one consisted of some bagels and miniature tubs of processed cream cheese, toaster waffles with flavored corn syrup, square slabs of white or wheat bread, already going stale, generally poor coffee. Since dawn had broken, I could see my surroundings, which were pretty much empty fields. I broke camp and got on the road. I wanted to be in Clyde before noon. More evidence of trains in Clyde: separate tracks coming around a bend and converging just before Main Street, before running off into a [...] Read More »
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