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Landscapes in Literature: You Can Go Home Again!

© Kathleen D. Anderson

Mark Twain once wrote the following about his childhood home:

"The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the memory of it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years ago. . . . I saw the new houses—saw them plainly enough—but they did not affect the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there with perfect distinctness."

Vanished houses. New houses. Memories of long ago.

When I read Twain's words, I think of my own childhood home:

Born in a small industrial town in Ohio named Ashtabula---an Indian name which means “River of Many Fish,”my home stills stands, its rickety old front porch now encased into a modern sunroom; I can still remember the fishy smell of the then chemically polluted waters, and the taste of gritty peanut butter sandwiches eaten as we sat on the sands of the Lake Erie Shore and waited to go swimming again....

Quick! Now it’s your turn. Close your eyes and recall the most familiar landscape that you know! What thoughts or feelings come to your mind’s eye? Imagine writing down in words what you see in order to evoke an historic period or window of the past for others to look into. Can you put your own words on paper?

This was the assigned task for my last week’s Great Books class. We were visiting Denmark through Isak Dinesen’s words, and, while the question of landscape was directed toward a more personal view of my students’ “own” hometown landscapes, the conversation quickly turned to questions about our own country’s great writers:

Specifically, where was the landscape of so many of our American authors and exactly how did their childhood landscapes play into their writings?

Here are just a few locations and some of the authors born to those landscapes:

Back Creek, Nebraska---

The rough prairie land filled with the American pioneer spirit and experience---Scandinavian, Bohemian and French immigrants---this location became inspiration for many of Willa Cather’s books such as "My Antonia."

Hannibal, Missouri---

Home of Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain---a writer and adventurer who like his own character was not satisfied to stay home but instead crisscrossed the globe---piloting the Mississippi River, later reporting from the American Frontier, then traveling to tropical isles and Europe as a celebrated author---adventures all parlayed into his writings!

Yoknapatawpha County---

The fictional home of Faulkner’s characters and a county in Northern Mississipi patterned upon Faulkner’s own Layfayette County Mississippi home. The Yoknapatawpha River, according to Faulkner Yoknapatawhpa, means “water flowing slow through the flatland."

Sketch of my own "childhood home"

My daughter in front of Hemingway's Key West Home

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