Chasing Orwell's Ghost

A writer travels to the Scottish island of Jura where Orwell spent some time with tubercular fever.

Enjoy.

6 American Sites that Inspired Great Books

The list, care of Airship Daily.

The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem

Every year, scores of Into the Wild fans tackle a dangerous river crossing to visit the last home of Alaska’s most famous adventure casualty. Why are so many people willing to risk injury, and even death, to pay homage to a controversial ascetic who perished so young?

From a piece in Outside...

I WENT TO ALASKA FOR the first time in the summer of 2011, on a grant to report and write radio stories in a small town in southeast Alaska. At summer’s end, I went farther north, spending an extra month and a half with my traveling partner, Jonathan, both of us living out of a 1993 Jeep Cherokee we nicknamed Muskeg, which had dented armor, a cracked windshield, and a missing tailgate handle. Jonathan and I drove 3,500 miles along seven of interior Alaska’s highways, reporting stories for Alaska Public Radio along the way. 

It was Jonathan who first suggested we do a story about the McCandless seekers. The phenomenon is well-known in Alaska—a source of enduring controversy. Every summer, newspapers in Anchorage and Fairbanks publish reports about search-and-rescue episodes on the trail, which invariably prompt online catcalls from Alaskans, who tend to dismiss McCandless as a greenhorn who had no business in the northern wilderness. 

Jonathan and I put the idea on our story list, and as we traveled around the state, we read Into the Wild to each other over the clatter of Muskeg’s engine. We soon felt the story’s pull. I was 20, Jonathan was 22, and McCandless’s uninhibited adventures spoke to both of us.

10 Literary-Themed Restaurants from Around the World

Enjoy!

The Birth of Superman - Cleveland, OH

Book Heaven in Paris

Shakespeare & Company.

The National Library of Romania - 25 Years in the Making

And it's still not done.

From a story in American Libraries magazine...

The National Library occupies several floors, with escalators and glass elevators and ceilings, all with LED lighting. The Aedificia Carpaţi architectural firm won the contract with the Ministry of Culture in 2009 for the completion of construction work on the building, for €112,894,627, a 20-year loan that Romania’s government secured from the Council of Europe Development Bank.

Work started on the building in 1986, during the regime of the infamous Nicolae Ceauşescu, but construction came to an abrupt halt after the 1989 revolution that overthrew communism and ended with the execution of Ceauşescu and his wife. The building then stood half finished until 2009 when the Romanian authorities decided that the project should be finalized. The original 1986 structure received a modern look with the glass shell that envelops the building. The interior space design did not allow for too much alteration.

A few months before his demise, in the summer of 1989, Ceauşescu insisted on inaugurating the building. Part of the main entrance hall was staged as a library, he cut the ribbon, and the year “1989” was carved on the frontispiece, where it remained for the next 20 years as a symbol of unfinished business.

Stalking Harper Lee

Amy Whitaker, for the Millions, goes to Alabama.

From the piece...

As it turns out, I will not meet Harper Lee, but I will get to go to the church picnic, take a nap on the sofa of the president of the Chamber of Commerce, have a farm lunch and traipse through pastures with Truman Capote’s cousin, and be a bonnet-wearing extra in the play two days later. I will meet people starting properly Aristotelian four-year interdisciplinary programs at the local junior college, programs that sound a lot less like student loan factories than formative learning experiences. I will meet the police detective who plays Boo Radley, both Atticuses, two Scouts, and Crissy, an almost-Belgian existential philosopher who married a local doctor and runs the town’s one coffee shop. Like any life adventure or creative process, this is all steeped in the texture of everyday life — from daily drives past the vast Wal-Mart they call Wally World, to the man who wants to help Dawn get ice for her lemonade stand but quips, “The worst thing about losing the city council election was giving up the key to the ice machine.”

I will come to believe that the really interesting thing about Harper Lee is, moment to moment, what happens next. Harper Lee’s own life sounds fascinating, and I start to fantasize that she is a person I would have liked to be friends with, or even who is a little bit like myself. But to make her a character instead of a person — even inside her own mythology — is not as interesting as the living breathing life-as-art practice of all the townspeople who guard her privacy fiercely, who work as the bank CEO by day and play Atticus by night, and who print me a volunteer nametag even though I can’t give directions to anything but the ladies room, and offer me Styrofoam cups of Malibu Tropical Mojito out of a giant Capri-Sun container as we chat with Miss Stephanie backstage during the play. Crissy the bookstore owner who witnessed Lee’s cameo at lunch said, “Those people have no class, snapping pictures on their cell phones. They post them to Facebook and say they had lunch with Harper Lee.” She says it kindly in playful humor.

Victor Hugo's Paris

You can follow in his footsteps, here.

From the piece on the Smithsonian website...

Church of Saint Paul - Saint Louis
 
Located in the Marais neighborhood, this Baroque church serves as the setting for Cosette and Marius’s nuptials in Les Mis. After the wedding, Hugo writes, “People halted in the Rue Saint-Antoine, in front of Saint-Paul, to gaze through the windows of the carriage at the orange-flowers quivering on Cosette’s head.” The Jesuits constructed Saint Paul-Saint Louis from 1627 to 1641, and the church’s 180-foot dome, intricate carvings and shadowy corners appear much as they did 200 years ago. Hugo was a parishioner of the church and donated the shell-shaped holy water fonts on either side of the entrance. Like Cosette, Hugo’s daughter Léopoldine was married in Saint-Paul in 1843.

Writers' Houses

"Where stories live."

Literary Paris Still Lives

So says CNN, as they follow in the footsteps of writers, here.

The Mo Yan Culture Experience Zone

One week after Mo Yan became the first Chinese author to win the Nobel prize, proud local officials rushed out a £70 million plan to transform his sleepy village into a "Mo Yan Culture Experience Zone".

From a story in the Telegraph...

Until last week, the county of Gaomi in the eastern province of Shandong was a poor farming community. It was here that Mr Mo ate tree bark and scrabbled for wild vegetables to survive a tough childhood. 

When reporters tracked down Mr Mo, 57, to his family home in the wake of his prize, they found his 90-year-old father working the farm, unperturbed by the hullaballoo.

But now, ambitious Communist party chiefs see a glorious future for the county as tourists flock to pay homage to the Nobel prize winner. 

On Tuesday, Fan Hui, a local official, paid a visit to Mr Mo's father to ask him to renovate the family home. 

"Your son is no longer your son, and the house is no longer your house," urged Mr Fan, according to the Beijing News, explaining that the author was now the pride of China. "It does not really matter if you agree or not," he added.

Hobbit Tourism

For millions, the Lord of the Rings films turned New Zealand into Middle-earth. As the premiere of a second trilogy approaches, tour operators are ready for another bonanza.

From a story in the Guardian...

The countdown to The Hobbit – in its film form, also a trilogy – began last week in earnest. In earnest and in fact: Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown unveiled a giant clock, complete with an image of Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, counting down the minutes to the 28 November premiere.

The clock sits atop the Embassy Theatre, the handsome 1920s cinema that will host the screening. A bevy of international stars, led, it's safe to predict, by Freeman, will return to Wellington to walk the red carpet down Courtenay Place. The last time the 500m carpet was unrolled, for the world premiere of The Return of the King in 2003, about 120,000 people came to watch the procession. Organisers expect a similar turnout this time. "It will be a real carnival atmosphere," promises Wade-Brown.

There is nothing subtle about efforts to piggyback. The national tourism slogan "100% Pure New Zealand" has become "100% Middle-earth", while in the days leading up to the premiere Wellington will be "renamed", Wade-Brown announced last week, as "Middle of Middle-earth".

It would all no doubt bewilder Tolkien, who conjured up his Middle-earth from Oxfordshire in the 1930s, and never travelled as far as New Zealand.

5 Bizarre Book-Inspired Experiences

The list, care of Lit Reactor.

From said list...

Hunger Games Adventure Weekend

For fans of: The Hunger Games, zip-lining, archery, dystopia, murder, bloodsport
Location: Brevard and Transylvania County, North Carolina
Cost: $389 

Ever wanted to hunt down other human beings in the woods and pretend to murder them? Then do we have the trip for you, the Hunger Games Adventure Weekend. On select dates, you can join twenty-seven other strangers in the North Carolina woods to make-believe that you're learning how to fight one another to the death. What could go wrong? Your journey begins with a lottery that will separate you and your fellow participants into Districts because all vacations should begin with a divisive ceremony that pits you against your fellow travelers. By day, you'll participate in "survival classes," learning archery and sling-shot skills, fire- and shelter-building techniques, and orienteering. You'll paint your face in camo and try not to let the situation devolve into a Lord Of The Flies scenario involving a severed pig head. By night, you'll zip-line through the forest canopy where your face will careen—high-speed in the dark—into spider webs, leaves, and flying nocturnal insects. On the final day of your adventure, you'll participate in a Hunger Games "simulation." According to the website, this simulation does not involve actually putting an arrow through your fellow competitors' heads, but rather time trials of the skills you learned during the weekend.

There's a Pencil Museum?

Yes. Pencil in a visit, will you?

Where Do Chinese People Buy Books Forbidden by China?

Hong Kong.

From a piece on CNN...

When a mainland Chinese tourist heard about a bookstore in Hong Kong that sold books banned by Beijing, he knew he had to check it out.

The Beijing native traveled to Hong Kong for a weekend in July and stopped by People's Commune in Causeway Bay to see if the rumors were true. "I want to know the inside stories of the party," said the man, who did not want to be identified because it was illegal to bring the books back home. "It has nothing to do with me personally but there is no way you can get those inside China."

In mainland China the government places strict controls on mass media, which often means that political analysis and controversial accounts of Chinese history are impossible to find within the country's borders.

However, entrepreneurs in Hong Kong -- a special administrative region of China that has freedom of press -- are cashing in on the ban to cater to the millions of mainland Chinese who travel to Hong Kong to shop.

15 Most Spectacular Libraries in Europe

The list, care of Mental Floss.

America's Literary Named Towns

A map, care of AbeBooks.

Hemingway - the Hotel Chain?

Indeed.

From a small piece in the New York Daily News...



Hemingway’s estate recently announced that it intends to build a hotel brand based on the iconic author and his works. The chain, Hemingway Hotels and Resorts, cites his traveling and jet-setting lifestyle as the inspiration behind the concept, which hopes to infuse the surrounding landscape and character of the hotels’ locations into the physical architecture and layout of these lush resorts. 

The hospitality group’s website reads, rather ebulliently: “An artist needs inspiration to flourish, and so Hemingway was drawn to the world’s most beautiful locales: Paris, Spain, Venice, Key West, Havana, Idaho. Hemingway Hotels will also be found there, and in other beautiful places around the world, in cities and in nature, on beaches and in mountains. Only select hotels will be approved for this iconic brand. For each Hemingway Hotel must be true to its environment, unique architecturally, and committed to providing guests with active, passionate one-of-a-kind experiences that deeply enrich their lives.”

Literary Las Vegas

The Guardian goes in search of it.

From the article...

It's amazing anybody could miss the Neon Boneyard Museum, which at first glance resembles a Scrabble set designed for a giant. The metal tips of lorry-sized words peak out over the fences of a huge industrial lot – the curl of an "S" visible through the barriers, the peeling paint of an obese red "B" glinting. This is where the neon signs of Las Vegas come to die, forming a higgledy-piggledy poem to the city's history. Spanning from early neon offerings of "beer" and "girls" through to the atomic font of the cold war, this is Vegas in her own words. "Literary tours" might not be advertised in this city's neon, but fiction is everywhere in Las Vegas.

When I ask a taxi driver to take me from the Neon Boneyard to the nearest library, he nervously replies: "You mean the Library strip joint on Boulder Avenue?" Vegas might be a literary inspiration, but the most popular "Library" in Vegas involves strippers wearing glasses.