I found this book. Okay, I don't know what the title is, because I have a packet of copied pages my faculty mentor gave to me. It's some sort of literary guide to London, and goes through the long history of London authors by district, giving the locations where London writers intersected with the city {birth sites, death sites, home addresses, churches frequented, etc. etc}. It is AWESOME, because it completely justifies my entire field study. For example, there's an entry for St Andrew's church, where William Hazlitt was married, with Charles Lamb acting as best man. It gives A.A. Milnes' address where he wrote the Winnie the Pooh books {he was an essayist, too, so I'm not just interested in his children's lit. but Winnie the Pooh is pretty great}. This book will be key in my literary adventures, because it will cut out much of the work I'll have to do in searching through the city for anything that has to do with the authors I'll be studying. I'll be able to compile a list of sites to visit from this book, then I can supplement with any additional sites I find in the essayists' writing, and I'll be off to have an adventure interacting with the beloved dead. It's going to be freakishly awesome. As you can tell, I'm super excited about it.
But this post is more than just a place to express my excitement. I wanted to take one of the last learning journals in this prep course to explore and justify the purpose of my project. I've obviously taken time in my project proposal and other assignments in the class to do just that, but I wanted to take a step back and look at the larger picture of how important I feel it is to explore not only literature but the places where that lit. was conceived. One of the ideas that always comes up in my writing is how much of who I am I can attribute to where I come from, both physically and, eh, genetically {if that makes sense}. I'm from Southern Utah, and I find that the desert of Southern Utah has helped to define who I am. We have more of a connection to the place(s) we grew up than we tend to give credit for, and I think at some point we have to come to terms with our place of origin. When I say come to terms, it has an almost negative connotation; nevertheless, coming to terms, for me, means that we should think about it enough that we realize how much of an impact it has had on our lives. But maybe I just think about it too much.
No, I don't. I don't think you can think about it too much. Well, let me amend that as well. Of course you can think too much about something, and I think that thinking about place is an important thing to think about more than once or twice or five times. So that is why a project like mine is so attractive to me, because it gives me a chance to ponder about place outside of my own experience. It's my hypothesis that being more familiar with place will help me to better understand and experience the authors I'm studying. That's the hypothesis, and the hope that I have.
Before I end, I wanted to look at a couple example of authors' using place as a vital part of their writing. First, let's start with a classical essayist: Virginia Woolf. I often use her as an example, because she not only lived in London but wrote a LOT about London. She would take walks through London and tell the reader, in her very frank yet approachable way, what she saw on her walk. She was keenly aware of her relationship with London, and it's very evident in her writing that she identified with the city. Take London away from her writing, and you would be not only cutting out a sizable chunk of text, but alos cutting out a sizable piece of Woolf's character and relatability. Now another example: Terry Tempest Williams. She's a contemporary writer, and one that's closer to home. Terry Tempest Williams writes a lot about different landscapes in Utah, and I can tell by reading her essays that place is a huge part about her identity as a writer, and as a person in general. For example, in her book Refuge, she writes about her mother's death from cancer in context of the 1983 flooding in Salt Lake City, and the effect it had on the landscape, especially the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. She writes a lot about the birds in the refuge, and makes amazing connections between her family life and the refuge (and its inhabitants) and the landscape. It's a fantastic book.
I'm excited to start my project in London! Can't wait.
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