Thoughts about literary history and literary landmarks. I have been spending some time in Asheville, NC, for life-planning more than vacation. The city has a history for attracting writers. Thomas Wolfe wrote famously and fulsomely about growing up in rural NC. I haven’t really read him. I saw the biopic of him a few years back. Apparently Maxwell Perkins ensured he wasn’t as verbose as he wanted to be.
The Black Mountain poets who frequented Black Mountain College from the mid-30s to mid-50s were considered very influential on American art, but the college and their influence seemed to have flamed out. O’Henry spent time in Asheville but famously said it wasn’t good for his writing because the air was too clean and the scenery too pretty. Haha. F. Scott Fitzgerald spent two summers at a famous Asheville hotel, the Grove Park Inn (still exists), while his doomed wife Zelda was getting medical treatment nearby. But he only seemed to write his memoir of alcoholism and derangement, The Crack-Up, while there. It may have been a case of being too honest, if that is possible. In it, he made the famous statement that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
Charles Frazier, who wrote the well-received Civil War novel Cold Mountain, hails from Asheville and set much of that book in this area. I saw the movie but haven’t read the book. It seems to be a variation on The Odyssey, about a warrior trying to get back to his wife in an idealized home country.
And of course, Asheville has the Biltmore Estate, one of the most famous mansions in the US. It has been a dramatic backdrop for several Hollywood movies. I think it is okay for very wealthy people like the Vanderbilts to build extravagant and beautiful things. People need grand things to strive towards, even if they are beyond most of our reaches.
I am staying in a motel called The Beaucatcher, and true to the name, I haven’t caught any belles here. Haha. Sorry, it’s a bad joke. I won’t even try with my joke about the local river that is called French Broad.
I had a nice evening eating and reading on the outdoor balcony of my motel room on the second floor. I left the screen door open and a guy has come out from one of the neighboring rooms, talking crude business language on the phone like someone out of a David Mamet play. He seems to have calmed down and is just talking with a family member now.