Where do we find Hemingway? In a bullring in Spain, perhaps. At a bar in Paris. At a camp alongside Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. At a cottage alongside Walloon Lake in Michigan. At a house with deformed cats in Key West . . . .
Well, we didn’t look for Hemingway. We didn’t have the budget–Spain, France, Africa, Florida and Petoskey?–nor the pages.
But really, should we, just because we’re travel journalists, look for anyone? These are the great writers, and for most of us the words are enough. The words were crafted into the feeble-minded Lenny who wanted only to tend rabbits and a dog named White Fang and a sister named Eileen and an old man who loved the fading DiMaggio and a restless fiddler-father whose daughters found joy in little houses in the woods and on the prairie.
Philip Marlowe. Samuel Spade. Long John Silver. The Joads. Huck. A raven with a limited vocabulary.
Yet sometimes there is the urge to discover what the writer knew, to find the places that informed the prose and the poetry.
And that’s what–on the following pages–drove us to gaze at the Salinas Valley, linger in Washington Square and walk the sod of Minnesota–places that without John Steinbeck or Henry James or Laura Ingalls Wilder would be barley fields and a city park and another homestead with a creek.
Next time, if our friends at the baiduhai Magazine give us permission, maybe we’ll go looking for Ernest Hemingway or Mark Twain, or Toni Morrison or Stephen King. It’ll be Bob Cross and Toni Stroud, my two fellow travel writers, fighting it out.
Me? I’ve got dibs on Michener.
10 MORE GREAT LITERARY TRIPS
ZORA NEALE HURSTON AND LANGSTON HUGHES’ HARLEM
More Top Picks Best Embroidery Machines For Hats
Though they often wrote of other places, 1920s Harlem nurtured their gift, and the vibrancy lives on.
WILLIAM FAULKNER’S MISSISSIPPI
He graced Virginia and elevated Hollywood, but his time and place were long, hot summers and Oxford.
ANNE RICE’S NEW ORLEANS
Poke around in search of the French Quarter’s blood-lust creepiness–and save room for a muffuletta.
DASHIELL HAMMETT’S SAN FRANCISCO
Sam Spade lived and loved and ate here in restaurants that still serve steaks rare and Scotch well done.
LOUISE ERDRICH’S NORTH DAKOTA
Her Native American roots run deep here, from the Turtle Mountain reservation to Fargo.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S KEY WEST
Until Cuba reopens, nowhere else so freely celebrates an author-legend’s revolutionary spirit.
WILLA CATHER’S NEBRASKA
It isn’t easy to find Red Cloud, but those who love “My Antonia” will know they’ve been here before.
LARRY MCMURTRY’S TEXAS
Archer City’s picture show, Houston’s terms of endearment, a semi-imaginary place called Lonesome Dove.
HERMAN MELVILLE’S NEW BEDFORD
The Seamen’s Bethel beckons, as it did for Massachusetts whaling men who pursued Moby Dick.
ALICE WALKER’S EATONTON
The red Georgia clay that spawned Br’er Rabbit gained richness in “The Color Purple.”