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Since the 1945 publication of John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row, literary travelers have been drawn to the seaside town of Monterey, California. A must-see is the diminutive, weather-beaten dwelling at 800 Cannery Row, once the home and professional domain of Ed Ricketts–a marine biologist, Steinbeck’s close friend, and the inspiration for the character Doc in Cannery Row. The Cannery Row Foundation gives tours of ”Doc’s lab” on select days throughout the year, including this Saturday, February 27th, to commemorate Steinbeck’s birthday.
Steinbeck was a frequent visitor to the lab in the 1930s, along with other writers and artists who showed up for the legendary parties that sometimes went on for days. He would often walk the short distance from his cottage in nearby Pacific Grove to Cannery Row, where he indulged in “whiskey and conversation” with Ricketts. “Life on Cannery Row,” Steinbeck reminisced years later, “was curious and dear and outrageous.”
Tours are given hourly from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. The cost is $15 per person. For more information, visit www.canneryrow.org.
In 1898, the 38-year-old playwright Anton Chekhov was forced to leave his home in Moscow for the warmer climes of of the seaside Ukranian resort of Yalta due to his worsening tuberculosis. Constructed to his own unusual design with stunning views of the Black Sea, the house is where Chekhov spent the last five years of his life and penned a series of his late masterpieces, including The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
It was here that he was visited by writer Maxim Gorky and entertained by Rachmaninov on the piano. And it was on the telephone in his study that he called Tolstoy and received telegrams about the Moscow premiere of his play Uncle Vanya. The house was also home to Chekhov’s mother, his actress-wife Olga Knipper, and his sister Masha, who preserved its interior just as it was when her brother left it for the last time and opened it as a museum after the Revolution.
But now, in a year when the 150th anniversary of Chekhov’s birth is being celebrated the world over, the museum lies in a state of chronic neglect. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the house’s funding, as it suddenly found itself marooned in a Ukraine which does not regard the financial support of a museum devoted to a Russian writer as a priority. The funds that the museum now receives from the local Crimean authority are not enough to stop the physical fabric of the house from steadily deteriorating, says Chekhov biographer, Rosamund Bartlett. With mold in Chekhov’s study, ominous cracks appearing in the walls, and the ever-present threat of damp, the house is in urgent need of restoration. Bartlett has led the charge in establishing a fund to preserve the playwright’s Yalta house: www.yaltachekhov.org/ and from May 26 -31, she leads a Chekhov Anniversary Tour to Yalta, details of which can be found at www.exeterinternational.co.uk/chekhov.html.
A leather and brass dog collar that belonged to Charles Dickens has recently fetched $11,590 at a New York City auction. Like many Victorians, the writer was extremely fond of dogs. He had mastiffs named “Turk” and “Linda”, a pomerarian “Mrs Bouncer,” and a terrier “Snittle Timbery” just to name a few. Many of his books had wonderful dog characters as well, including “Spike” in Oliver Twist and “Diogenes” in Dombey and Son.
The last year of novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life is played out in the film The Last Station, which arrived in UK theaters today. The drama, which opened in the U.S. last month, stars Christopher Plummer as the literary icon and Helen Mirren as his wife and muse, Sofya Andreyevna—both of whom have garnered Oscar nominations for their performances.
Based on a novel by Jay Parini, The Last Station unfolds Tolstoy’s tumultuous final months in 1910 as his disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), attempts to persuade the writer to ignore Sofya’s wishes and sign a new will leaving the rights to his literary works to the state for the benefit of the Russian people. Chertkov installs a spy in Tolstoy’s household, a young man who falls in love with one of the writer’s daughters.
The Last Station was filmed in Germany, but the ancestral estate, Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy spent his final years is located in the Russian countryside 112 miles south of Moscow. “I could hardly imagine Russia, or my relationship with her, without my Yasnaya Polyana,” he once wrote. Today it’s preserved as the Tolstoy Estate Museum, and among the rooms on view are the writer’s 222,000-volume library and the study (right) where he penned War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
[photo ©The State Memorial and Natural Preserve/Museum-Estate of Leo Tolstoy]
Here at NovelDestinations.com we tend to focus on literary landmarks associated with classic writers. It’s not that we don’t read and love contemporary literature, but those authors probably don’t want us showing up at their houses asking to have a look around. Although last month we talked about Cara Black’s modern-day mystery series set in Paris, and today we have a walking tour to tell you about that’s associated with a recently published bestseller.
One of my favorite reads of 2009 was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. The first book in the Millennium trilogy (followed by The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest) is a thriller starring quirky computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Be forewarned: it’s an addictive 600-page read.
For those who would like to see some of the key locales featured in the story and learn about
historical and contemporary Stockholm, the City Museum is offering “Millennium Tours.” Stops include the building where Blomkvist lives in an apartment on Sodermalm (one of 14 islands that make up the city) with a vista of City Hall and “a view of the rooftops towards Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s oldest section” [at right]. Tours last about two hours and are given in English on Sundays at 11 a.m. through the end of February and on Saturdays at 11 a.m. from March until May. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
The Klencke Atlas, which takes six people to lift and has been recorded as the largest book in the world, is soon to go on display at the British Library, where it will be showcased as part of its big summer exhibition about maps. The atlas, which is 350 years old and measures 5 feet tall by 6 feet wide, was presented to Charles II by Dutch merchants. It has never been publicly displayed with its pages open and it will go on show with about 100 other maps from the British Library’s collection, including one of the smallest maps in the world, a fingernail-sized German coin from 1773 showing a bird’s eye view of Nuremberg.
Magnificent maps: Power, Propaganda and Art is at the British Library from 30 April to 19 September.
Among the surprise contenders in this year’s list of Academy Award nominees is the wonderfully inventive, hand-drawn animated film based on the real-life Book of Kells. The film was produced by independent filmmakers in Ireland and despite receiving rave reviews on this side of the pond, it has yet to be widely released in the U.S. The Secret of Kells follows the story of a twelve-year-old orphan living in the Abbey of Kells who fends off serpents and bloodthirsty Vikings in his quest to help the newly arrived master Illuminator, Brother Aidan, with an important task. The film’s official stateside release is scheduled for March, but in the meantime, you can click here to see a trailer.
The house where Rudyard Kipling was born in India is to be turned into a museum, but the author will be written out of history, failing to get a mention anywhere in the building because of “political sensitivities”. The foundation restoring the house, located in Mumbai, has shelved plans to use it to house a Kipling museum, fearing that commemorating the colonialist author of books like The White Man’s Burden will lead to a political uproar. Instead the house is slated to feature a collection of paintings by local artists.
Kipling was born in 1865 in the house, known as “The Dean’s Bungalow”, on the grounds of the JJ School of Art in the city then known as Bombay. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was the school’s first dean. Kipling went on to describe the location of the bungalow in his poem “To the City of Bombay” and his experiences there formed the template for the character he created in his novel Kim – a white boy who is indistinguishable from the Indian children around him.
Sharad Keskar, Chairman of the Kipling Society, explained, “You have a fairly ignorant officialdom in India, who don’t know much about Kipling apart from that he was an imperialist or part of the Raj. Officially he’s still persona non grata. I think that is changing, but it’s rather a slow change.”
