Some Literary Tourism Coming Up With Ernest Hemingway

I'm going to be MIA for a while, for travel not family drama.

While traveling, I like visiting author homes or homes connected with authors somehow. Like James Thurber's in Columbus, Ohio. Green Gables on Prince Edward Island. One of Gene Stratton-Porter's homes, in Rome City, Indiana. This month I'm going to Ernest Hemingway's Birthplace Home Museum in Oak Park, Illinois.

Usually I read something by the author involved with these excursions. But I've got to be honest. I am not a Hemingway fan. Reading Girl of the Limberlost on vacation back in '15...that's an experience I don't want to repeat anytime soon. So no Ernest Hemingway for me.

Loving Anne Shirley, Too

I sometimes find Margaret Atwood's nonfiction a little rambley. She doesn't seem to subscribe to the "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them" school of essay writing. Sure enough, in Nobody ever did want me, Atwood's "salute" to Anne of Green Gables on its one hundredth anniversary, she does meander. But she covers lots of good stuff.

1. She explains the attraction the book holds for the Japanese, which is probably a little more intense than the attraction it holds for Canadians, since Japanese tourists have to travel so much further to get to Prince Edward Island and the Green Gables site. And believe me, they do travel there. A Japanese family was taking pictures in front of the house the day I was there.

2. She points out the grim fate of most orphans at the time Anne of Green Gables was written. "Outside of fiction, however, orphans weren't only exploited, they were feared and despised as fruits of sin...This is why Montgomery goes to such lengths to provide Anne with two educated, respectable parents who were married to each other. But a real-life Anne would have led a Dickensian life of grinding child labour and virtual bondage as an unpaid mother's help..."

3. She talks about author Lucy Maude Montgomery's "disheartening" personal history, which I've been hearing murmurings about over the last couple of years, and how it could have influenced Anne of Green Gables. Atwood says, "Anne's plaintive cry, "You don't want me! . . . Nobody ever did want me", is a child's outraged protest against the unfairness of the universe that seems to come straight from the heart. Montgomery was an orphan sent to live with two old people, but, unlike Anne, she never did win them over. Marilla and Matthew are what Montgomery wished for, not what she got."

4. And, finally, Atwood suggests that, "There's another way of reading Anne of Green Gables, and that's to assume that the true central character is not Anne, but Marilla Cuthbert...Her growing love for Anne, and her growing ability to express that love - not Anne's duckling-to-swan act - is the real magic transformation."

As I said, Atwood has lots of fascinating things to say about Anne of Green Gables. What she doesn't do, interestingly enough, is talk about it in terms of "children's literature," as Janet Malcolm did with The Gossip Girls. But, then, Anne of Green Gables is so huge a phenomena in Canada and internationally that it probably doesn't need to be discussed in terms of anything but itself. And while Malcolm's article leaves readers wondering how much she knows about children's literature, Atwood's leaves us in no doubt that she knows her Anne.

This is another story I found as a result of catching up with my Adbooks reading.

Another Day

So here's the deal on Anne of Green Gables, in my humble opinion:

Anne Shirley is terrific. As soon as she appears on the scene--around Chapter 4, I believe--she packs a wallop. She's a really strong character. She's a chatterbox and melodramatic and fanciful. And then she grows up and becomes a conforming young woman who sacrifices her education to do the right thing. I brought Anne up with the professorial- and librarian-types at Child_Lit and the feeling there seemed to be that this kind of conforming to expectations ending was common in books of the period.

I wonder if Anne of Green Gables would find a publisher today. Not because of the conformity. Plenty of today's books are conforming, they just conform to something different. No, I wonder if it would be published today because my understanding of kidlit is that the publishing world likes a strong plot rather than strong characters. The only plot in Anne of Green Gables is that Anne grows up. I also don't think the lengthy descriptions would go over well with the publishing world. I'm not saying kids wouldn't like them. I've asked around and kids seem to still be reading Anne, so it doesn't bother them. But I think it bothers the adults who make publishing decisions.

I forgot to mention in my earlier post that there is an L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island (or UPEI, to those of us in the know)where you can find out all kinds of stuff about Lucy Maude Montgomery, Anne's creator. I also just learned today about the Kindred Spirits listserv where you can go to talk about Anne and Maude. Lo and behold! The Kindred Spirits listserv is part of the L.M.Montgomery Institute.

So now you know a lot about what I did and thought about on my vacation. Aren't you glad?

The Land of Anne

Back to my vacation, which I am sure you are all anxiously waiting to hear about.

So, we went to the Maritime Provinces, or at least some of them. Since Prince Edward Island (or P.E.I., to those of us in the know) was one of them, I decided to read Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery.

By the time I started reading the book we were in New Brunswick. We started seeing Anne of Green Gables dolls in gift shops. As soon as we got over the bridge onto P.E.I. we stopped at the first tourist area and found an entire shop full of Anne paraphernalia. Anne of Green Gables the Musical was playing in Charlottetown when we got there. Evidently, it's been playing in Charlottetown every summer since 1965. There is an Anne of Green Gables gift shop in the city as well as an Anne of Green Gables Chocolate Shop.

Then we went to Cavendish, where we visited Green Gables.

No, I did not have too much Anne.

Another day I'll talk about the book itself.

For more Anne of Green Gables images, check out my Land of Anne Pinterest board.