| The Atlantic Magazine recently published a story in their Books Briefing newsletter about why California has long-inspired so many writers. Journalist Maya Chung suggests that the diversity, culture, the love/hate of it all and the sheer grandiosity of the scenery challenges writers to capture it on the page. I’m bound for northern California to celebrate a wedding anniversary and our itinerary reads like the best kind of book-lovers’ getaway. I can’t think of a more perfect day than hiking in Big Sur, so while we’re there we’ll make a stop at the Henry Miller Memorial Library. Miller wrote in a cabin that was surrounded by towering redwoods and wildflower meadows and that cabin is now the library, filled with photographs and novels, including “Tropic of Cancer,” which was published in France in 1934 and banned in the United States. Then, we’ll head north to Monterey and Steinbeck country to Cannery Row. In Steinbeck’s day, the aroma of the day’s catch was so pervasive, the writer described the street as “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream…” Today, it’s a bit hokey but still worth dropping in and you’ll find sites that appeared in novels and movies. I also want to see the Tor House in Monterey, a home built by hand by poet Robinson Jeffers for his wife, Una. The house, which sits on a rise overlooking a tranquil cove, became the hottest literary ticket in town when writers like Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sinclair Lewis dropped in. And we’ll make it out to the Point Pinos Lighthouse, where Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of “Treasure Island” apparently hung out. The lighthouse made it into his book, “The Old Pacific Capital” and the views may’ve inspired his great classic. Once we get to San Francisco, we’ll wind along California Street to see the monument to Robert Frost and then we’re headed to North Beach to City Lights Booksellers with a drop-in at the Beat Museum, a small archive dedicated to the work of Beat poets and artists. Then, it’s out to Oakland where Jack London dreamed up his novels in Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon. Legend has it he made notes for “Call of the Wild” and “White Fang” inside the bar. Right next door is a replica of the cabin London lived in in the Klondike. And what will I read while I travel the Golden State? I’m going to indulge in some L.A noir, with Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Steph Cha.
— Kerri Miller | MPR News | 