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Researching for A Novel
A challenge for me is squaring the Montauk of my imagination with the “real” place on Long Island. In my novel, for instance, I’ve situated two of my characters in a house on Fort Pond Bay in an area of the coast that doesn’t quite exist. Meanwhile, the two children in my novel, Max and…
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Visiting the High Line
The High Line, which began as a quirky idea for an urban park, has morphed into one of New York City’s tourist attractions, a 1.5 mile long greenway with over 500 species of plants and trees. It’s touted as a stunning example of a creative repurposing of unwanted infrastructure– in this case, elevated train tracks…
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Thomas Hardy’s Literary Dorset
Thomas Hardy’s atmospheric Tess of the D’Obervilles, set in Dorchester near Dorset, made a big impression on me when I read it at a young age, for its depiction of the hard life of agricultural laborers and the restricted possibilities for women. Hardy’s home is now a museum. The modest house and grounds stand in stark contrast…
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A Sense of Place: Virginia Woolf’s “Hauntings”
Virginia Woolf regularly went on what she called “street hauntings,” where she wandered around London. She wanted to feel absorbed in her surroundings, and in particular to watch people’s interactions with the city. She described this as leading to a “dissolution of the self,” a sense that the boundaries between herself and her environment were…
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“Eating the Sea”
There’s no way to write about Montauk without writing about fish and shellfish. Any beach walk brings treasures like clam, scallop, mussel and oyster shells, the strong tang of dried seaweed, the sight of boats in the distance and fisherman along the shore. Fishing and shellfishing are the heart of the place. The Eastern End…
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Alexis Rockman’s Art: An Environmental Call to Action
Alexis Rockman’s art is fascinating. I love how his paintings look—vivid, colorful, eye-popping. They are not only gorgeous visually, but also serve as a call to action. For instance, his recent “The Great Lakes Cycle,” have been described as “natural-history psychedelia” https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/alexis_rockman.html. This recent series explores the geographical, physical, and ecological changes of the Great Lakes…
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Heroes of the Frontier, a novel by Dave Eggers
Heroes of the Frontier, by Dave Eggers, is deeply philosophical, deeply felt, and deeply funny. The novel centers on a woman who escapes to Alaska with her two children and makes her way across the state in a beat-up rented recreational vehicle they call the Chateau. If you’ve ever gone camping, you’ll adore all the…
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Orient, a novel by Christopher Bollen
Orient, a novel by Christopher Bollen, is truly atmospheric, a literary work in the guise of a thriller, that kept me completely riveted https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062329950/orient/. The novel is set on Long Island, the rural tip of the North Fork in the hamlet of Orient. It’s an area I know, though nothing as well as I’d like,…
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Stowe Landscape Garden, Buckinghamshire, England
I’ve always been in love with gardens. I grew up in what were called garden apartments, in a complex called Glen Oaks, in the area of Queens known as Kew Gardens. But although there were oaks, there were no glens and no gardens to be seen. I loved trees, plants, and flowers from an early…
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The Curious Hoodoos of Montauk’s Shadmoor Cliffs
In my current novel set in Montauk, I’ve taken my characters outdoors on some of my favorite walks and hikes in the area. One of these is a popular hike along the ocean cliffs of Shadmoor. The Shadmoor property, nearly 100 acres of Montauk moorland, is unique both for its cliffs, which form something called hoodoos,…
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