Travelogue Feature: The American Writer's Museum

As a writer, in the pursuit of crafting something beautiful with your words, it’s easy to slip into such self-absorption - fighting through fog or fatigue. It’s “on me” to perform. And in a sense, it is. For me, working full time adds the challenge of creating time, space, and energy to continue honing my craft, to answer the urge I have to write, to bring something to life. When I come home tired from a full day, often I find I have “nothing” to write about…when the truth is, I’m mentally spent from a day that’s already tapped me of energy. Creating a space in which I can create takes the self-discipline to exercise my way to a fresh my mind, to eat right, to get up early, to go to bed early…to sleep…

But, conversely, stepping outside my own mind to learn from writers of times past is, I’m finding, quite worthwhile.

The museums’s children’s library. Here’s to never outgrowing it.

And so it was that I found myself one quiet morning at the American Writer’s Museum in downtown Chicago, catty corner to Millenium Park and the Bean, as their doors opened at 10:00. And for the next few hours, my heart and mind were captivated.

Museum staff informed me of the many interactive exhibits throughout, and right away I approached a screen with a map of the United States. Its search feature encouraged users to search their favorite author by state. I tapped through several, and found where some of the most renowned writers in our history originated. Some I knew (Truman Capote from NOLA; MLK Jr. from Georgia; F. Scott Fitzgerald from St. Paul, Minnesota - not Montgomery, Alabama, though, as I’d thought, where he was stationed when he met a lovely Miss Zelda Sayre). Fascinated, I tapped through several more states, from Frederick Douglas in Maryland to John Steinbeck in California, sailing through origin story after marvelous origin story.

Turning the corner, I found myself facing floor-to-ceiling windows, covered with screens to quell the harshness of sunlight, so that a warm glow bathed the room. It was the children’s library.

And so I took a step (or twelve) back in time. A kind and sweet little nook, it was, I decided immediately, perfect. Perfect. Seating throughout the room beckoned visitors to sit and stay awhile, curled up with their favorite story from times past. I watched characters from my favorite books leap across the walls, from bedtime stories my mom used to read to my sister and me when we were little - Good Night Moon and Cat in the Hat were two long-time favorites, both featured by way of floor-to-ceiling tapestries - and my eyes pricked with nostalgic tears.

Wow. Tender and sweet.

Leaving hesitantly, I followed the sound of pensive music, the type you’d hear in an emotional movie trailer: sans lyrics, steady, and calming. I looked left outside the children’s library; it came from a video feature projected on the wall, walking the viewer through America’s history through the eyes of its most renowned writers.

Words fall short. This too was an emotional moment. I sat and watched a beautifully woven narrative of events in our nation’s history, as told by the brilliant voices that birthed the story of America. Her birth, her growth, her growing pains, her achievements, her strength. I sat there a few rounds through, and relished the swell of patriotic pride I felt. Upton Sinclair unveiling the realities of industrialized work conditions in The Jungle. Truman Capote catapulted to success via his brilliant revival of a real-life murder story in Holcomb, Kansas. Abraham Lincoln putting pen to paper and crafting the Emancipation Proclamation. Call me Ishmael scribbled before me in hasty script font, before a backlay of crashing waves…surely the same ones where the mighty Moby Dick lurked below.

What a special way to celebrate and commemorate our veterans on Veterans Day weekend. It was marvelous, and a gift, to be taken back in time, with the likes of Edna Ferber, Edith Wharton, Allen Ginsberg, Henry David Thoreau, as my tour guides.

The subsequent hallway featured a pair of walls flanking its visitors with various interactive tidbits: to the left, color-coded by era on the timeline of our country’s lifespan; the right, color-coded boxes dotting the wall, inviting you to pull them open, revealing a fact or quote from a noteworthy writer of a given decade, and if you’re lucky, a surprise sensory feature. Harper Lee’s block, for instance, featuring her name and book To Kill a Mockingbird, sounded the shrill chirping of the book’s namesake bird upon opening. George Plimpton’s block featuring his coverage in Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback began the chatter of a sports commentator. One famed food writer’s block even released the smell of an onion.

Next came the typewriters. Various models were laid out, and labeled with the writers that used each one, given the decade they occupied.

I know what I want for Christmas.

Yet another exhibit detailed the various habits, disciplines, perches, and rituals that pieced together the processes of famed authors. Maya Angelou would check into a hotel room, pour a glass of sherry, and begin her writing as such. Truman Capote reportedly began writing with a pencil; when he did transition to his typewriter, he kept it in his lap, a cigarette in his hand.

Many times, I found myself forgetting where I was. Here, I relished Chicago’s history of producing great writers, and the love they returned back to it by putting words to the story of the city, as Edna Ferber did:

"Just to be out on the Chicago streets, with their smoke-blackened apartment houses and their bedlam of Loop traffic; their misty green lakeside parks and windswept skyscrapers— strange mixture of provincial town and cosmopolitan city, with the stink of the stockyards from the west side, and the fresh tang of Lake Michigan from the east side—this was to know adventure."