LAND OF WOLFE AND SANDBURG

Carl Sandburg's Home, Connemara, in Flat Rock, North Carolina

I arrived in Asheville on Friday night, just in time for a reading at the new Battery Park Book Exchange, probably the hippest used book store you could ever hope to find, complete with champagne bar.  The next night on to City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina, a tiny mountain town with a big love of books. 

But when I had time, I toured Thomas Wolfe’s home in Asheville and then Carl Sandburg’s in Flat Rock, NC.  Thomas Wolfe lived in town, in a boarding house, run by his mother.  Apparently he didn’t even have a room of his own because his mother would rent every room in the house when and if she could.

Carl Sandburg’s home, on the other hand, sits on 200+ acres in the beautiful North Carolina mountains.  And the house, well, it’s as if the Sandburgs have just run to the store and will be back any minute.  Everything is just as it was when the couple lived there.  Apparently after Sandburg died, his wife packed up her clothes and a few personal belongings and left the house fully furnished, down to a box of Kleenex by a living room chair.  

The setting is so peaceful — words were meant to be born there.

Posted June 22, 2009 at 8:33 pm · 2 comments