Edwin Romanzo Elmer's "Mourning Picture" (1890), the inspiration for the new novel "Every Past Thing."
("Every Past Thing")
Shelf Life
The artist Edwin Romanzo Elmer died unacclaimed, but one of his paintings, born of tragedy, has been a literary inspiration.
In 1890, at the age of 9, his daughter, Effie, died. Elmer and his wife, Mary Jane, were so heartbroken that they moved out of the stately home he had built near Shelburne Falls. Later that year Elmer painted "Mourning Picture," in which he and Mary Jane sit in front of the house and Effie stands in the foreground. It has become Elmer's best-known work, inspiring a poem by Adrienne Rich and, now, the novel "Every Past Thing," by Pamela Thompson. Ten years ago, the painting, which is still on display at the Smith College Museum of Art, captivated Thompson, and she began researching Elmer's life.
In 1899, the Elmers spent a year in New York while he attended art school. Little is known of what happened to them that year. "Every Past Thing," Thompson's first novel, fills in the blanks - with anarchist Emma Goldman and an old secret love of Mary Jane's.
Green Mt. manse
On a round-the-world honeymoon in 1892, Rudyard Kipling and his bride bought land on a hillside in southern Vermont. They built a house Kipling designed, with a fireplace in his study. There he wrote "The Jungle Books," "Captains Courageous," and began the "Just So Stories," which explained how the elephant got his trunk, the camel his hump, and other quirks of animal anatomy.
The homestead, still containing some of Kipling's furniture, lay vacant for 50 years until it was restored by Landmark Trust USA in 1993. It is now available for vacation rentals, but the public gets a peek inside every once in a while. To carry on Kipling's legacy, the trust sponsors dramatic readings of the "Just So Stories" for local schoolchildren. On Nov. 29, adults are invited to a performance of those stories at the estate, in Dummerston. Tickets are $25. Call 802-254-6868 for reservations.
Madeleines and molecules
Jonah Lehrer, 26, of Concord, N.H., marries his fascination with science and art to powerful effect in his first book, "Proust Was a Neuroscientist." He explains the contributions eight outstanding figures in literature, art, music, and cooking made to science, maintaining that the discoveries of Marcel Proust (the inaccuracy of memory), Auguste Escoffier (the fifth taste, now called umami), and others predated parallel findings by scientists.
Coming out
"Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by Philip McFarland (Grove)
"Best Music Writing 2007," edited by Robert Christgau and Daphne Carr (Da Capo)
"Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Greatest Trips" (National Geographic)
Pick of the week
Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of "All Souls" and "Easter Rising," recommends "How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads," by Daniel Cassidy (CounterPunch): "It's a long-overdue look at how Irish (Gaelic) influenced so much of the language we all speak. While the Oxford English Dictionary has largely ignored Irish influence on the English language - aside from obvious words like hooligan - Cassidy's book offers not only Irish etymologies for words like scam, slum, snazzy, sucker, fink, moolah, baloney, and even jazz, but reveals a fascinating social history of the Irish."
Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.
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