During the intro for the “Dead Writers” podcast, Tess Chakkalakal refers to famous authors’ homes as “the Disneyland of literature.” Seconds later, her co-host Brock Clarke counters that visiting a dead writer’s house is merely “a thing to do when you’re extremely bored.”
Both are English professors at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, but with widely differing views on the value of this specific type of landmark.
Chakkalakal worked to restore the historic exterior of the Brunswick house where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in the early 1850s. Clarke wrote a 2007 novel called “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England,” in which the homes of several famous authors are set ablaze.
“It’s more interesting when people disagree than when they agree,” said Clarke, explaining their co-hosting partnership. “For me, the novels are enough; the poetry is enough. But I recognize other people have reasons for wanting to visit these places, and so part of what I’m doing with Tess is trying to figure out what those reasons are.”
“Dead Writers” began airing on Maine Public Radio on July 28 and will run each Sunday at 8 p.m. through Sept. 8, with all the episodes also available on the Maine Public website.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Brunswick. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
Each of the seven, half-hour episodes focuses on a notable American writer – some more famous than others – with the hosts making visits to their home or some historic site associated with them. Each writer is either from Maine or has some tie to the state:
• Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” during the two years she lived in Brunswick in the early 1850s. The home she lived in is now owned by Bowdoin College and used as offices.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the most popular poets of the 19th century, was born in Portland in 1807 and his family home is open to the public for tours, run by the Maine Historical Society.
• Edwin Arlington Robinson was a poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes in the 1920s and grew up in Gardiner, where his childhood home is privately owned but has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
• Edna St. Vincent Millay also won a Pulitzer for poetry in the 1920s. Her childhood home in Rockland is currently host to a writer-in-residence program.
• James Weldon Johnson, a Black activist, diplomat, novelist and poet, was killed in a car crash while vacationing in Maine in 1938. He wrote the lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” referred to as the Black National Anthem.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, an 1825 Bowdoin graduate and author of such classic novels as “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of the Seven Gables,” spent much of his childhood in a family home in Raymond – where the Hawthorne Community Association hosts speakers and art shows now, among other things.
• Sarah Orne Jewett, born in South Berwick, was a popular novelist and short-story writer in the late 1800s, best-known for works set on the Maine coast. Her home in South Berwick is run as a house museum by Historic New England.
A Charles Osgood oil-on-canvas portrait of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1840. Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum
WRITER’S PERSONAL SETTINGS
The hosts recorded many of their visits in the early spring of this year. While they interview scholars who know the writers’ work, they say they’ve tried to make sure the podcast is not especially heavy on academics and experts. At a bar and restaurant called Erik’s Church in Windham, not far from the Hawthorne house, they recorded a conversation with a server about “The Scarlet Letter.”
In Wiscasset, they visited the train tracks where train hit Johnson’s car – his wife was driving and survived – and a memorial bench dedicated to him near the courthouse in the center of town. At the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, they talked to a young woman who works there and takes pride in getting the house ready for visitors every year but is not a particular fan of Longfellow’s work.
“Her commitment was all about the house and not about the literature,” said Chakkalakal of the Wadsworth-Longfellow House worker, Vivian Cunningham.
In the episode focusing on Stowe and the Brunswick house, the hosts talk about how Stowe harbored fugitive slave John Andrew Jackson there.
Instead of staging all their visits and interviews, they sometimes showed up unannounced at places to try to capture the spontaneity of the moment. That’s what happened when they knocked on the door of Robinson’s childhood house in Gardiner – a private home – and found the occupant in the middle of her workday and unable to talk with them.
Still, they peeked in windows and walked around on the street and opined that it seemed like a nice place to grow up, even though Robinson famously want to get away from there. Clark said they didn’t think of calling the owner ahead of time partly because “we’re total amateurs” at making a podcast, and partly because they wanted to see what happened if things weren’t completely scripted.
Portrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Carl Van Vechten, 1933 Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
“If we had actually gone into the house it might have been a stultifying ‘This Old House’ moment, which is not what we’re interested in at all,” said Clarke, 55. “So I kind of liked it better that we were just bumblers who didn’t think to call ahead and interrupted this woman’s Zoom call.”
At the Hawthorne house, they did sit down and talk to the president of the Hawthorne Community Association, Tom Ewig. But the conversation was more about the preserved house as a community gathering space, and included Ewig singing tunes from the Broadway musical “The Pajama Game.”
“I was very informal, sort of an armchair conversation,” aid Ewig. “I thought they did a tremendous job.”
PASSION FOR PRESERVATION
Chakkalakal said she remembers a student telling her years ago that podcasts were the future. At the time, she didn’t really listen to any. But over the years, she began seeking out podcasts about literature and literary figures and found them mostly boring. She decided, if she ever did one, she’d try hard to not make it boring.
“They were too long and they usually have experts blathering on about what books they think everyone should read,” said Chakkalakal, associate professor of Africana Studies and English. “I wanted to do something that sort of shunned the whole expert thing.”
Chakkalakal said she thought she and Clarke should do a podcast together on writers’ homes after reading his novel, in which a man accidentally burns down the home of Emily Dickinson, then gets fan mail asking him to burn down the homes of Hawthorne and Mark Twain.
Chakkalakal, 52, had first become interested in Stowe when she wrote her PhD dissertation on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” She also teaches a course at Bowdoin called “Reading ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in the 21st Century,” talking about how Stowe influenced and helped spawn the genre of African American literature.
When she first began teaching at Bowdoin around 2010, she thought the Stowe house needed to be restored to the way it looked, on the outside, when Stowe lived there. She also wanted it to be recognized as an important historic site. She talked with college administrators, townspeople and others to help get those things accomplished.
Work was done about eight years ago, including giving it an outside facelift so that colors and features looked true to the 1850s. The interior is used mostly for Bowdoin offices but also houses a public exhibit space known as “Harriet’s Writing Room.”
The “writing room” at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house in Brunswick is a public space, while much of the house is used as college office space. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
A Bowdoin student working with Chakkalakal, Katie Randall, did extensive research which led to the house being designated as a site on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2016.
“Dead Writers” came to life after Chakkalakal was on the Maine Public radio show “Maine Calling” about famous authors of the past. Chakkalakal mentioned to the show’s producer that she had been thinking about doing a podcast and was told to talk with Susan Tran, chief programming officer for Maine Public.
Tran said she liked the approach Chakkalakal wanted to take and encouraged her to make a pilot episode. Tran liked the pilot and told Chakkalakal that, if she and Clarke could fund and produce the series, Maine Public could find a home for it on radio and online.
“I loved their approach to stories about literature and history, connecting the past and the present. I felt it was something our audience would appreciate and get excited about,” said Tran.
Chakkalakal said she and Clarke have raised about $90,000 through donations – including from Bowdoin alumni – to cover costs of making the series. If this first season attracts attention and some corporate sponsors, the pair may make a second season of episodes, they said.
One of the first things they did was hire veteran freelance audio producer Lisa Bartfai of Brunswick to take their ideas and interviews and craft them into a podcast. Both hosts admit to knowing little about podcasting or audio technology, and they depended heavily on Bartfai.
“Without her, I don’t think either of us would have gotten our feet off the ground,” said Chakkalakal.
But Bartfai credits the hosts for having the idea and approach, which became the foundation of the series.
“I love that they are passionate and very serious (about literature) but not so precious about it,” said Bartfai. “They want to make it approachable and fun.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-10 21:00:00
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