ACRL national conference Sue Waterman Literary Authors and bookstores to explore during the ACRL National Conference

Chapter one: Baltimore writers life in Virginia and New York, but it was in The city of Baltimore has long been associ­ Baltimore that his literary efforts fi rst began ated with two literary lives: to be noticed. Here he won a literary contest and H. L. Mencken. Poe first rose to promi­ in 1835 for his story “A manuscript found in nence in Baltimore but went a bottle,” and this award on to live in Richmond, brought him to the attention New York, and Philadel­ of a patron, John Kennedy phia before returning to Pendleton, who helped Baltimore, where he died. him place other stories in Mencken lived his whole various newspapers and life in the city, and most of magazines. that in the same rowhouse. Poe lived in a tiny house His life was inextricably on North Amity Street for bound with his city, and he much of the time he spent expressed his preference in Baltimore, and this house for his hometown over the has been carefully pre­ bright lights of New York, served as the Poe House where most writers of his and Museum. It was here generation lived. that he fell in love with There are, however, his young cousin, Virginia Hartshorn, W.S., photographer. “Edgar many other names in lit­ Allen Poe.” 1848. Prints and Photo­ Clemm, who, at the age erature, some famous, some graphs Division, Library of Congress. of 13, became his wife. In less so, that can be linked the uppermost room of the to Baltimore. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his house, Poe wrote many of the stories and wife, Zelda, lived in Baltimore for several poems for which he is now famous. years, while Zelda was being treated at the It was also in Baltimore that Poe died, a renowned psychiatric facilities at Sheppard­ mysterious death that has never been fully Pratt Hospital. Frederick Douglass escaped explained. Many theories exist for why Poe from Baltimore by train in 1838, and went on was found, nearly unconscious and wearing to write the most well­known slave narrative a stranger’s clothes, on a Baltimore street in of the 19th century. October 1849. One of the most recent accounts of his Poe death is the bestselling novel by Matthew The city clings stubbornly to Edgar Allan Poe Pearl, The Poe Shadow. We may never as one of its own, and not only because Poe’s final resting place is the Westminster Hall and Sue Waterman is research librarian at Johns Hopkins Burying Ground in downtown Baltimore. Poe University, e-mail: [email protected] was born in Boston and lived much of his © 2006 Sue Waterman

C&RL News December 2006 676 know what caused Poe’s death, but you Mencken always wrote what he believed, can visit both the house where he wrote no matter whose feathers he might ruffl e. And and his grave, where each January 19 on his he often ruffled feathers. But his prolifi c writ­ birthday, a mystery fan, known as the Poe ings, as newspaperman, book reviewer, and Toaster, visits and leaves a half­empty bottle political commentator attest to a fi ercely inde­ of cognac and three red roses in tribute to pendent and passionate spirit. Baltimore clings this author of the macabre. fast to this native son; he was not afraid to speak his mind. Much of what he wrote reads H. L. Mencken like Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. A much less mysterious, but no less color­ • Democracy is the theory that holds that ful, Baltimore literary figure is Henry Louis the common people know what they want, Mencken, known to all as H. L. Mencken, and deserve to get it good and hard. the Sage of Baltimore. In spite of national success and acclaim, Mencken never left his Literary links hometown. Even though he kept an offi ce in Manhattan, he returned every Friday to his Westminster Hall and Burying home, a humble rowhouse that still stands at Ground, www.westminsterhall.org/ 1524 Hollins Street. In typical Mencken prose, Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, www.ci.baltimore.md.us/government he explained this in 1926: /historic/poehouse.html The Poe Shadow, www.matthewpearl. The old charm (of Baltimore) still com/poe/poe.html survives . . . I am never more conscious The Poe Toaster, labyrinth13.com of the fact than when I return from New /Poe_Toaster.htm York. Behind me lies the greatest city of The H.L. Mencken Room, www.epfl . the modern world, with more money net/exhibits/mencken/ in it than all Europe and more clowns Free Library, www.pratt. and harlots than all Asia, and yet it has lib.md.us/ no more charm than a circus lot or a Harbor Place, www.. second­rate hotel. It can’t show a single com/html/ The , www. genuinely distinguished street. It hasn’t jhu.edu a single park that is more lovely than Daedalus Books, www.daedalusbooks. a cemetery lot. It is without manner as com/ it is without manners. Escaping from it Senator Movie Theater, www.senator. to so ancient and solid a town of Bal­ com/ timore is like coming out of a football Children’s Bookstore, www.thecbstore. crowd into quiet communion with a com/ fair one who is also amiable, and has Atomic Books, www.atomicbooks. the gift of consolation for hard­beset com/ and despairing men.1 Red Emma’s,www.redemmas.org/ Mystery Loves Company, www. mysterylovescompany.com/ Author of an important study of the Eng­ Kelmscott Bookshop, www. lish language (The American language) and kelmscottbookshop.com/home.php founder and editor of an infl uential review Royal Books, www.royalbooksonline. (American Mercury), Mencken was also a com/home.php journalist for and one of Tiber Books,www.tiberbooks.com/ the 20th century’s leading literary and social Drusilla’s Books, www.drusillasbooks. critics. Sometimes called the “American Ni­ com/ etzsche,” he was colorful, controversial, and The Book Thing, www.bookthing. absolutely candid. org

December 2006 677 C&RL News campus, it includes Mencken publications, original letters, and photographs inscribed by Mencken.

Other literary notables Many writers have lived or worked in Baltimore at some point in their careers. Among these, perhaps the most notable include: • F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived in the Bolton Hill and Rodgers Forge neighbor­ hoods and wrote Tender is the Night and The Crack­Up while in Baltimore. H. L. Mencken at his typewriter. Credit: H. L. Mencken • Dashiell Hammett, who grew up Collection, Enoch Pratt Free Library. Details at www.epfl . net/exhibits/mencken/guidelines.html. in the city and worked for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency in the Conti­ • No one in this world, so far as I know nental Trust Building at the corner of East . . . has ever lost money by underestimating Baltimore and South Calvert Streets. Some the intelligence of the great masses of the believe the large black birds on that building plain people. were the inspiration for the • A newspaper is a Maltese Falcon. device for making the ig­ • John Dos Passos, died norant more ignorant and in Baltimore in 1970. He the crazy crazier. lived here during the latter • Suicide is a belated years of his life and worked acquiescence in the opin­ in the library of the Johns ion of one’s wife’s rela­ Hopkins University, the tives. , • The curse of man, and the Enoch Pratt Free and the cause of nearly all Library. his woes, is his stupendous • Gertrude Stein, even capacity for believing the though she lived much of incredible.2 her life in Paris, declared You can find a host that Baltimore was “where of Mencken­isms on the we were born longer and Web. And you can visit that was because after all the Mencken Room while H. L. Mencken’s House. Credit: Andrews, everybody has to come 3 in Baltimore at the Enoch Ronald L., photographer. National Register from somewhere.” Stein Pratt Free Library. Here you of Historic Places. lived as a child in Balti­ can view his library and more and studied at the the typewriter he used. While the Mencken Johns Hopkins Medical School before mov­ Room is normally only open on Mencken Day ing abroad. in September, it will be open to ACRL con­ Be sure to check out some local living ference­goers during a tour of libraries and writers before your visit. Choose from cur­ their special collections. Another notable local rent favorite writers who live or work in collection is the Robert A. Wilson Collection Baltimore: of H. L. Mencken, a gift to the Johns Hopkins • Alice McDermott, winner of the National University from trustee Richard Frary. Housed Book Award for Charming Billy and author at the Eisenhower Library on the Homewood of the current bestseller After This.

C&RL News December 2006 678 • John Barth, National Book Award winner mail order catalog of new remaindered books who writes from ’s Eastern Shore. and CDs. Daedalus has two locations in the The Sot Weed Factor and The Tidewater Tales Baltimore area, both huge bookstores with a are among his many novels. wonderful selection of books, music, cards, • Anne Tyler, National Book Award fi nalist; and magazines at bargain prices. Closest to her latest bestseller is Digging to America. downtown is Daedalus Books on York Road, • Taylor Branch, National Book Award opposite the historic Senator movie theater. finalist and author of the trilogy America in The Senator has premiered such hits as Hair­ the King Years. spray, Sleepless in Seattle, and 12 Monkeys. A • Stephen Dixon, another National Book popular night out in Baltimore includes taking Award finalist and author of experimental in a movie at the restored art­deco Senator novels and short stories, including Frog, 30 Theater, a visit to Daedalus Books across Pieces of a Novel, and Interstate. the street, and dinner at one of the small • Russell Baker, National Book Award restaurants nearby. finalist for his autobiography set in Baltimore, The small bookstore is not dead in Balti­ Growing Up. more. The Children’s Bookstore in Roland • Laura Lippmann, author of mysteries Park, just off Roland Avenue, has been a Bal­ set in Baltimore featuring Detective Tess timore tradition for a generation. It boasts an Monaghan. Try Every Secret Thing or In a impressive collection of (what else?) children’s Strange City. books for all ages in a charming surrounding. • Tom Clancy, best­selling author of the Accessible by taxi, its Roland Park neighbor­ Jack Ryan series of political thrillers, Patriot hood is worth a visit, too. Games and The Hunt for Red October among More for grown­ups, and also in a very them. interesting neighborhood, is Atomic Books • Sujata Massey, another local writer of on “the Avenue” (36th Street) in Hampden. mysteries, but set in Japan. Check out her Full of zines, graphic novels, independently female detective Rei Shimura. published books, collectibles, Archie McPhee toys, and just plain books, this is one inter­ Chapter two: Bookstores esting bookstore. And you are sure to enjoy While it may take some exploring, Baltimore walking the Avenue, as Hampden’s main abounds in bookstores, large and small. From street is known, as it is home to many in­ the giant Barnes and Noble at the Power teresting shops and restaurants of all kinds. Plant adjacent to Harbor Place, to the small This is Baltimore’s most funky and interesting radical bookstore and café, Red Emma’s in neighborhood. Mount Vernon, there are books to be found In the downtown neighborhood of Mount and savored and purchased all over the city. Vernon is the relatively new bookstore/café Everyone is familiar with Barnes & Noble’s known as Red Emma’s, named after the early huge inventory of books and its café, but 20th­century anarchist Emma Goldman. While downtown Baltimore’s location has something Red Emma’s may be new, Baltimore has a that is perhaps unique—a waterfront setting. tradition of radical bookstores, most of which Located at the , a former power have gone out of business but who live on in plant (really), you will fi nd yourself at home, memory. Red Emma’s has a very interesting with a view. And newly opened in the Charles selection of books on anarchy, feminism, phi­ Village area near Johns Hopkins University is losophy, politics, and a good fi ction section. the newest Barnes and Noble in the area, with Revisit the ’60s here. a lovely café and a good selection of serious Another specialty bookstore, this one in fiction and nonfi ction. the rapidly gentrifying and historic neighbor­ Another familiar name, although one hood of Fells Point, is Mystery Loves Com- without a face, is Daedalus Books, a popular pany, with a stock devoted to, well, mystery

December 2006 679 C&RL News books. Baltimore writer Laura Lippmann’s Holly, David Chauncey of Halethorpe, works can be found here, as well as all those Maryland. Baltimore in American Literature. other detective and mystery novels. Baltimore: Type­written copy (for the Johns The used and rare book market is quite Hopkins University), 1933. lively in Baltimore. The first block of West 25th Marbrook, Del. “Baltimore: City of Writers.” Street, close to the Johns Hopkins University Potomac Review 4, no. 1 [13] (1997): 4­21. campus and the is Mencken, H. L. “On Living in Baltimore,” in known as “Book Row.” Several fine rare book Prejudices, Fifth Series, 237. New York: Alfred stores are located within this block, includ­ A. Knopf, 1926. ing Kelmscott Bookshop, Royal Books, Shivers, Frank. Maryland Wits & Baltimore Tiber Books, and Johanson Rare Books. Bards: A Literary History with Notes on Wash­ In the Antique Row neighborhood, on North ington Writers. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Howard Street, is Drusilla’s Books, known University Press, 1998. for children’s and illustrated books, folklore, fairy tales, and fables. Notes Finally, we must mention the unique 1. H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Fifth Series Baltimore book venue known as “The Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 237. Thing.” Created in 1999, by Russell Watten­ 2. Gibbons Burke, The H. L. Mencken berg, The Book Thing has a huge inventory of Page “My favorites” www.io.com/gibbonsb books that are free. That’s not a typo, all the /mencken/quotes.html. books at The Book Thing are free, as many as 3. Frank Shivers, Gertrude Stein quoted you want. Wattenberg has a passion for getting in Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards books into the hands of people who want or (Baltimore and London: JHU Press, 1998), need them, in the hope that, as he puts it on 268. his Web site, “if everyone reads a lot there’ll be more people to have intelligent conversations with.” Donations are welcome, but not neces­ sary. Just come with a love of books.

Epilogue So whether you are a literary sleuth, histo­ rian, or bibliomaniac, Baltimore holds some surprises and treasures. It is not gratuitous that one of Baltimore’s nicknames is “The City that Reads.” Enrich and expand your visit to Baltimore by visiting its literary sites, shopping in its bookstores, and reading books written in this most eclectic and iconoclast literary city.

Bibliography French, John C. “Poe’s Literary Baltimore.” Maryland Historical Magazine 32, no. 2 (1937): 101­112. Hahn, H. George, II. “Twilight Refl ections: The Hold of Victorian Baltimore on Lizette Woodworth Reese and H. L. Mencken,” The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South 22, no. 4 (1984): 5­21.

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