Fall 2015: Landscapes of Literature
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A Publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies A Journal of Place Volume xı | Number ı | Fall 2015 Essays: Landscapes of Place: A Literary Tour 3 Helen Horowitz: The Writer’s Path: J. B. Jackson and Cultural Geography as a Literary Genre Deirdre David: The Ha-Ha and the Railway: The Country and the City in the English Nineteenth-Century Novel Paula Deitz: In the Landscape with Henry James Kate Kinast: Paradise Lost: Revisiting Narnia Anna Shapiro: Irony in the Pastoral: Vermont and the Literary Imagination Kathleen John-Alder: A String of Beads, a Pearl, a Howl, a Fear of Silence, and a Patchwork Quilt Book Review 20 Cynthia Zaitzevsky: Arthur A. Shurcliff: Design, Preservation, and the Creation of the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape By Elizabeth Hope Cushing Calendar 23 Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor ome of the land- on dichotomies – rich versus landscape of her youth not the wilder parts of Mallorca Tenth Anniversary Issue scapes we encounter poor, field versus forest, city only in memory but through where she grew up became This year marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of when we read are versus country. literature as well. a surrogate Narnia in the the Foundation for Landscape Studies. During this period imaginary; others We stamp our mark on As Deitz and Shapiro childhood reading days she we have: have real-life coun- the landscape, as Jackson make clear, landscapes carry fondly recalls here. • Published twenty issues of Site/Lines, with coverage of Sterparts beyond the printed realized, but it changes us in meaning. The appearance As stated in our previous cities, parks, gardens, and landscapes from Japan to page. Whether fictive or turn. In “A String of Beads, and transformation of a issue of Site/Lines, we have the American West, and place-based themes such as food, actual, scenery and setting a Pearl, a Howl, a Fear of place may have symbolic limited the mailing of this beverages, water, and stone. may be described in all their Silence, and a Patchwork importance, as Deirdre donor-supported publica- beauty or desolation or serve Quilt,” Kathleen John-Alder David explains in “The tion to those who have con- • Awarded 31 David R. Coffin Publication Grants to authors as springboards for analyses explores the way in which Ha-Ha and the Railway: tributed to the Foundation or publishers of English-language books-in-progress that of cultural geography – the Ralph Waldo Emerson and The Country and the City for Landscape Studies dur- advance scholarship in the field of garden history and ways in which people have Henry David Thoreau – and in the English Nineteenth- ing the past year. In order landscape studies. shaped their landscapes. later Aldo Leopold, Loren Century Novel.” The writers to continuing receiving this • Awarded 36 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prizes to This issue of Site/Lines con- Eisley, and Ian McHarg – she discusses fondly recall a journal in the printed for- authors of distinguished books published in the English tains six essays covering the identified nature’s effects on vanishing rural world along mat preferred by a majority language within the prior three years. ways in which the meaning the ways we think and feel. with the disruptive changes of our readers, please make of place has been conveyed Fictional landscapes wrought by technology. a discretionary gift via the • Published four books in association with other institutions through literature. can work their magic on In “Paradise Lost: Narnia attached solicitation enve- and publishers: the Morgan Library and Museum, the New Aficionados of the writ- us also. Paula Deitz’s essay Revisited,” Kate Kinast lope or on our website. York Society Library, David R. Godine, the Museum of ings of John Brinckerhoff “In the Landscape with describes how C. S. Lewis New Mexico, and Dumbarton Oaks/Trustees of Harvard Jackson will appreciate the Henry James” describes her re-created and reenvisioned With good green wishes, University (forthcoming spring 2016). new details of his biogra- pleasure in walking in the that disappearing world in • Sponsored and co-curated three major exhibitions: Roman- phy Helen Horowitz has footsteps of the characters his famous series of chil- tic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Design, Writing the Garden, and unearthed and shares with created by the well-traveled dren’s books, The Chronicles Rome: City of the Soul (opening May 2016). us in her essay “The Writer’s novelist. In “Irony in the of Narnia. According to her, Path: J. B. Jackson and Pastoral: Vermont and the Lewis’s imaginary country Elizabeth Barlow Rogers • Digitized and provided comprehensive metadata for eight Cultural Geography as a Lit- Literary Imagination,” functions as a stand-in for President thousand slides, which are now available for the purposes erary Genre.” The course of Bennington alumna Anna England, but “an England of teaching, education, and scholarship via a special Jackson’s early career helps Shapiro revisits the Vermont stripped of modernity.” But Foundation for Landscape Studies collection within the us to understand how he since Narnia is illusory, it Artstor Digital Library. came to pioneer a new way of ultimately assumes a unique • Organized and conducted two study tours: Italian Villa looking at landscape based aspect in each reader’s Gardens and Landscapes of the Netherlands and Belgium. imagination. For Kinast • Assisted organizations in several cities in America and abroad to develop and sustain public-private park partner- ships. In congratulating ourselves on these accomplishments, we also thank those who have made our work possible: writ- ers, editors, publishers, museum directors, foundations, and donors, among whom we count 725 individual contributors – On the Cover: including readers of this journal. A map of Narnia and some of the surrounding countries. 2 Landscapes of Place: A Literary Tour The Writer’s Path: J. B. Jackson and Cultural Geography terparts, these vibrant thoroughfares extend “a universal wel- as a reader I know that this gift was inexorably linked to his as a Literary Genre come.” To walk on the Rambla of Barcelona or the Cannebière unique powers of expression. To what he saw, Jackson gave n one of John Brinckerhoff Jackson’s most memorable of Marseilles is “to be part of a procession, part of a ceaseless intellectual shape and meaning. He dramatized his many essays, “The Stranger’s Path” (1957), he presented the district ceremony of being initiated into the city and of rededicating ideas through vivid contrasts and clear, unforgettable images. of the city “devoted to the outsider, the transient.” Eschew- the city itself.” He had a wit that could be wicked in conversation but in ing the well-kept suburban neighborhoods that were As “The Stranger’s Path” testifies, Jackson was a master writing was sly and beneath the surface. His prose seemed as habitually recommended to him as the true expression of of the essay, creating a magnificent body of writing from the artless as a poem by Robert Frost – and as carefully wrought. Iwhatever city he was visiting, he set out instead to describe 1950s until his death in 1996. His vehicle was Landscape, the As in “The Stranger’s Path,” his essays taught us new ways of the procession of streets and establishments generally magazine he created in 1951. Through 1968 he remained its seeing and evaluating our world. unknown to lifelong residents – those given over to “receiv- editor, publisher, and one of its chief writers. During the Jackson’s unique sensibility was shaped by his unusual ing” the stranger and “satisfying his immediate needs.” 1960s and 70s, while teaching at Berkeley and Harvard, he life experiences. He was born in 1909 to American parents Arriving at a train station or bus depot, the stranger is wrote American Space, penned essays for other periodicals, and residing temporarily in France. The family returned to live deposited in what Jackson ironically describes as a “smiling ultimately saw many of his pieces collected in volumes. in Washington, D.C., but his father quit the household a landscape of parking lots, warehouses, pot-holed and weed- In 1994, Jackson agreed to talk with me on tape. Then in few years later. As a boy with a trust fund from his paternal grown streets, where isolated filling stations and quick-lunch his mid-80s, he was finding it hard to write, but he remained grandfather, he was raised with the blessing or curse of never counters are scattered among cinders like survivals of a a great conversationalist. He was also a good friend. I sug- having to earn a living. Bright and curious, he could read bombing raid.” Typically the traveler encounters a produce gested that I might assist him by recording his insights and write by the age of four, traveled frequently in Europe market as well as lighted signs that offer a range of treats: and, perhaps, his memories. I would then provide him with with his mother, and was well educated in schools both at “Chiliburgers. Red Hots. Checks Cashed. Snooker Parlor. The transcripts he could regard as a first draft. Although I enjoyed home and abroad. Early on, he developed a fascination with Best Shine in Town!” All kinds of “strange little establish- these taping sessions immensely – five conversations in mid- the etymology of words. He believed that this interest was ments,” which promise “good times,” are wedged in between January and three more in late necessary services. It is inaccurate to call this area a slum, May – the plan didn’t work. Jackson insisted; it is simply “a district for unattached men Jackson found the transcripts from out of town.” From here the visitor’s route proceeds to a horror. The easy flow and the financial district, with its banks and business offices, and delightful phrasing of his then to the better hotels, where it loses its “loud proletarian speech was not that of his pen.