BOOKPATHS

Key West, Florida

Writer Edmund White explains why he, "like countless writers and artists," returns regularly to Key West.

The poet Elizabeth Bishop lived in Key West because it made time seem to go by more slowly.  If you're afraid of ageing and dying (as she was, as I am), then torpid small-town life in the heat is the best solution -- events start to creep by in a place that is almost tropical (it's the southernmost point in the US, just 90 miles north of Havana).

Florida

Jane Ciabattari praises Karen Russell's debut novel Swamplandia!.

Throughout the book, she dwells lovingly on the endangered beauties of South Florida's Ten Thousand Islands, from 'glacial spires of a long oyster bed' to a 'sky-flood' of moths with sapphire-tipped wings.  Powered by Russell's vivid wordplay and imaginative energy, 'Swamplandia!' is a continuously alluring phantasmagoria.

Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal Orlando Resort, Florida, U.S.

Neil Genzlinger checks out the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.

It’s just as well that there’s only the one truly outstanding ride in Wizarding World, because rides aren’t really the point; workmanship is. This attraction was made for the kind of people who have more or less memorized Ms. Rowling’s books, and it shows in all sorts of details. The weathering of the stone to make it look indefinably old. The way the snow sits on the rooftops, just on the verge of melting. – from “Muggles Take Flight at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times

Eatonville, etc., Central Florida, U.S.

Adam H. Graham follows in the footsteps of Zora Neale Hurston.

Though Central Florida has changed radically over the last century, the places Hurston called home during her childhood (before 1914) and later, from 1932 to 1960 — Eatonville, Fort Pierce, Sanford, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville — have retained much of their Old Florida charm. Together these towns and cities reveal an evocative slice of Hurston’s Florida. – from “Forgotten Florida, Through a Writer’s Eyes,” by Adam H. Graham, The New York Times

Bok Tower Gardens, Lake Wales, Florida, U.S.

Editor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and philanthropist, Edward Bok (1863-1930) made a gift of the Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, to the American people “in gratitude for the opportunity they had given him.”  Now a National Historic Landmark, Bok Tower Gardens, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., is open every day of the year from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; the Visitor Center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Visitor information is available on their website.

In 1921, Edward W. Bok was spending the winter months in the residential mountain lake community located adjacent to one of the highest hills of Florida’s Lake Wales Ridge, 298 feet above sea level. He enjoyed taking evening walks to the top of ‘Iron Mountain,’ among the virgin pines and sandhill scrub, to enjoy Florida’s dramatic sunsets and bird life. The idea came to him to preserve this hilltop and create a bird sanctuary – a place of beauty, serenity and peace. – from Bok Tower Gardens Website

(Photograph from the National Park Service website)

Sugarloaf Key, Florida, U.S.

Author Barbara Ehrenreich “savors life ‘up the Keys.’”

The second, and last, place we looked at was on Sugarloaf Key, a patch of land jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico from the lone highway connecting the necklace of islands that make up Florida's Keys. We drove to the end of the paved road, then onto a dirt road cutting through a low jungle of indigenous buttonwoods, poisonwoods, sea grapes and thatch palms. At the end of that was a pleasant gray house linked to the water by a boardwalk and dock, and at the end of the dock was a revelation: more than 180 degrees of turquoise water dotted with a series of tiny emerald mangrove islands. Live here, said a voice from the blue-green vastness—whatever it takes. – from “Sugarloaf Key, Florida: Keeping Good Company,” by Barbara Ehrenreich, Smithsonian Magazine

Florida, U.S.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston  (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008; first published in 1937)

Their Eyes Were Watching God follows Janie Crawford on her journey of self-discovery through three marriages, finally finding the kind of love she longs for when she meets and marries “the roustabout” Tea Cake in her early forties.  Descriptions of people and place pull readers into the pages, from the “West Florida” landscape of Janie’s birth and youth; to Eatonville, the "all-black" community where the author grew up; to the Everglades, where “hordes of workers” gather to cut sugar cane and beans in season.  Hurston's classic novel is a memorable and enriching read.

To Janie’s strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new.  Big Lake Okechobee, big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything.  Weeds that did well to grow waist high up the state were eight and often ten feet tall down there.  Ground so rich that everything went wild.  Volunteer cane just taking the place.  Dirt roads so rich and black that a half mile of it would have fertilized a Kansas wheat field.  Wild cane on either side of the road hiding the rest of the world.  People wild too.  – from Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Zora Neale Hurston: the Official Zora Neale Hurston Website

Welcome to the Town of Eatonville: the Oldest Incorporated African American Municipality in America

Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.

Author Jeff VanderMeer shares “his thoughts on books and the secrets of his adopted home city, Tallahassee, Florida.”

“This is a city teeming with writers… At Florida State University, you have Robert Olen Butler, poet David Kirby and Mark Winegardner (best known for literary fiction until he did the 'Godfather' spinoffs), Bob Shacochis and Julianna Baggott, for example. Daniel Maier-Katkin, another professor, just sold his account of the relationship between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger to a major publisher, so he'll be high-profile soon. Outside of the university, there's Mark Mustian, also a city commissioner, who just hit it big with a sale of a novel to Putnam (a writer to watch next year). I'm probably the resident 'fantasist mascot,' so to speak, and then there are host of others at the university and elsewhere working in poetry, fiction and nonfiction.” – Jeff VanderMeer, Los Angeles Times Interview with Carolyn Kellogg

Vero Beach, Florida, U.S.

Charles McGrath talks with Carl Hiaasen about his new book, The Downhill Lie: a Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport, “part memoir, with reminiscences about his father” and partly an “account of how he took up golf again after what he calls ‘a much-needed layoff of 32 years.’”

“It’s [Quail Valley Golf Club] in the middle of nowhere, a former citrus grove outside Vero Beach, and the entrance is guarded by a remote-control gate. BMWs and Mercedes S.U.V.’s gleam in the parking lot. In the clubhouse the heads of a moose, an elk and some African-looking ungulate gaze down on the dining room, and the men’s locker room is graced with a stuffed lion and a reared-up bear. You can imagine that Palmer Stoat, from the Hiaasen novel Sick Puppy, who tries to arrange a big-game hunt in the Florida wilds, might feel right at home here." – from “It’s Florida. It’s Hiaasen. It’s Golf?” by Charles McGrath, New York Times

Florida

Lois Lowry explains why we “must read” The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

“Then, as my mother read those first few pages of The Yearling, I saw blue-gray smoke rising from the chimney of a simple cabin, and watching the smoke drift into the sky was a boy named Jody Baxter. I recognized him right away. He was so like me: skinny, blond, solitary. I moved, as my mother read the words, into the clearing in the Florida swampland where the Baxters lived their hardscrabble lives. I could hear the insects buzzing and the bubbling sound of the little spring, and I could see the glisten of the dark magnolia leaves and smell the thick pines” – from “Finding a Familiar Loneliness in The Yearling,” by Lois Lowry, NPR All Things Considered