On Moving A Writer's Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again

by DeSalvo, Louise

• ISBN13: 9781582345819
• ISBN10: 1582345813
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-17
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Summary

A literary exploration of one of life's most taxing, emotional, and pervasive experiences: moving.When acclaimed memoirist and scholar Louise DeSalvo sold the house she and her husband had raised their children in and moved to a beautiful new home in Montclair, New Jersey, she was shocked to discover a rash of unexpected emotions interfering with her plans. Suddenly the old, cramped house was paradise, and the new house a barren building with none of the comforts or familiarity of "home." Faced with a sudden disillusionment over her dream house, DeSalvo turned, as she always has, to her favorite writers.What she found was a treasure trove of material, most of which has seldom been written about before, chronicling the tumultuous and inspiring moves of some of our most beloved literary figures. Percy Shelley, destitute and restless, moved his tired family from one home to another, only to settle in what he came to believe was a haunted house on the Gulf of Spezia (in which he soon drowned). Virginia Woolf, on her hunt for the perfect room of her own, was a real estate hound, and spent years trying to get back to her home in London after a nervous breakdown forced her to relocate to the country. More recently, Mark Doty found selling the house he and his dying lover had spent decades renovating surprisingly freeing as the couple found a new home in which to say goodbye.DeSalvo discovers that the pain, hope, and turmoil involved in moving have been universal for generations.On Movingmines the hopes, disappointments, memories, and fears that come with that simple yet fundamental part of everyone's lives: moving.

Author Biography

Louise DeSalvo is a writer, professor, lecturer, and scholar who lives in New Jersey. Her many books include the memoirs Crazy in the Kitchen, Vertigo, Breathless, and Adultery; the acclaimed biography Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work; and Writing as a Way of Healing. Recently, she moved.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
"A Balm to Cure All Ills": Dream Houses	p. 11
"A New and Better Way of Life": House Hunting	p. 35
"A Home, Dismantled": Packing Up	p. 57
"Adrift": Life After Moving	p. 71
"A Space for the Psyche's Hinterland": Homemaking	p. 87
"Displaced": Exiles, Refugees, Wanderers	p. 107
"A Door Opening": Changing Lives	p. 143
Moving On	p. 175
Afterword	p. 201
Acknowledgments	p. 215
Notes on the Sources	p. 217
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