Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Books

Reviews
"Balthus: A Biography" by Nicholas Fox Weber
A fat volume skewers the old goat who made his name painting nymphets in bloom.
By George Rafael
[01/04/00]

Dear Mr. Blue
Is politeness required?
After dumping his longtime wife, my friend has taken up with a much younger woman. Do I have to be nice to her?
By Garrison Keillor
[01/04/00]

Reviews
"The Cockroach Papers" by Richard Schweid
They're revolting, they're fascinating, they're brilliantly engineered and every one of those vile little bugs is different.
By Pete Wells
[01/03/00]

Warped, battered, torn and stained
Salon salutes the cookbooks real cooks use every day.
By Salon staff members
[12/27/99]

Crisis of faith
Scientists who use evolutionary psychology to explain religion are ignoring facts and missing the point.
By Margaret Wertheim
[12/24/99]

Complete archives for Books

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"Congratulations," my friends and family say, then quickly add, "Will Lindsay visit?" Beneath this seemingly innocuous question on my fiancée's behalf I detect something else: the suspicion that artists colonies are boozy and adulterous hotbeds, spawning grounds for torrid affairs and illicit behavior. I'm familiar with this mythology -- every writer's heard the jokes about "Bed-Loaf." But as my departure date nears, I'm hearing some convincing evidence. "You'll have a great time," a newly married friend, a colony veteran, assures me. "I did -- I mean I used to," he says, with a worried glance at his wife. "I can't really talk about it right now," he says, when I press him for details.

By the time Lindsay finally sees me off at the Port Authority bus terminal I'm oscillating wildly between exhilaration and the panicked feeling that I've already cheated. Simply to go to this place feels like a violation of relationship rules. I worry that my protestations of innocence won't hold up after the fact, and this anticipation -- along with the last-minute discovery that I've packed whiskey but forgotten shampoo -- preoccupies me on the ride up.

Day 1
I disembark in Keene, N.H., where Blake, a serene, bear-like man who is to guide me into the colony itself, awaits. He hands me a latte as I step off the bus and into his van. Instantly I feel a weight lifted from my shoulders.

Soon we pass a spectacular lake, a series of little villages -- each more pristine than the last -- and arrive at last at the colony itself: acre upon acre of grassy pastures and woodsy glades. I'm shown to my studio, a white pine cabin with a grand piano and a fireplace, a desk beneath a window looking out on a bright meadow. On the wall are wooden "tombstones" -- plaques engraved with the names of the room's previous occupants. Jonathan Franzen was here recently, as was Andrea Barrett. Longer ago Galway Kinnell, Louise Bogan: The names taper off into illegibility. Too excited to work, I spend the afternoon on the screened-in porch, reading Henry James. Heaven itself could be no better.

At dinner, I meet the other colonists. There are 14 total, most of whom will be shipping out in the next day or two. I'm told I've arrived at the beginning of a "cycle." Four more newbies will be here tomorrow, and the colony will be near maximum capacity -- 26 -- by next week. I feel a stab of schoolyard anxiety as I plunk down next to the one other new colonist, a voluminous, bearded poet from Bowling Green, Ohio. The old-timers are laughing and chattering while the poet and I sit quietly with our meatloaf. "Don't bother," one of them says when I introduce myself. "I'm leaving in the morning."

Otherwise, they're friendly. Charles, a sculptor, is having an open studio that night and invites me over. There, I loosen myself up with liberal quantities of Stoli and Chee-tos before blundering into a discussion two women are having about a writer I know distantly, whose scabrously funny novel of family entanglement I recently enjoyed. "Good old Walter. What's he up to nowadays?" I ask. The conversation stops. One of the women blushes and walks away. I stare stupidly at my bright orange fingertips. My worst suspicions are confirmed.

Next page | OK, who's sleeping with whom here?