Great writers throughout history have created their literary masterpieces in the unlikeliest of settings.
Hemingway wrote in bistros. O. Henry and Dostoyevsky composed their works from prison. Louisa May Alcott penned some of her best writing from a Union Army hospital during the Civil War.
The human mind is flexible.
How does environment shape an author`s perceptions? How does the space define the writer? What sets a mood conducive to creativity?
We asked a handful of Chicago area authors to talk about where they write what they write. What do they have in common? Beyond a reverence for books and a passion for procrastination, very little.
Here`s what they said:
Rick Telander
In Lake Forest, the land of Jaguars and mansions, lives a regular guy who drives a Ford Taurus and makes his living writing about sports.
Rick Telander, 41-year-old author, senior writer for Sports Illustrated and costar of ”The Sports Writers” TV series, wrote ”The Hundred Yard Lie” (Simon and Schuster, $17.95) in an office above his garage. The sleek, modern work quarters were converted from a dilapidated barn when he and his wife of 10 years, Judy, moved into the 100-year-old home six years ago.
”The reason we bought this place was the barn,” Telander said. ”I wanted to work at home but somehow separated from home.”
It took a lot of imagination to envision the barn as an efficient office. ”There was still hay and manure in the place when we bought it,” he said.
”And the only way up was a ladder.”
A staircase was built. Telander installed the pine floors himself. Workers constructed skylights, windows and permanent walls. A friend insulated it so tightly that a small, portable heater is all that`s needed to warm the loft even in the worst weather.
It`s a cozy, well-lit room with two black Formica-top desks, a tan sofa bed, overstuffed bookshelves and personal mementos of Telander`s awards and achievements, including his Northwestern football helmet from his days as a cornerback.
Though he said there are advantages in working so close to home (Judy just gave birth to the couple`s fourth child), there are disadvantages as well.
”The kids will meander in while I`m in the middle of a deadline and ask me to resolve the Barbie Crisis. There are all the drawbacks and conflicts of running a household. Every single day is a battle. But I don`t want to wall it all out and go to a Loop office to work.
”You can see decided attempts at order here,” he explained. ”To me it looks like somebody who doesn`t like clutter but just can`t help himself. Everything here is mine. I can`t blame anyone else.”
Future anthropologists researching the Telander digs might find plenty of grist for doctoral dissertations. ”They`d see somebody with too many interests pulled in too many directions.”
Indeed. Three guitars and a small electric piano sit in a corner awaiting an impromptu jam session with his retro-rock party band, The Del Crustaceans. Dumbbell weights gather dust in another nook. Framed mounted insects dot the room, including three homeless cicadas. Books as diverse as ”Drugs, Sports and Politics” and ”Killing Mister Watson” share floor space with numerous newspapers and magazines.
Most of all, Telander`s office reflects his fascination with sports. All- Star game tickets lie beside a baseball autographed by Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. There`s such an abundance of football memorabilia that he could start his own Telander Room at Ditka`s Restaurant. Getting permission for that would be easy; his fence abuts the Bears` practice field at Lake Forest College.
Telander said he doesn`t go through any ritual before he begins writing.
”But before I start,” he said, ”I like to have the floor clean. I`ve mopped up in here lots of times.”
The struggle to write is universal, he said.
”All I need is quiet. Since it`s something you do for a living, you can do it anywhere. A writing chamber is ultimately completely unimportant. It`s like a batter hitting a baseball. There are 1,000 different stances and approaches to the plate. But when a batter makes contact with the ball, every one of them looks alike. When you actually write, it`s just you and the typewriter. Everything else is just window dressing.”
Harry Mark Petrakis
Ghosts roam the second-story office of Harry Mark Petrakis.
”Members of my family have slept on the bed in my office and I`ve told them, half seriously, half in jest, that if you hear murmuring in the night, don`t worry. It`s only my characters coming to life,” Petrakis said. ”They won`t hurt you,” I tell them. ”They`re only letting you know they`re here.” Petrakis, 67, is known for his mournful novels, most of which are set in Chicago.
But for 22 years he and his wife, Diana, have lived in a Dune Acres, Ind., home on a sandy bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.
Here he wrote ”Nick the Greek,” ”Hour of the Bell,” ”Days of Vengeance” and his latest, ”Ghost of the Son” (St. Martin`s Press, $18.95). The Petrakises built the addition after purchasing the house in 1968. His rustic, wood-paneled office is located upstairs behind the home. It features oak floors with wooden pegs instead of nails. The walls reveal much about the occupant. There`s a framed poster with Greek lettering, a rubbing, he said, from the tombstone of master Greek writer Nikos Katzanzakis.
It says, ”I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
The smell of new wood is long gone, but Petrakis is comfortable with the office`s glorious view and beautiful light. ”It`s a marvelous room. In some strange way,” he said. ”I feel I`ve not yet earned it.”
His desk is littered with correspondence and piles of papers. Shopping bags of books sit beneath a table. ”It`s annoying if it`s littered. When I see that I clear the whole desk off. It has to be uncluttered. I`ll grab some Lemon Pledge and wipe it clean as an operating table. I`ll find some fresh bond paper and begin.”
He said that if everything else in the office were removed, he would still need to have books nearby in order to work. They`re not only great resources, he said, they`re terrific companions.
Petrakis has a compact disc player to provide the constant background music he said helps him to work. He prefers chamber music by Brahms and Mozart. ”Nothing intrusive and no big, loud slashing symphonies,” he said.
”But something soothing.”
A 1916 family portrait of his parents stares down from atop the staircase. His father wears the long beard and serious countenance of a Greek priest. Portraits of his wife and children bring comfort and support. The writer who uses this office is a family man and his work reflects the jubilation, pain and conflict of families.
He was 34 before he published his first story and didn`t achieve any real literary success until he reached his 40s. He`s grateful for the amenities, seclusion and inspiration this office provides.
”Some days when I feel depressed, when hours and maybe days pass before I work well, I think of the many writers who`d envy my working conditions.”
He has developed a mystical attachment to the room over the years. It`s understandable after pouring so much of himself into it. ”I feel attuned to this office, not just in the jubilant moments when I`ve completed books, but because I`ve carried griefs and sorrows into this room.”
Diana Petrakis occasionally comes in to dust. ”We argue sometimes because I don`t want her to touch anything on the desk. I say there is order in my disorder,” he said, defending himself. ”But invariably, what she does improves it.”
Bamboo curtains block out much of the light and allow privacy while enabling him to see some greenery and skies. He confesses to one idiosyncrasy: spotless windows. ”My view of the world is altered by the cleanliness of the windows.” From his office you can smell the pines and hear the rush of the wind and the roar of the waves below.
Like all the writers interviewed for this story, Petrakis`s workplace is overrun by books. ”They keep coming to my house and there`s no way to stop them,” he said. ”Once my library only consisted of books I`ve read. Now there are thousands here I`ve not read.”
A good literary detective would be able to piece together the things that are important to Petrakis, like the bust of the Greek patriot, Kolokotronis, or a model of the brig from ”Hour Of The Bell.”
Anthony Quinn, who played Petrakis`s larger-than-life character Leonidis Matsoukas in the film version of his novel, ”A Dream Of Kings,” smiles from an autographed photo. The late gambler Nick ”The Greek” Dandelos is there, too. His office breathes Petrakis`s characters.
Maybe it is haunted.
Studs Terkel
Few personalities spell Chicago to the rest of the world like the inimitable Studs Terkel. The 78-year-old activist, author and WFMT radio host could be declared a Windy City landmark, if only for his trademark gravelly voice.
Terkel has lived in Chicago`s Uptown neighborhood for 40 years. ”The transient nature attracted me,” he said, growling between puffs of a Central American cigar, a gift from a film co-star in ”Eight Men Out.”
Terkel works out of two offices. His radio show is produced and taped at WFMT`s Illinois Center offices, where, like bread rising from a bowl, the books seem to expand before your very eyes. It`s easy to see why he writes at home. There`s no room in this office for work.
Environment, Terkel said, is crucial to his writing. Only once has he written outside of Chicago, a play he crafted one summer in New Hampshire called ”Amazing Grace.” It bombed. So much for New England inspiration.
His books, oral histories like his most recent effort, ”The Great Divide” (Pantheon, $18.95), ”The Good War” and ”American Dreams Lost And Found,” were penned at a spacious Prairie School home, ”on a street of haves in a neighborhood of have-nots. One block away is like another planet,” he said.
Terkel`s home (the one then-”60 Minutes” correspondent Dan Rather couldn`t find when he suffered his famed altercation with a Chicago cabdriver several years ago) is a comfortable but not plush home of blond brick and numerous windows.
His upstairs office is in a small room bulging with even more books and cassette tapes, one of the perks of having a national radio show. ”I don`t know what I`m going to do with them all,” he sighed.
Terkel prefers the office at home to his radio station digs because there are fewer distractions. At home is his wife of 51 years, Ida, whom he describes as his best critic. She insulates him from intrusions when he`s immersed in a book project, such as his current one, tentatively titled ”The Feeling Tone,” about race relations in America.
”He reads to me,” said the ex-social worker, whom she calls ”Louis,”
his given name.
Terkel pounds out his perceptions on an old, institutional-green Hermes electric typewriter while listening to tapes. ”Word processors are Aramaeic to me,” he grumbled. ”I still hunt and peck. At WFMT I use an old Remington. But at home I can knock off things a lot faster.”
Terkel said his office tells a lot about him.
”Anybody coming in here could tell I`m a combination of sloppy and improvisational,” he said. ”They`d see a very slovenly man.”
He`s not far from the mark. Ashes from his omnipresent cigars sift over his typewriter`s keys (he won`t use a computer). The tape cassettes threaten to collapse a card table on which they`re stacked and numbered. Yet, there`s a comfortable sense of familiarity at work here.
”There`s a lot of cursing and swearing and mumbling and talking to myself when I write,” he said. ”Sometimes I`ll stop writing in the middle of a sentence, because I`m hungry or want a drink. I don`t pace. But sometimes I`ll go to the john. And when I`m deep into a project, I hardly get out of my PJs. I do stop for a martini at five, though.”
Old customs die hard.
Terkel said he enjoys writing most when the weather outside is stormy and miserable. ”There`s something cozy and comfortable about being inside then,” he said.
He likes to surround himself with familiar objects that bring him joy. His books and a good cigar provide his security blanket. So does the postcard from longtime friend, the late Chicago novelist Nelson Algren, who once wrote: ”Louie, did you find work?”
As you would expect from a raconteur like Terkel, everything in the room has a story behind it. A large sledge hammer used by railroad workers is mounted on one wall, a gift from a pal. Inscribed into the wallpaper is the legend, ”Henry`s Hammer.”
”A friend gave me that and said it was John Henry`s hammer,” he explained. ”There might not have been a John Henry, but those old stories were based on real experiences, so who knows?”
The best part of a story is sometimes not knowing.
Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky looks fragile in the tiny, cubby-hole office of her Victorian-era home. Her golden retriever, Cardhou, pants by her side.
Fans of the 43-year-old creator of six V.I. Warshawski mysteries will recognize the dog breed from her books. But V.I. is a North Sider, while Paretsky resides in Hyde Park. She has been writing for 38 years, full-time since 1986.
Her compact office, situated near the entrance of her red-brick home, might have been used once as a guest room.
”I like to be in a small space when I`m writing,” she said. ”The more cave-like the space, the more private I feel. I prefer it to be as intimate as possible.”
She said her husband, University of Chicago physicist Courtenay Wright, lived here with his three sons when the couple was married in 1976. ”I needed some privacy because I was working on my Ph.d. in history. This seemed like a good spot.”
Years later, she`s still there. ”I`m like a dog,” she said. ”I don`t like change.”
The books have accumulated and the office has overflowed into a second room upstairs, where a photocopier and other business machines are located.
The adventures of V.I. Warshawski begin and end in the ground floor office, though. Paretsky`s tough, socially conscientious, feminist private eye is known worldwide. Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Norwegian. Fans from around the globe send mementos, such as a miniature bottle of single-malt Scotch, her protagonist`s medicine of choice.
On a desk beside a draped window is a Hewlett-Packard personal computer. It`s an old model, but she said the screen`s clarity is the best she`s found. ”And when you`re working in concentrated periods, that`s important.”
Stacked behind the computer are reference texts and guidebooks, including the Bible and the ”Chicago Manual of Style.” Would fans of her private eye recognize the office?
”V.I.`s office is downtown. It`s important to her to have a complete separation between home and work. She`d never work out of her own home,”
Paretsky explained.
Some things would ring familiar. Like V.I. Warshawski, Paretsky is a Cubs fan. A framed ”Chicago Times” cover of local sports greats, including Andre Dawson, hugs one wall. A Cubs Mania trivia game sits on the radiator.
The office isn`t as spartan as Warshawsky`s. Paretsky writes in a chrome backed, floral print upholstered chair. The desk and bookshelf are burled pine veneer. ”It`s not a very useful desk,” she admitted. ”I think I need a lower table more suitable for computer work.”
Two walls of the office are occupied by tall bookshelves. A publicity jacket cover for her novel ”Burn Marks,” (Delacorte Press, $17.95) is propped on the radiator-turned-bench. There`s a print of the World War II homefront heroine, ”Rosie the Riveter,” an inspiration to the South Chicago steelworkers who recognize a little of themselves in V.I. A framed list commemorates the first time Paretsky cracked the book trade`s bible, the elusive New York Times Best Seller list. A poster from the Wisdom Bridge Theatre`s ”Kabuki MacBeth” clings to another nook. Two miniature West African lions, gifts from a friend, guard a bowl of dry white beans. Three empty French champagne bottles are perched on bookshelves, their contents now only a happy memory.
Paretsky appreciates the advantages of working from home. ”There are days when I don`t even put on underwear when I write,” she revealed. ”I just slump down the stairs in my sweats.”
And she eats compulsively when she works. ”I get very nervous when I write. Sometimes I`ll write a sentence and eat 20 cookies. It`s my most disgusting habit,” she conceded. ”But I`ve vowed not to eat by the computer anymore. The crumbs get into the keyboards and make the letters stick.”
Paretsky has enjoyed a productive writing career, averaging nearly one book a year. She attributed her discipline to the 15 years spent in the business world. She was a marketing executive with CNA Insurance and was once put on probation for having a sloppy desk. Her desk is still cluttered, but she hasn`t written in a year due to an illness.
She said she profited from the business experence. ”I still have a corporate clock in my head that seems to compel me to work,” Paretsky said.
But readers seeking similarities between the public-defender-turned-private eye and her creator will discover little from Paretsky or her office.
”V.I.`s bigger, and stronger and fitter, more of everything, than me,”
she said with a mysterious, Clark Kent smile.
Gwendolyn Brooks
But not every writer works out of an office. Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks sounded embarrassed when she admitted she didn`t have an office. Brooks needn`t have apologized. It`s impossible to tell by reading
”Annie Allen” or ”We Real Cool” that the 73-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning poet didn`t compose her works on a sleek teak desk with a latest, state-of-the-art computer.
”I write on trains, in lobbies and just flouncing on my bed,” Brooks said. ”You don`t need an office to write. All you need is an idea and patience and industry.”
