A Place of My Own Read Free Page A

I’m having trouble sleeping, or fretting over a sentence that refuses to unknot, or corralling a paragraph to go where I want it to, I’ll put myself at the big ash desk, with the windows hitched up in August mode, and feel the soft breeze of a summer morning passing through the space. A place of my own: as it began it is once again, which is to say a cherished daydream. It is one I can usually count on to clear out my head, so I guess you could say I still get some good work done there, in the hut by the pond three thousand miles away.

Acknowledgments
    I had a great deal of help in the making of A Place of My Own— both the building and the book. I can’t imagine a better guide to the world of architecture than Charles Myer, or to the world of carpentry than Joe Benney—these friends, my Virgils, were the best of teachers and companions. Besides giving me an education in the intricacies of their respective crafts, Charlie and Joe both read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions.
    Mark Edmundson read several drafts of the book and never failed to improve it by his comments; I felt him by my side at every step. I was also fortunate to have the wise and generous editorial help of Allan Gurganus and Mark Danner. Ileene Smith read the final draft with scrupulous care; only another writer who has had the benefit of her judgment and her ear can know the value of her contribution.
    In Ann Godoff I have everything a writer could ask for in an editor: wisdom, encouragement, patience, and friendship. Amanda Urban, my agent, was not only unflagging in her enthusiasm, as always, but also inspired in her editorial suggestions. My thanks, too, to Elsa Burt, Enrica Gadler, Jim Evangelisti, Don Knerr, Susan Dunbar, Don Statham, Jessica Green, Gerald Marzorati, Dominique Browning, Malka Margolies, Christopher Stamey, and Liz Denton.
    But, finally, it is Judith to whom I owe this book. There is not a page in it that doesn’t bear the mark of her thoughtfulness, encouragement, and sacrifice. Though Judith made it a point never to hit a single nail, neither the book nor the building would stand if not for her generosity. In more ways than I can say, A Place of My Own is her gift.

A Place of My Own

CHAPTER 1
A Room of One’s Own
    A room of one’s own: Is there anybody who hasn’t at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn’t turned those soft words over until they’d assumed a habitable shape? What they propose, to anyone who admits them into the space of a daydream, is a place of solitude a few steps off the beaten track of everyday life. Beyond that, though, the form the dream takes seems to vary with the dreamer. Generally the imagined room has a fixed terrestrial address, whether located deep within the family house or out in the woods under its own roof. For some people, though, the same dream can just as easily assume a vehicular form. I’m thinking of the one-person cockpit or cabin, a mobile room in which to journey some distance from the shore of one’s usual cares. Fixed or mobile, a dream of escape is what this probably sounds like. But it’s more like a wish for a slightly different angle on things—for the view from the tower, or tree line, or the bobbing point a couple hundred yards off the coast. It might be a view of the same old life, but from out here it will look different, the outlines of the self a little more distinct.
    In my own case, there came a moment—a few years shy of my fortieth birthday, and on the verge of making several large changes in my life—when the notion of a room of my own, and specifically, of a little wood-frame hut in the woods behind my house, began to occupy my imaginings with a mounting insistence. This in itself didn’t surprise me particularly. I was in the process of pulling my life up by the roots, all at once becoming a father, leaving the city where I’d lived since college, and setting out on an uncertain new career. Indeed, it would have been strange if I