Bennington, 1985

It occurred to me just this morning that it was almost 40 years ago exactly that I made the three and a half hour drive to Bennington, Vermont from New York City to participate in a month-long creative writing workshop. I had spent the previous month in cancer land with my dad in Houston, and was thrilled to be sprung from that bummer situation, if only temporarily.

It was a perfect summer day, the day I traveled to Bennington, and I drove too fast and listened to music the whole way there—Prince, The Cure, Madonna, Chaka Khan, Elvis Costello—on my super-janky, dirt cheap car stereo (the only-slightly-nicer one the car came with had been stolen, a window smashed to get at it, crack epidemic style, on the streets of New York).

As I drove, the city faded away, the landscape grew greener, and, after I got off the highway, I turned off the A/C and cranked the window open. Eventually I arrived at Bennington. I had thought Oberlin was small, but this campus was itsy, like a little cake-topper mini-campus: there were 550 students enrolled there the year I visited. Many of them lived in a series of colonial-style houses arranged in a horseshoe shape around a circular drive.

I found my dorm there, Swan House, and dragged my suitcase out of the car, along with a canvas tote full of Vintage Contemporaries paperbacks. Vintage Contemporaries published Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Joy Williams, and lots of other writers who were considered quite top shelf, circa 1985. They had stylish, colorful covers that were instantly recognizable, and labeled the owner a person of taste.

I also grabbed the vintage Smith Corona travel typewriter my mom’s boyfriend Stanley had given me before I went away to boarding school. These were the days before personal computers were a big thing, and I’d left my bulky electric typewriter back in Oberlin for the summer. I loved that vintage typewriter, even though most of the keys stuck, and it wasn’t therefore especially good for writing.