I recall as a child being totally awestruck by two museums my family visited. One was the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. The other was Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The latter with its interactive exhibits, true-to-life coal mine, and World War II German submarine dazzled my young mind and showed me just how amazing the world really was. Just over a week ago, I visited the American Writers Museum located on the second floor of a larger building at 180 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. You’ll recall from my blog of January 5 that I received a membership to the museum as a Christmas gift from my wife. I am happy to report this museum also left me awestruck in a different but still profound way, so much so I am already looking forward to a return visit.

The American Writers Museum, which isn’t especially large, is arranged in a circular pattern so you end your tour at the same place you start. The first section features individual panels each focused on a particular American author. The panels are arranged chronologically beginning with colonial figures such as William Bradford and concluding with contemporary writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike. It was good to see not just novelists represented on the panels, but also playwrights, essayists, diarists, poets, and letter writers. Most of these literary figures were familiar to me but a few were not, and there are two whose works I plan to seek out and read. Eudora Welty wrote both short stories and novels set in the South. According to the museum, Welty’s writing “embodies a profound sense of place, in particular the folklore and mythology that place can generate.”  Then there’s Chester Himes, an African-American writer, who wrote crime novels set in Harlem and featuring the detective team of Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. His fast-paced stories were often violent but had humorous touches, such as a hearse being commandeered to smuggle gold out of the inner city. I’ll be adding works by Welty and Himes to my reading list.

The next section of the museum gives visitors the chance to identify their favorite three books by an American author. As I sat down to type in my responses, it occurred to me many of my favorite books were written by English writers — H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Alexander Kent. Still, I had no trouble identifying two American books that are among my favorites: The Catcher in the Rye and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It took a moment to come up with a third choice. I eventually settled on The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories by Edgar Alan Poe.

Farther into the museum was a special exhibit on the “Tools of the Trade.” Typewriters belonging to such literary heavyweights at Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, and Maya Angelou were on display. (That’s Hemingway’s typewriter in the featured photo.) So. too, were pens and an inkwell used by Frederick Douglass. Perhaps the most interesting artifact on display in this section was Helen Keller’s braille-writing device. As I came to the end of this exhibit, I realized at least two of the featured typewriters were “Royals,” the model I used to type term papers in high school and college. (You know you’re getting old when things that were once new to you turn up in a museum.)

Outside the “Tools of the Trade,” several typewriters were lined up on tables; into each typewriter a clean sheet of paper had been scrolled. What’s going on here? I wondered. Some instructions on a nearby wall answered my question. Go to a typewriter and finish a story someone else has started. On the wall, next to these instructions, were ten or more clips holding the pages of stories other visitors had started. Some of the “stories” were rather aimless and uninspiring, but one caught my attention. The writer, obviously someone younger than I, couldn’t imagine a world that didn’t have computers. How, he or she wondered, could anyone be nostalgic for such a time. I decided to continue the story by answering that question. When I finished, I clipped my page on top of the one written by the computer-infatuated visitor.

Just past the Finish a Story typewriters was an interactive game I wouldn’t mind playing more often. Here’s how it works. First, the player chooses a genre of book from which selected paragraphs will be drawn. After that, three or four paragraphs from a published book of that genre (not necessarily a classic) are flashed onto a screen with about seven or eight key words missing. Beneath each blank where a missing word should go, the player is told what kind of word is needed: noun, verb, adjective, etc. Below the paragraphs are several columns of words. The challenge is to move the appropriate word out of the column and into the spot where it belongs. The player earns a certain number of points just for putting the right kind of word into a blank. If it happens to be the same word used by the author, he or she earns a bonus.

There are a number of smaller subsections to the museum. One shows the different environments in which famous writers preferred to work: the park, the kitchen, a restaurant, a bus, or anywhere at all. Even more interesting was the display showing common words and the well-known writers who were the first to use them. For example:

Cyberspace: First appeared in William Gibson’s short story “Burning Chrome.”

Co-Ed: Louisa May Alcott had a character use this word to criticize a gender-mixed environment in Jo’s Boys.

Bible Belt: Journalist H.L. Mencken coined this term while covering the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in the 1920s.

Factoid: First used by Norman Mailer in his biography of Marilyn Monroe to describe “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper.”

The last major section of the museum focused on writers with a connection to Chicago. Not having a strong connection to that city myself, I didn’t spend too much time here, although I did read the bio of Roger Ebert, the Chicago newspaper film critic who once had a lively TV show with fellow film critic Gene Siskel.

Behind the front desk is a small gift shop selling everything a museum gift shop should: t-shirts, caps, coffee mugs, key chains, posters, post cards, refrigerator magnets, and other souvenir items. The shop also offers a number of better-known books by American authors, including The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Charlotte’s Web.

There is more I could say about the American Writers Museum, about the children’s programs they offer and the special exhibit featuring immigrant and refugee stories, but I’ll save that for a future blog. After all, I plan to come back in September if not sooner. As for giving me a membership in this museum, my wife definitely did the “write” thing.