I was in Bowling Green the other day with a little time to spare, so I decided to spend an hour with one of my favorite authors, Robert Penn Warren.
Well, not exactly.
Warren died in 1989 at the age of 84 after one of America’s most distinguished literary careers. The Kentucky native was the nation’s first Poet Laureate and won three Pulitzer Prizes, including the 1947 award for his novel All the King’s Men. It is the classic tale of populist politician Willie Stark, who becomes corrupted by power. Sean Penn starred in the most recent movie adaptation in 2006.
All the King’s Men is one of my favorite books. I met Warren once, in 1980, when he and two fellow writers returned to Vanderbilt University in Nashville for a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of their Southern Agrarian manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand.
Warren’s birthplace in the Todd County town of Guthrie has been restored as a museum, although the 300-year-old barn in Fairfield, Conn., where he lived and wrote for 38 years, was demolished in 2003 to make way for a McMansion.
The best place now to connect with Warren is the Kentucky Library and Museum at Western Kentucky University. You enter through the side door, walk up some steps and ask at the desk. There, you’ll be directed to a small room with two noisy dehumidifiers that contains some of Warren’s most prized posessions.
After Warren’s death, his widow, the writer Eleanor Clark, left his library and most of his personal effects to WKU, which in 1987 had created the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies. Warren spent little of his adult life in Kentucky, but the state always remained close to his heart.
The room contains Warren’s well-worn chair and wooden desk, which holds his manual typewriter and reading glasses. And his hand-exerciser, a likely diversion. I’m sure even a literary lion got writer’s block now and then.
Several rows of shelves hold his large collection of books — some inscribed by the authors, who were friends; others containing his penciled notes. And there are his own copies of his own books.
What I found most interesting were albums of letters and family photos. Alone in the room, quiet except for the rattling dehumidifiers, I sat at a large table and thumbed through them.
In some ways, they weren’t like your photo albums or mine. Several pictures of Warren were stamped “The New York Times” on the back. And there were photos that included famous faces, such as a 1967 snapshot from Egypt, with Warren and William Styron, the author of Sophie’s Choice, riding camels and acting like tourists at the pyramids.
But there were many more photos that were striking because they were so typical. There were dozens of snapshots of Warren, Clark and their children, Rosanna, now a poet, and Gabriel, now a sculptor. They were photos of childhood milestones, family celebrations, picnics and good times in the back yard.
Somehow, it’s satisfying to see that one of America’s greatest authors, one of the best minds Kentucky has ever produced, looked happiest when he was playing with his children.
