Freezing in Salem
Brenda Wineapple, at work on a biography on Nathaniel Hawthorne, reports that she “froze to death” in Salem, Mass., on Monday as a guest on C-SPAN's American Writers show about the author who made Salem famous.
Wineapple, the Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, was interviewed for the live, two-and-a-half-hour show outside the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, also known as the House of Seven Gables that inspired Hawthorne's classic 1851 novel.
Wineapple was seated in a garden “whipped by cold winds blowing off the sea— very New England and very Hawthorne-y,” she says. “After a break, they covered us with blankets and jackets.”
As with other shows in the C-SPAN series, the guests took questions from callers, one of whom was interested in a connection between Hawthorne and The Music Man.
The show will air again on Friday, May 25, at 8 p.m. on C-SPAN.