The first exhibit you’re likely to encounter at the new American Writers Museum is a temporary installation.
Longer on gadgetry than on literature, AWM is all about the breezy quote and the glitzy busywork toys that are now the currency of the exhibit industry: push a button, spin a wheel, drag an icon, and the gadgets spit out a thimbleful of data. It’s American Lit 101 (and more), the nutshell version. The books? Look up when you first walk in: a lot of them are stapled to a framework hanging just below the ceiling.
There’s also a projected “waterfall of words,” an invitation to sit down at a typewriter and add your own lines to an ongoing story, and a Mind of a Writer gallery with more touch-and-drag screens—you can find out which author fired up with a brownie or with alcohol, tap on a word and see its origin pop up, and win points by filling in the blanks in a poem.
Or maybe, like the ecological musings visitors are invited to write on pieces of paper that’ll be shipped back to the Merwin property in Hawaii, it’ll be mulch. v
