I'm standing in front of a house outside Cleveland, half-waiting for a spaceship to arrive. When it finally appears, blotting out the sky, I will crane my neck and stare at its sleek, impossible angles. People will shout, point, and run. But I don't see it.
Instead, the house at 1652 Lincoln Avenue sits quiet. It was built in 1917 of stone brick with a front porch. The house is a duplex, split in two by an interior wall I can only imagine. There is a single dormer window sticking out from the attic, perched towards the sky. There is a big tree on the left, whose tips are already turning to fire, here in the September sun. The front door is closed.
When I decided to organize a new edition of Clare Winger Harris's stories, I knew I wanted to see the place she once lived in Lakewood, Ohio. But as I stare at her old house, I see little in the way of connection. There are some old grating and windowsills that may have survived the century, but that's about it. The old bones are there, but the paint is new. People still live here, but there is no one home, so I don't push it.
What's to push, anyway? This wasn't William Faulkner's house. Or Emily Dickinson's. It didn't belong to Langston Hughes, who went to high school in Cleveland. No, this was the house of Clare Winger Harris, who wrote weird science fiction in the early decades of the 20th century. If I rang the bell and announced that, like I was some door-to-door literary merit salesman, I can easily guess the reply:
Who?
