Miserable cartographer that I am, I invite my readers to the challenge of drawing a map of the Revson Estate to include in a future edition with credit given to the winning drafter.

Since the beginning of storytelling there have been maps of imaginary worlds. There is a map of the meandering journey of Homer’s hero Ulysses from Troy to Ithaca, through the Aegean Sea, which took ten years. Or Jonathan Swift’s maps of the travels of Lemuel Gulliver to lilliput, Brufuscu and Brobdingnag in the South Sea islands off the coast of Sumatra. In fantasy fiction the more complex and diverse the worlds within a world a map is all but necessary; think the Hobbit with its map of Middle Earth. It perhaps was JRR Tolkien’s map which gave William Faulkner’s the idea to map out from his imagination the place where most of the action in his novels take place, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi (his publisher demanded it). A map elevates a place to a mythic dimension.

Which makes the mystical Revson Estate a perfect candidate. The property itself is one of the main characters of the novel; the way it creaks, opens its French Doors in the wind, or locks them, the hum of the pool’s filtration system, the glass greenhouse with its spinning Rooster weather vane, the front hall’s  glass ceilinged atrium with its shaking crystal chandelier, the heaving of the Estate’s floor boards during the scene with the fire, not to forget the earth tremoring below the gravel drive, or the cotton white mist which covers it.  In the real world the Revson Estate is a real place, with a reservoir wooded area known as Devil’s Den. This is the world where most of the story’s action takes place, in the suburban countryside of Fairfield County, Connecticut (the town I grew up in, Weston).

The novel gives dimensions of its property boundaries.  There’s the fields and ponds beyond the West wall, which runs north from Old Hyde Road in the “real” running south past the enchanted Fountain Statue, to the town school’s playing fields, fenced off from the property by a row of fir trees which runs east to Eugene’s Greenhouse in the eastern corner, nestled in beside the stone wall which separates the mystical Revson Estate from the outside world to the east, surrounded by woods where Memphis Topheles makes an appearance as a deer hunter.  The stone wall runs north past a grove of pines, past Sharon’s Garden, making an abrupt turn further east to the Tennis courts at the foot of the expansive front lawn with its bed of vibrantly colored flowers at its center.

With its varied themes, symbolism and topical issues, American Faust lends itself to writing a school essay on many subjects; literary devices, film inspirations, chapters based upon famous fictional works; the line between fantasy and reality; the “Metoo#” movement, male privilege and female fate, the lure of Beauty cosmetics in popular culture, biblical underpinnings and the meaning of Club Heaven and Hell, symbolism of place and the social gatherings of different time periods. The study questions for book clubs (see below) also give suggestions for paper topics.  Submit your paper here, 500 words or less, and the best will be published on this site. For the very best, inclusion in a future published edition of the novel. 

For aspiring writers, try your hand at writing some fan fiction! Create a story around one or more of the main characters in different time period or social gathering.