My apologies for the dearth of posting this week. I’ve been on vacation in Wisconsin, for a family reunion. During the vacation, we traveled all over the state visiting tourist attractions my mother didn’t get to as a child. One of those places was the House on the Rock in Spring Green. I’ve been there before, but I didn’t get to see the carousel. This time, I did. It was everything I’d hoped it would be and more.
I’ve never been able to make a formal top ten list of my favorite books. The ranking is a problem. Reading new wonderful books keeps the entire thing in flux. One book that has stayed on the revolving list is Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. After I read the book, I was delighted to learn that the House on the Rock portrayed in the book was a real place. When I first visited it, I was even more delighted to learn that Gaiman’s version was incredibly close to the actual place. I got to see more of the place this time and it felt like walking into the major scene in the book where the protagonists use the House to meet inside Mr. Wednesday’s mind. Pieces of the book came back to me as I walked: the mechanical orchestras, the Burma Shave ads, and, of course, the carousel.
The House itself is bizarre and fascinating. But it’s the exhibits on the ground around the House that stick in the memory. My nephew had a fistful of token that he used on the mechanicals scattered throughout the exhibits. I think he managed to see all of them. The longer I wandered through the meandering exhibits, the more the place felt endless. The floor is uneven. The lights are dim. Around each corner is something that I could never in a million years have expected. The House on the Rock requires stamina and I recall American Gods’ protagonist, Shadow, complaining about why they didn’t take a shortcut and being told that sometimes the shortest way is to travel in a spiral. I saw exhibits of creepy dolls and exotic Orientalia and recreated Victorian businesses and a gigantic tableau of a whale being attacked by a squid.
And then, at the end of a long, black passage way, I saw a red glow. I had, at last, spotted the carousel. The red glow grew as I walked closer. Then, I was there. The carousel whirled past to the music of a mechanical orchestra. A choir of angels circled the top. Every picture I took was blur because of the speed of the carousel.
It is the strangest feeling to stand in a place one has only been through fiction. I really felt that I had been in this place before. Gaiman’s description of the place was vivid—not too much detail, but each detail was crucial. I really felt like I was walking into the book and I would run into Shadow at the next corner. The two ideas I had of the House on the Rock—the fictional one and the real one—merged in my head. When I next reread American Gods, I wonder if my head will explode when the characters travel to the House on the Rock.