A new Voluminous podcast, ‘Elizabeth and the New York Boys’. Elizabeth referring to the two respite visits he took, via two ferries from New York City, to reach the more sedate Elizabeth. Which he called Elizabethtown…

Elizabethtown is a balm, a sedative, & a tonic to the old-fashion’d soul rackt with modernity.

Also a purgative of a sort, as due to…

the memory of weird things I had seen at twilight in Elizabethtown

… he quickly wrote his first story in a long while. He also later dreamed of the place, visiting it in a dream with Benjamin Franklin.

The rest of the letter is a whirlwind of people and places, including writing “The Shunned House”. All of which is hard not to see as effectively displacement activity which served to mask the impending collapse of his short marriage to Sonia. This circumstance and timing also helps to illuminate the final “elbow” in “The Shunned House”.