Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film.
The only thing I remember of the novel is the comparison to Martin Amis made by the reviews, which may have been why I picked it up, and I mention it here only because, a few years later when I was studying at the University of Sussex and living in Brighton, my friend and fellow student Sean happened to be living in the house in which the novel had been written. We climbed the steep stairs to the attic room and there was the desk on which it was written, bathed in sunlight from a steeply sloping window. That was it.
In June 1912, Kafka, accompanied by Max Brod, visited Weimar as a pilgrimage to Goethe's city. He records it in his travel diary:
Walked at night to the Goethehaus. Recognised it at once. All of it a yellowish-brown colour. Felt the whole of our previous life share in the immediate impression. The dark windows of the uninhabited rooms. The light-coloured bust of Juno. Touched the wall. White shades pulled part way down in all the rooms. Fourteen windows facing on the street. The chain on the door. No picture quite catches the whole of it. The uneven surface of the square, the fountain, the irregular alignment of the house along the rising slope of the square. The dark, rather tall windows in the midst of the brownish-yellow. Even without knowing it was the Goethehaus, the most impressive middle-class house in Weimar.The next day, they go inside:
Reception rooms. Quick look into the study and bedroom. Sad, reminding one of dead grandfathers. The garden that had gone on growing since Goethe's death. The beech tree darkening his study. While we were still sitting below on the landing, she ran past us with her little sister.
She is Margarethe Kirchner, the teenage daughter of the Goethehaus' custodian, known as Grete. Kafka becomes infatuated, seeking out her company at every turn. She is polite but clearly not interested. The great writer and his house are relegated to a backdrop to his unhappiness:
Box bed. Slept. Parrot in the court calling Grete.
If a person could only pour sorrow out the window.
I choke up at the thought of having to leave.
Two weeks later, he meets Felice Bauer. I have often wondered if the encounter at the Goethehaus was as significant as the one in Prague, momentous as that was, and was disappointed that Reiner Stach's biography lets it pass as a short diversion from the main story.
The only other writer's house I've visited, that is a writer who wasn't already a friend or indeed the house of the writer whose body I inhabit, was Goethe's, more aware of following in Kafka's footsteps, seeing what he saw. In particular, I wanted to find where Max Brod took this photo of Kafka and Grete in the garden and have my photo taken there too, but for some reason that day the garden was closed. Back home, I discovered the plastic tag I should have handed in before stepping onto the creaking floorboards.
It is clear from visiting a writer's house, you can't step into the same river, not even once.