Read Your Way Through Maine
Read Your Way Around the World is a series exploring the globe through books.In American fiction, my state is code for outpost. Maine is where you send a character you want to get rid of, someone who goes off to raise goats, farm oysters, prep for the apocalypse — or write a novel. Apart from California, I can think of no other state in the Union that lives as strongly in the national collective imagination as a place to play out a festering dream.I was in my mid-20s, waitressing on an island off the coast of Rockland, Maine, when the actor William Hurt — ultrafamous, at the height of his career — sat down in my section. I’d heard rumors that morning that he was on island, as they say, on a solo “soul-searching” sail up the coast and that his navigational equipment had broken down. He’d c...