Last month, at the height of leaf-peeping season, we packed up our gear and drove north from Brooklyn to Susan Orlean’s house near Rhinebeck, New York. We were excited both for our day trip and the shoot, which had been scheduled for more than a month. We’d taken advantage of the long lead time to do some research on Susan’s Architectural-Digest-worthy home, and we were fixated on her windows. From the photos we saw in the New York Times, the house looked like it had more windows than walls. Because shooting video against windows can be tricky, we were worried that her library would be too bright and that we’d have to shoot the interview in her chicken coop.
As soon as we arrived, Susan took us on a brief tour of her bookshelves, so that we could figure out the best place to shoot. We gasped, and not just at the beautiful views. Some of the cases spanned entire walls, beneath the aforementioned windows. Then she led us to the newly-finished, windowless library (it featured skylights instead). We restrained ourselves from high-fiving each other. No windows! Without a debate, we unpacked our lights and cameras.
When we say that the house that Susan built with her husband, John Gillespie, is worthy of Architectural Digest, we don’t want give the impression that the house is a museum. Yes, it’s a marvel of stone, wood and glass set atop a hill with no neighbors in sight. At the same time, it feels amazingly comfortable and lived-in. A lot of the art, whether painting, sculpture or knick-knack, follows a farm-animal theme. We saw likenesses of chickens, eggs, birds, cows, dogs, fish, ducks, horses, pigs, and at least one swan. Not to mention Susan’s real-life dog, cats and chickens. We couldn’t help but make the connection to E. B. White, another New Yorker writer who moved from the city to the country mid-career and wrote some great stories about farm animals. Who knows, maybe Susan’s story about raising chickens in the Sept. 28 issue of The New Yorker is her own, One Woman’s Meat?
In which the author explains how books about real life are better than fiction.
First editions from her grandmother feature prominently in Jennifer Gilmore’s library.
