Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City

16 For a Writer, a Home with a Hideout: ROXANA ROBINSON AND HER HUSBAND ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE (July 12, 2009)

9 5 16 For a Writer, a Home with a Hideout Roxana Robinson and Her Husband on the Upper East Side JULy 12, 2009 The novelist Roxana Robinson in her Classic 8 on the Upper East Side. (James Estrin/The New York Times) 9 6 The novelist Roxana Robinson, who lives in a Classic 8 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, can reel off many of the unusual ways that writers have found quiet and solitude in which to practice their craft. Ernest Hemingway holed up in a cheap apartment without electricity above a sawmill in Paris. The short-story writer Raymond Carver wrote in the front seat of his car, a pad balanced on his lap. When the essayist Annie Dillard, writing in the library in Hollins College, became overly fond of watching the comings and goings in the parking lot outside her window, she drew a sketch of the scene, closed the Venetian blinds, and taped the sketch onto the blinds. Ms. Robinson, whose home is an 11-story red-brick apartment house on East 68th Street near Park Avenue, writes in an 8-by-10-square-foot space that faces a tan brick wall and was formerly a maid’s room. In décor and design, the space is as spare as a monk’s cell. The spartan furnishings include a brown wooden chair, a small white bureau, a cotton rug, and an old-fashioned metal radiator whose gray paint is peeling . A white coverlet lies atop a twin bed. The only possible distraction comes from the set of shelves filled with children’s books for visiting youngsters. The first thing in the morning, after having had her coffee but before speaking to anyone, Ms. Robinson retreats to this room, sits cross-legged on the bed, places her laptop on her knees, and writes for several hours. These austere quarters are hardly her only option. At the opposite end of the sprawling apartment, where she and her husband, Hamilton, a retired investment banker, have lived for 12 years, is a welcoming study that would seem the ideal lair for a novelist. This room is considerably larger than the onetime maid’s quarters and combines the necessities of 21st-century life—computer, printer, fax machine—with immense personality , thanks to works of art and memorabilia that paint an indelible portrait of its occupant and her highly textured world. Ms. Robinson, whose works include an acclaimed biography of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and most recently the novel Cost, realizes that in choosing the unprepossessing small room over the more lavishly decorated larger one, she has rejected a space most writers would kill for. But over the years she has given a great deal of thought to why certain spaces encourage the writing life and others seem to inhibit it, and she has come to understand why she made the choice she did. f O R A w R I T E R , A H O M E w I T H A H I d E O U T 9 7 “I did everything but write in that room,” Ms. Robinson says of the study. “I paid bills. I printed things out. I sent faxes. I was connected to the Internet. The assumption is that writers can write wherever they can sit down. But the main thing you need as a writer is a sense of certainty that you won’t be interrupted.” Distance from the Internet is part of the issue, especially in these ultrawired days, hence the popularity among writers of a device that temporarily blocks connection to the Web. Ms. Robinson herself says that her idea of freedom is turning off the Internet for a few hours. But having a physical space that offers minimal distraction is equally critical. Especially for a writer living in New York, distraction can be the unwelcome flip side of inspiration. The buzzy activity that invigorates and offers food for thought can make it impossible to concentrate. The building where Ms. Robinson lives embodies both those elements. The Art Deco apartment house, which was constructed in 1931, sits in one of the most congested parts of the most congested borough. Yet once through the front door, past the owls, rabbits, and squirrels carved on the façade, residents enter a far more tranquil world. This is partly because the apartment house and its sister residence on East...