Where is Fellowship Point?
The question I have been asked most often since I’ve been in Maine this week is…where is the real Fellowship Point? Or people have told me they know where it is. Somehow saying it exists only in the novel doesn’t go far toward dispelling the notion that there is a real place that could be visited.
Every time someone asks I think of the the answer newspaperman Francis Pharcellis Church gave to a child named Virginia when her friends told her there was no Santa Claus.
Original exchange between Virginia and Church
It’s a stirring answer, if a bit dated. It gets at something important about imagination that explains how Fellowship Point exists. It is behind the veil that separates the material world and the unseen realms. I made it up. It developed as I saw my characters walking around the point itself and visiting the graveyard and having meetings outside. It is inextricable from the story; dramatic necessity created the place. It bears resemblance to existing places because Maine is so particular in its flora and fauna and especially its light. To describe a made up place brings it very close to reality, so close people feel a sense of recognition.
The imagination is fascinating and powerful, and I fear as a culture we are losing our respect for it—has fake news become conflated with it in a damaging way? When I think of the role imagination plays in creating the future, I become convinced that it should be a subject taught in school, with caveats about potential misuses and guidelines for how to develop it to help in all areas of life.
Meanwhile I am in the real Maine and looking out at a real point. It’s so beautiful hours pass as I stare at the ocean. Fall is close. Santa Claus is hard at work.
Alex Katz, a painter of Maine light
What will $25,000,000 buy you in Maine these days?
When I was teaching 8th grade English, we used a Jack London short story, "To Build a Fire" to illustrate what might happen if you lacked an imagination. Just like the man in the story, you would be unable to foresee problems because you would not be able to imagine what could arise.