Thomas Reed

Thomas Reed taught medieval and Victorian literature, film, and writing at Dickinson College for thirty years. His first novel, Seeking Hyde, grew out of courses he taught on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and was named Finalist in the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction. His second, Pocketful of Poseys, draws more broadly on his experience growing up in an academic family; his education at Yale, the University of Virginia, and as a Fulbright Fellow at Oxford; years spent living in Rome and Christchurch, N.Z.; circum-global travels with his wife and children; and courageous decisions made by his mother-in-law as she faced her death. He and wife Dottie now split their year between Sarasota, Florida, and Camp Pemigewassett, a summer camp for boys in New Hampshire.

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What’s your favorite non-reading activity?

I could actually say writing, because writing’s a little like reading a book that comes magically into being before your eyes. It’s a form of play that leaves a trail of words. I’ll say walking, though, because I really spend more time out afoot than I spend writing. I walk eight to ten miles a day, rain or shine, sometimes with my wife, sometimes alone. I don’t listen to music or to podcasts because I’m either listening to the birds, talking with my walking mate, or working through some idea or dilemma that’s been on my mind. There’s nothing like a brisk stroll to shake random thoughts down into new and more coherent patterns.

Is there a work of art that you love? Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

I love Jan van Eyck’s “Arnolfini Portrait” of a fifteenth-century Italian merchant and his wife— enough that I never go to London without visiting it in the National Gallery. Long thought to be a visual record of a wedding, it’s a masterpiece of color, symmetry, and brushwork so fine you can stand two feet away from it and think it’s a lustrous photograph. On my honeymoon in 1987, I used a post card of the painting to confirm with a Highland hotel that my wife and I were on the ground in Britain and were definitely planning to stay with them. When we arrived at the place, the woman at reception smiled and said, “So pleased that you and Mrs. Reed are joining us. I recognize you from your picture.”

Do you collect anything? If so, what? Why, and for how long?

I don’t know how many people would consider outerwear a collectible, but it definitely is, and I’ve been a collector for half a century. I think my outer clothing bent really kicked in after I read James Ramsey Ullman’s wonderful account of the first American ascent of Mt. Everest in 1963 and I learned about the revolutionary down clothing Eddie Bauer made for Big Jim Whittaker and the other climbers. I soon had a great Bauer winter jacket and vest for those cold winter walks to college classes and I’ve never looked back. I probably own six down jackets (light- to expedition-weight), four or five Gore-Tex parkas, four or five synthetic jackets and vests, a half dozen wool coats and vests, and two top-of-the line leather jackets—one short and one long. Oh, and a new waxed-cotton, wool-lined trucker jacket. I love the Fall for the glorious foliage but just as much for the chance to take the collection out of mothballs. There’s something about having just the right layer for the current conditions that makes me feel perfectly in tune with the natural world. It's weird that something so material can manage that.

What do you worry about?

Global warming. I could joke that I worry because rising temperatures are going to keep my outerwear in my closet. It’s clear, though, that humanity has never faced a greater threat, and we haven’t yet found the collective will to do anything significant about it. Scientists, governments, the corporate world, and many private individuals have seen for decades where we’re headed, yet no one has adequately articulated the sacrifices every consumer in the fossil-fuel-consuming world will have to make to save our way of life OR motivated them to make those changes. Maybe huge advances in technology will make a difference, but it’s sad to see so many nations falling short on commitments that weren’t sufficient in the first place.

What brings you great joy?

For me, there’s nothing that beats being on top of a remote mountain at sunset—partly because I’ve had to walk to get there, partly because there’s that opportunity to use the appropriate outerwear, partly because there’s something about mountaintops and epiphanies. It’s no accident that Moses went to the heights for the Ten Commandments, or that Jesus announced the New Law on the Mount, or that Mohammed and Martin Luther King went to the mountain top, or that Lennon and McCartney put their Fool on the Hill to see the world spinning ‘round. You don’t need to believe in Heaven to relish being close to the stars as they begin to spark into view. To be in such a place with friends and to retreat to a tent or a high-mountain hut for a well-deserved sleep is as close to joy itself as I can imagine coming.