Author Quest: A Sylvia Beach Hotel Odyssey
A member submission by Tricia Jones
This week’s newsletter is Part 1 of a series submitted by Sylvia Beach Hotel guest Tricia Jones about her quest to stay in every author room in the hotel after her first stay in 2022. Part of the goal of the Society newsletter is to provide a platform for reflections on our relationship with literature and the places that bring us closer to the written word and each other. See the Sylvia Beach Society’s call for submissions to learn more and inquire about submitting.
Part I
Ducklings are said to imprint on the first moving object they behold.
I was far from newborn, the five-story lodge with dark green paint was not my first hotel, and it budged not an inch when I pulled into its parking lot. But I fell in love, all right. The kind of love that sets off the longing to explore every corner and memorize each feature.
Right then my inner completist set the goal. Eventually, I had to stay in all 21 rooms at the Sylvia Beach Hotel.
It was late May in 2022. Like most longtime Oregonians, I’d heard of the hotel, but hadn’t made it a priority to visit. A friend suggested the outing several times before I drove the hour to Eugene to pick her up and travel northwest to the coast for a two-night stay.
We tugged our luggage from the adjacent parking lot; I peered into the window of the room on the northeast corner. I couldn’t see a lot in passing, but enough to want more. Linda and I registered at the front desk and got instructions for finding our respective rooms. We were welcome, our desk clerk said, to look in on any unoccupied rooms – the doors were open. How enchanting was that?
So it began for me, and so it continued for 30 months. That first spring, I thought I’d have years ahead to rotate through the authors, spending multiple nights with each one. Being retired gave me more freedom. I decided I’d average about four trips a year, or one per season. I wanted to settle into the hotel, walk the surrounding beaches, meet other guests at least once every month of the year.
We know that relaxed schedule got scuttled. In April 2024, during my 10th stay, the news broke. Like Chekhov’s cherry orchard, the hotel was sold. Perhaps guests wouldn’t hear axes sundering trees as they left for the last time, but the results would be similar. An era was over.
Until that happened, I wondered: Would I have time to occupy each room, thoughtfully furnished and appointed in singular fashion, before the doors closed and renovations began? Could I pay homage to all 21 spaces, honoring what made them stand apart from their neighbors up and down the halls? Was it possible to page through the journals documenting the love for every curation and the spirit of its resident author?
Everybody here has a Sylvia Beach journey. This was mine.
Amy Tan
Check-ins always started with the satisfying heft of a key in hand. No credit card-sized disk, no swiping in front of a touchy sensor. Instead, each guest collected a metal key attached to chain from which dangled a rectangle the size of a hotel soap bar (the room’s name on one side, a photo of its interior on the other). My first visit took me into the building’s heart – a room in the center of the hall on the center floor. My friend Linda meanwhile took up residence two doors down with Emily Dickinson.
To enter the Amy Tan room was to imitate Dorothy Gale stepping from the black-and-white of Kansas to the Technicolor of Oz. The butternut walls, sapphire-and-gold drapes, crimson accents and peacock shower curtain combined to place a guest in sumptuous splendor. Delicate, Asian-inspired touches – a well-worn suanpan (abacus), a lacquered case, tiny gift boxes – demonstrated faith in guest integrity. A chain hotel wouldn’t trust its clientele with such treasures.
A white paper lantern floated over the bed. You might expect to see the Great Wall outside the window, instead of the Newport Visual Arts Center.
I had yet to learn about the journals from past guests, so my Amy Tan visit didn’t include reading what others had to say about their stays, their impressions of the room or their history with the featured writer.
My exposure to Amy Tan was limited to her first and best-known novel, “The Joy Luck Club.” I read it shortly after its 1989 publication and hadn’t returned to it. Nor did I remember a great deal about it, except to think that I probably ought to revisit her work. Of course, I could have done so with the volumes at hand on those two late May evenings. But I was too taken with my surroundings, too eager to roam the halls, to take the time during my first stay.
Tan appeared to be a moderately popular room on subsequent visits. Not always occupied, but not neglected, either. How much of that was down to the décor and how much to the writer’s popularity, I couldn’t say.
Amy Tan did have the distinction of being one of only three SBH authors still living when I stayed in the room bearing her name. I wondered whether she would have found its environs as delightful as I did.
Ken Kesey
Almost immediately after my first visit, I started campaigning with friends and relations to organize the next one. And the next, and the one after that. Those of us who loved the Sylvia Beach wanted everyone to experience the joy we found inside the hotel’s walls.
My first taker was a friend and former newspaper colleague, Amiran. About two months after Amy Tan, I arrived for my first summertime stay and first sojourn on the third floor. Amiran and I checked into the Ken Kesey room on a mild July day. We each staked out a bed from the four singles in the room and spread our gear on the spares, making good use of the center table with four chairs as well.
Kesey was the only room without an en suite bathroom. Not to worry, though – the room key opened two other doors maybe 10 steps away, one with a sink and shower, one with a toilet and sink. The latter was right beside the third-floor public bathroom, which was handy when Kesey housed multiple occupants.
This room offered a personal connection for me unlike any other at the hotel. Of all the authors honored here, Ken Kesey was the only one I ever met. A freelance photographer traveled with me to Kesey’s Pleasant Hill farm in 1992 to cover a story for a Claremont Colleges publication on Kesey’s connection with one of the college’s professors. I kept mostly in the background as the writer of the piece, not wanting to be part of the story. But we did spend considerable time in his home and followed him out to the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta as part of his entourage.
Like the man who inspired it, the Kesey room quirked a comical eye. Tiny cups by each bed held jelly-bean “pills,” clipboards proclaimed “Property of State Mental Hospital.” The staff replenished packs of Juicy Fruit gum between check-ins. These of course were all tributes to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but there were other nods to Kesey culture in the form of logging town-themed artwork and a punching bag dangling from the ceiling.
The Kesey spread featured two windows. Though they didn’t face the ocean, the views of the neighborhood were worth catching – particularly the morning a man drifted past the horizon on a paraglider.
Kesey was often vacant when I stayed in other rooms. Most guests don’t require more than one or two beds. It can be inconvenient for anyone who has to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Still, it was a handy option for group stays, with a vibe that managed to be comforting and sassy at the same time.
Lincoln Steffens
Linda was as ready to return to SBH as I, so we planned our next foray for mid-October. She hoped to secure the Shakespeare room, and I had my eye on something else.
“Good,” said the staffer who answered the phone when I called to ask what rooms were available, and named our preferences. “It’s nice to see Steffens get some love.”
It’s embarrassing to admit I knew next to nothing about Lincoln Steffens before arriving in the SBH room dedicated to his life and craft. After all, I spent 12 years as a reporter – though very little of that was spent investigating government corruption.
Nevertheless, I was enchanted with the antique Underwood with manual carriage holding pride of place on the bedside desk. The Steffens room was a clean, spare space with angular accents. Touches of blue softened the austerity. It was well suited for contemplation. But far from isolated, given its second-floor placement with rooms on either side and across the hall.
We hear little of Steffens today, even though it could be argued we need his ilk more than ever. That obscurity may account for the registering clerk’s remark. Most ocean-facing rooms were in demand, but few guests probably felt a kinship with the early 19th-century muckraker.
Yet his room included framed photos of an older Steffens with his young son, proving he was a doting father as well as a fierce guardian of public morals. One of the room’s journals testified that the Steffens room was no squelcher of romance. In it was an entry from a previous guest who proposed marriage to his beloved within its walls.
She said yes.
Agatha Christie
Rarely on my frequent visits to SBH did I walk down the first-floor hall and get a glimpse inside the doors of Agatha Christie. All three of the hotel’s oceanfront so-called Classics were favorites, to be sure. And Christie’s online description once called it the most popular room.
I might question that designation, although more about that later. Still, the celebrated mystery writer’s room was in as much demand as reprints of her murderous plots. Its private deck and working fireplace made the cozy British abode a splurge, so moving in for a couple of nights called for celebration.
Luckily for me, given my once-a-season itinerary at that time, our household has a winter birthday. I decided it was time to introduce my husband, Alan, to the hotel to mark his special day in February. And even though he is not a reader, he instantly understood my infatuation with each floor, from daylight basement to attic.
The Christie room’s Edwardian charms reportedly were boosted by bits of business referencing the cases facing sleuths Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. I noticed only the bullets lodged over the headboard.
Winter may be off-season, but it was a perfect time to take up residence in Christie. The forest green and crimson palette warmed and cheered, and the scarcity of other guests meant Alan could tour almost every room with me when we prowled the corridors. We awoke in the middle of the first night to a full moon over the water outside the west-facing window. Late sparks from the fading fire popped into the early hours.
This was my first stay on the first floor. Given the deserted nature of early February at a beachside resort, it was comforting rather than intrusive to realize that the hotel’s front desk was just a few steps around the corner from Christie’s front door. In those times, someone was on duty for 24 hours – a welcome presence for those of us who worry “what-if” should there be some emergency.
As a longtime Christie fan, it was sad to say goodbye to her spacious, well-lit room at the end of our stay. But already I was looking forward to spring, and the prospect of settling in with the next author.
Virginia Woolf
On an early May day nearly a year after contracting SylviaBeachitis, I motored from Roseburg to Newport with a friend from Chicago, not knowing which of two rooms I’d be sleeping in that night.
Leslie’s status as resident of a landlocked state made her game for just about anything on the Oregon Coast. I’d asked her to go online and choose a handful of SBH room options for our foray. We booked two of them and I invited her to decide once we arrived and inspected both.
She opted for Fitzgerald upstairs. That put me in a room of my own with Virginia Woolf. I felt at home immediately.
Woolf then featured burnt-orange walls set off by warm tones in the yellow-to-red spectrum. Its first-floor windows faced the ocean but were level with side parking lot; however, I don’t recall being bothered by comings and goings of other guests. The vibe was at once Bloomsburyesque and reminiscent of an English country home. Whoever designed it was familiar with the work of Woolf’s artist sister, Vanessa Bell.
A head-and-shoulder image of Woolf was painted on the inside of the door. Her expression was noncommittal, as if she was still making up her mind about the person she beheld.
Subsequent visits proved that few were afraid of Virginia Woolf. The room tended to be filled perhaps three-quarters of the time.
Checkout was easy for me because I knew I’d be back in just over a month. And the next visit was going to be something special – my best friend’s wedding, upstairs on a deck overlooking the sea.
More installments of Tricia’s Author Quest are planned for future newsletters, and will be linked here once published.
Tricia Jones spent most of her career as a newspaper reporter, features writer and editor in three Western states. When not reading or researching obscure trivia, she joins her husband in attempting to manage two strong-willed schipperkes in their Roseburg home. She can be reached at triciajones421@gmail.com.
Thank you for sharing these.
The glimpses into each curated room is one of the best mysteries that the Sylvia Beach Hotel gifted to its guests. To walk down the corridors and see each and every room was a delight. Imagination was spurred and you strode into something special.
"Agatha Christie" room is a delight. Though I never saw it in person, I'm glad you shared it.
"Lincoln Steffens" was my first room. It was a cozy room that was warm, welcoming, and helped share the rest of the hotel. With its size, it encouraged you to spend hours in the library. There you would meet other guests, write, read, or stare out the window at those that braved the winds.
Thank you for consistently sharing and helping keep the memory of a unique place alive, as well as a community.
Beautiful, bright, bubbly. Cheers 🥂