25 Plan of Attack

Combined, Hopper's etchings, watercolors, sketches and oils number over 1,000. I had to limit my search to oil paintings on canvas after 1922 that hang in public museums. I excluded private collections because my interest was in what the average American felt, and I wanted the painting to hang in a place where any average American could go see it. I also started from 1922 because I felt when looking through his work (and most art historians agree) that Hopper's mature style really began then, with New York Restaurant. This left me with 47 cities.

To fund the trips to see the paintings, I kept my day job as a medical editor and divided the country into regions that I could drive around when I had enough money and vacation time: New England, The Great Plains, Ohio, the Mid-Atlantic, California, Texas, Virginia, and a few stray cities on their own. I would be tracking Hopper, who often drove across the country, ogling the people and places. Many times, I felt I had entered his footsteps or paintings. I stayed in Hopperesque lonely hotel rooms. I toured garish roadside attractions. I ate in a million Nighthawks cafes.

13 What I Was In For

Forty-seven towns. Over one hundred Hopper paintings. Nearly a thousand interviews.

A mere four-hour drive from Chicago, Muskegon had been a trial run. Without too much investment, I could see whether people were interested in Hopper's art and my question. But Miriam's plea made me feel that I had an obligation to see this through.

Little did she know it, but she launched me on an adventure that would take me backstage at New York's Museum of Modern Art; into a bank president's office; on a tour of the strictest town in America with the former mayor as my chauffeur; inside a major corporation's headquarters; onto the campus of posh Phillips Andover prep school; and down an endless road of dingy travelers' hotels, restaurants, and roadside attractions. I would meet a man who was a freelance art curator and got into the business by going blind; a Yale professor who hosted a dinner party to discuss my subject; a woman who was an up-and-coming star on the national fine arts scene; a man working as a greeter on the deck of the very ship where he had been the crew's dentist 40 years previously; a homeless man who was a big art fan; and a million other people with stories as compelling as the characters in Hopper's paintings.