Walking through Graceland, it is easy to forget you are still in Chicago. It’s spacious, full of trees, a pond and obviously thousands of gravestones. It’s a good place to go when you need a reprieve from your computer screen and maybe also a not so subtle reminder that life is short and that if you have aspirations to write the next best American novel, you better get to it. Standing in front of the Dexter Graves Monument (which looks a bit like a mash-up between a Dementor from Harry Potter stories and the sort of cloaked figure you might encounter twisting its way through the dark corridors of any number of gothic novels) is the surest way to shake off any inertia.
