One resists pushing the autobiographical too far, yet the House on Lincoln Avenue, decaying New England and the decay of his own family before his very eyes—Dean, hopelessly addicted and very nearly a ghost, haunted the house in the flesh—must have had something to do with "The House on the Hill" and other "houses" in the long catalogue: Cavender's, Matthias’, Old King Cole’s, and above all that notable one with "the stairway to the sea," to mention only a few.