Thought you might like to see this about our friends down the road.
>>> Daniel Traister <traister@pobox.upenn.edu> 01/20/00 11:57AM >>>
This article is freely available today only at the New York Times website;
it bears directly on topics of interest to ExLibris readers
<http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/012000austin-papers.html>.
The New York Times
January 20, 2000
ARTS IN AMERICA
How to Lure Writers to an
Afterlife in Texas
By MEL GUSSOW
AUSTIN, Tex. -- When Thomas F. Staley calls,
writers know that money and posterity are on the
line. Under Mr. Staley's direction, the Harry Ransom
Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas
at Austin has strengthened its position as one of the
world's primary repositories of literary archives. Once,
when an author asked for three reasons that his papers
ought to be at Austin, Mr. Staley said, "Graham Greene,
Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce."
An author who chooses Texas has
the assurance of being in great
company. If the writer is a
playwright, Mr. Staley's reasons
could be George Bernard Shaw,
Samuel Beckett and Tom
Stoppard. In each writer's case,
and those of 1,700 others, most or
a substantial amount of the
author's papers (manuscripts,
books, letters and journals) are on
file at the Ransom center. Mr.
Staley, who also teaches Joyce
and modern English literature at
the University of Texas, is
carrying on the work begun in 1957 by Harry H.
Ransom, the university's chancellor.
Texas is, of course, one of many universities (and
libraries) specializing in literary archives. Often there
is some overlap from one institution to another. Keats
is at Harvard. Boswell and Ruskin are at Yale, as are
the letters of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West, but most
of Wells is at the University of Illinois. Virginia Woolf
and Athol Fugard are at the University of Indiana. V. S.
Naipaul has gone to the University of Tulsa, along with
Jean Rhys. Paul Scott is at Austin and Tulsa.. Paul
Bowles is both in Austin and at the University of
Delaware. Faulkner is mostly at the University of
Virginia, and the Sitwells are mostly in Austin. The
Brownings are at Baylor University in Waco.
Although many Americans are at the University of
Texas, the emphasis is on British writers. Objections
have been raised in the British press, with some calling
the one-way traffic a scandal stripping the country of its
cultural heritage. Of course, there are British writers
whose archives remain on home ground (Harold
Pinter's papers are on loan to the British Library), but
more and more have been tempted by offers from
universities in the United States.
Brian Friel's play "Give Me Your Answer, Do!"
(recently presented off Broadway by the Roundabout
Theater) raises provocative questions about the
disposition of literary estates. The central conflict in
the play is between two Irish novelists, one
exceedingly popular, the other more artistic and
therefore less successful. The first has sold his archive
to a university in Texas for a healthy price, but his
friend and rival eventually rejects a similar opportunity
although he desperately needs the money.
He wonders if such a sale would signify that his career
was at an end. For him, there is also something tainted
if not immoral about depositing his papers in a
university, especially an American one determined to
buy all Irish writers of consequence.
For authors there is also the question of privacy. By
placing their papers in a collection they are putting
themselves on public display, which is why some
restrict access. For example, at the request of Thomas
Pynchon, his letters in the Morgan Library in New York
are not available even to scholars. There are similar
restrictions on the J. D. Salinger letters in the Austin
collection.
Many writers might not think that the sale of papers
poses a dilemma: If Texas or Tulsa wants your archive,
sell it, and get the best price. From Mr. Staley's
perspective, the acquisition is an entirely positive
pursuit. "Literary reputations ebb and flow," he has
said, "yet the purchase by a research library of a living
writer's archive represents a contemporary ratification
of the writer's place in the literary canon."
Mr. Staley, who read the Friel play in an early version
but did not see it, is amused by the idea that he (not
mentioned by name in the play) could be regarded as a
predator. From his point of view, he and those in
charge of collections at other universities are rescuers.
In a recent interview in Austin, Mr. Staley said that
writers can be disorganized about their papers. Several
years ago he visited Mr. Stoppard at his home in
England and was distressed to find that the playwright's
papers were strewn around his study and in another
building on his property. He said that Mr. Stoppard had
told him, with some accuracy, "What you want is
mostly stuff I would throw away: notes on this and
that."
When the playwright's papers arrived at Austin, they
included wedding invitations and his list of favorite
songs for his appearance on the BBC radio show
"Desert Island Discs" as well as manuscripts of his
plays.
Last year Mr. Staley visited Arthur Miller at his home
in Connecticut. "While I was there," he said, "he told
me that he found a box. He thought it was filled with
roofing nails." But when Mr. Miller opened it, he found
valuable notebooks and a short story. Mr. Staley, who
has many of Mr. Miller's papers, hopes to add the
contents of that box to his collection.
Some writers save every scrap of paper as if it were
celestial dust, but that is not necessarily a guarantee that
the archive is valuable or even intact. Early drafts of
novels and plays can go astray. A university offers a
safe place and the expertise of a conservation
department that sorts an archive and enters it on a
computer database.
In selecting whose papers to acquire, Mr. Staley has to
look to the future and focus on writers he thinks will be
the subject of biographies and other literary
scholarship. He said he wants to believe the writer has
a stature that will endure, or if the writer is new ands
promising, that he will be able to sustain a career. The
principal goal is to collect the complete papers rather
than a single original manuscript.
Occasionally he buys the papers of a lesser artist if
there is a close association with a major figure. That
was the case with Stuart Gilbert, a friend of Joyce who
wrote an early book about "Ulysses." After Gilbert's
death in 1969, his wife kept the collection in her
apartment in Paris. When the archive was sold to
Texas, Mr. Staley discovered a typescript of the first
chapter of "Finnegans Wake" with corrections written
in Joyce's hand. That, he said, "was worth more than
the whole archive" of Mr. Gilbert.
Sometimes writers and other artists have made
discoveries while exploring archives. Visiting Austin,
Stephen Spender found a novel of his that he had
forgotten and had it published. Vanessa Redgrave came
across Tennessee Williams's early play "Not About
Nightingales" and was instrumental in having it
produced.
Often universities work through intermediaries, some of
whom are book dealers. Often there are widows and
widowers and executors. Naturally, payment varies.
"They talk about million-dollar collections," Mr. Staley
said. "I've never been close to that." He said the I. B.
Singer collection, one of the most expensive, was
valued at half a million dollars, part of which was paid
by a donor.
Recently he bought the papers of Doris Lessing and
Arnold Wesker and -- a rare Texas acquisition --
Terrence McNally, who was born in Corpus Christi.
What about Mr. Friel, whose play is so skeptical about
the sale of literary archives? Mr. Staley said he was
considering contacting him about selling his papers to
the Ransom center. If Mr. Friel agreed, it would be a
case of life contradicting art.