It's a fascinating article -- the sheer size of some of these collections of writers' papers; the business of buying collections; the ambition of the center to be the top scholarly archive in the country; and the personality of its raconteur director Thomas F. Staley (a James Joyce scholar, no less -- the center's holdings on Joyce are remarkable). Read the article online at The New Yorker web site while it's still available here.
The story, written by D.T. Max, fills me with admiration for archives and what they mean to literary history and heritage. It also makes me want to read more Don DeLillo, because of his connection Joyce and David Foster Wallace, as this excerpt shows:
One day this spring, I flew to Austin to take a look at the Don DeLillo archive. The Bronx-born writer, whose papers Staley acquired in 2004 for half a million dollars, fits into the Ransom’s collection well: for one thing, DeLillo is part of a node of expansive American fiction that goes back to Philip Roth and forward to novelists such as Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, and David Foster Wallace; DeLillo has corresponded with all of these writers. DeLillo counts Joyce as an influence, so he connects to the modernist node. And he has kept engaging, detailed notebooks that shed light on the intellectual foundation of his novels. Most important, he writes on a manual typewriter, producing draft after draft of his work, allowing scholars a chance to see his creative mind at work.
D.T. Max is my new favorite journalist. He also wrote a really good NYT mag piece on Happiness 101, about researchers who study true happiness.
As for the Ransom Center, it's that kind of UT effort that makes me wanna shout "Hook 'em, Horns!"
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