Sunday, May 01, 2005
Ransom Center Gets Mailer Papers
Wow. Somehow I missed this announcement last week. If those snotty New Yorkers were shocked and outraged over the DeLillo deal,* what will they have to say about this?
From the Guardian (UK):
Mailer sells his papers to Texas
The American literary giant Norman Mailer has sold a vast collection of his papers to the University of Texas in Austin for $2.5m (1.3m).
Mailer, 82, has handed over documents weighing almost nine tonnes and ranging from war letters he wrote to his first wife, Beatrice Silverman, which formed the basis for his first published novel, The Naked and the Dead, to dog identification tags, sales receipts and cancelled cheques.
The collection, which was bought by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, also includes correspondence with the novelist and essayist James Baldwin on civil rights, the writer Joan Didion on literature and the poet Robert Lowell on Vietnam.
There are also a dozen finished screenplays, French aviation scrapbooks and observations on New York graffiti art.
'I have always had the most intense feelings about Texas, both pro and con. In a funny way, what I am saying about America - that I love it and hate it when it goes bad on me - I can say about Texas,' said Mailer, who lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in a speech in Austin this week.
He said he had chosen the Ransom Center because it had one of the finest collections of literary archives in America.
However, he had given considerable thought to the fact that his papers would be archived in President George W Bush's home state. He was concerned that 'some damn fool... Texas legislator could stand up and say, 'What's this Ransom library doing with that atheist Norman Mailer?'' "
*Actually, there was no real outrage over the announcement that the DeLillo papers were coming to UT, though Salon.com's indie publishing guy, Scott Thill (who has written elsewhere on all things "indy" and can be reached, as you might expect from a guy who specializes in indy culture, at his aol.com mail account) did use the announcement to take a few cheap shots at Texas, something that didn't go unnoticed by Katherine Pelletier over at the HRC.
UT's press release on the acquisition is here. ¶ 12:37 AM
From the Guardian (UK):
Mailer sells his papers to Texas
The American literary giant Norman Mailer has sold a vast collection of his papers to the University of Texas in Austin for $2.5m (1.3m).
Mailer, 82, has handed over documents weighing almost nine tonnes and ranging from war letters he wrote to his first wife, Beatrice Silverman, which formed the basis for his first published novel, The Naked and the Dead, to dog identification tags, sales receipts and cancelled cheques.
The collection, which was bought by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, also includes correspondence with the novelist and essayist James Baldwin on civil rights, the writer Joan Didion on literature and the poet Robert Lowell on Vietnam.
There are also a dozen finished screenplays, French aviation scrapbooks and observations on New York graffiti art.
'I have always had the most intense feelings about Texas, both pro and con. In a funny way, what I am saying about America - that I love it and hate it when it goes bad on me - I can say about Texas,' said Mailer, who lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in a speech in Austin this week.
He said he had chosen the Ransom Center because it had one of the finest collections of literary archives in America.
However, he had given considerable thought to the fact that his papers would be archived in President George W Bush's home state. He was concerned that 'some damn fool... Texas legislator could stand up and say, 'What's this Ransom library doing with that atheist Norman Mailer?'' "
*Actually, there was no real outrage over the announcement that the DeLillo papers were coming to UT, though Salon.com's indie publishing guy, Scott Thill (who has written elsewhere on all things "indy" and can be reached, as you might expect from a guy who specializes in indy culture, at his aol.com mail account) did use the announcement to take a few cheap shots at Texas, something that didn't go unnoticed by Katherine Pelletier over at the HRC.
UT's press release on the acquisition is here. ¶ 12:37 AM
