Texas and Literature

In the rest of the world you don't often hear 'Texas' and 'literature' in the same breath. Not even here in the 'only state in the U.S. that was once an independent nation.' [Not that there is not great Texas Literature. Still sports talk surely outpaces literary talk in most circles here.]

But the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has collected literary archives that include a Gutenberg bible and letters and manuscripts from writers like James Joyce and Norman Mailer as well as books, photographs and personal effects.

The windows of the center are etched with illustrations from the collection, see above. (Disclaimer...photo was made in 2005.)

The Harry Ransom Center is well-known to librarians and archivists around the world. Apparently writers of renown (especially in the English-speaking world) and their heirs talk about "selling to Texas" as a way of raising some money late in life or just cleaning out the storage room. The Center puts on some fascinating exhibits from the vast store of materials, too.

The Center and its director, Tom Staley, are the subject of an article in the June 11/18 issue of "The New Yorker." Sometimes I envision getting a researcher's card and going to the center and seeing the actual archives. But since it took me almost two years to read Stuart Gilbert's explication of James Joyce's Ulysses and I've yet to read the actual book, I think my chances of becoming a scholar before I die are slim. So I'll probably just keep going to their wonderful exhibits and reading about their acquisitions in the newspaper.