'A Confederacy of Dunces' - a missing manuscript and a found history

This is the story of a researcher who went searching for a manuscript and discovered the memories he found instead were more valuable - I just loved this when I read it so thought I'd share it!

Cory MacLauchlin has recently published a biography of the writer John Kennedy Toole.  Butterfly in the Typewriter: the Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of the Confederacy of Dunces tells the long and sad tale of  John Kennedy Toole and his novel A Confederacy of Dunces. MacLauchlin tells how, after writing the book, Toole corresponded with an editor for two years.  When after this time they still could not agree on the revisions Toole shelved the manuscript.  He didn't write any more novels and after suffering a mental breakdown committed suicide at the age of 31 in 1969.  However the story of the book didn't end there as Toole’s mother found the manuscript and eventually found a supporter for it in the author Walker Percy, who found a publisher.  It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.  However the original manuscript which Toole's mother passed on to Walker Percy has never been found.

MacLauchlin states that

"I have been researching and writing about Toole for seven years, digging through archives, interviewing his friends and family, trying to decipher Toole’s character, his fears, his desires, his angels and demons. And I have often contemplated that missing manuscript. "

He tells how he almost thought he had found it when talking to Lynda Martin, the sister of Toole's best friend in High School.  He flies on a plane to go meet her, full of excitement at possibly finding the original manuscript.

The subsequent deflation when he realises it is a copy and not the original is quickly dispelled when Lynda Martin offers to recount her memories of John Kennedy Toole.  I think this bit of the article is a wonderful example of the importance of oral history, of the first-hand record, the completely not-impartial sharing of stories, of life.  Cory MacLauchlin expresses it far more eloquently than me here:

Earlier that morning, I thought I was going to find a rare artefact of literary history, which would help me gain a clearer picture of Toole’s descent towards suicide. But Lynda’s memories were far more profound to me than dissecting how Toole edited his famous novel. Of course, I had to report to my agent and my editor that I had not found the manuscript. But I took heart in what Lynda freely offered me: a vivid portrait of a young aspiring artist, exploring a city filled with unique characters. No documents in the Toole Papers offered such a depiction, a depiction far more valuable than his manuscript.

As he says, of course he would still like to find the original manuscript some day and I don't intend to denigrate the importance of original manuscripts in my re-telling of this story either.  When I thought was so lovely about this story was his surprise at what he did find, at these wonderful memories which won't be around forever and which, unlike the manuscript, could not still be discovered another 30/40 years down the line.. until of course MacLauchlin turned up to find the manuscript and instead ended up filming her oral testimony of John Kennedy Toole.

Wednesday Wonders

I thought that, in conjunction with my, still relatively, new job cataloguing the records of the National Union of Women Teachers I would start my first 'series' on this blog.  So, 'Wednesday Wonders' it is!  I still get so excited by some of the things I come across when cataloguing - in fact, all archivists I know do - it's one of the major perks of the job.  The best thing for me now is that I'm sharing an office so not only can I share my finds in blog land I can also share them instantly with real live people!  That's not to belittle sharing things in blogland, far from it, I love reading about the archive work going on in Archives in far off lands and I hope that archivists elsewhere get as much pleasure from reading my blog, and of course, that non-archivists enjoy it too!

This week's Wednesday Wonder was one of those moments when you really do just go 'hey you'll never guess what I've just found' and hope your colleagues share your enthusiasm.  It was the lovely colours of the headed notepaper that first caught my attention.  The green and purple is lovely, and I thought, hmmn, this looks slightly familiar.  Then I looked closer, it was letter headed notepaper from the Women's Social and Political Union!

Letter from Rose Lamartine Yates, ref UWT/D/47/1, © Institute of Education

The WSPU was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her three daughters Emmeline, Adela and Christabel Pankhurst.  It was founded in 1903, one year before the NUWT, and they were founded out of frustration with what they saw as a lack of action in terms of obtaining the vote for women.  Their motto 'Deeds, not Words' reflects their stance.  The Women's Library website has a great summary of the WSPU so I won't repeat it all here.

As you can see this letter is a bit later, from 1933.  Rose Lamartine Yates (1875 - 1954) was born in Brixton to French parents.  She studied in the UK and in France.  In 1909 she joined the Wimbledon branch of the WSPU and by 1910 she was the Treasurer and Organising Secretary of the Branch.  In the letter she thanks Ethel Froud (the General Secretary of the NUWT at that time) for inviting her to attend NUWT conference but explains that she was too busy [she was] 'needed here', and was also ill, so she could not make it.  It's really interesting that this letter is dated 1933 as the WSPU ceased to exist in 1919 - maybe Rose Lamartine Yates just had an excess of headed notepaper!  The WSPU were very much about publicising the cause wherever possible and the collection of WSPU items at the Museum of London illustrates this - they have WSPU green and purple tea pots, badges, sashes, and WSPU stockings! 

So thank you for reading, it's been nice to share! Any archivists out there have any favourite finds from their cataloguing work?  What about in other professions? Any unusual finds? 

N.B. For more information on the content of the NUWT Archive you can search the catalogue here.  I also post about the NUWT project on the Institute of Education Library and Archive blog, Newsam News.

New Cataloguing Archivist post

I've just started a new job in the Archive at the Institute of Education, London.  It's another project job - this time for fourteen months - and I'm loving it already!  My job is to catalogue the records of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT).  The NUWT was founded in 1904 as the Equal Pay League and in 1906 it was re-named the National Federation of Women Teachers. In 1920 it broke away to form an independent union, the National Union of Women Teachers.  I wrote a post about my first impressions and first finds over at the Newsam News blog (the blog of the Institute of Education Library and Archive) so I won't repeat what I've said there except to say that the variety of subjects covered in the archive sounds very exciting, a perfect example is the poster shown below for the 'World Youth Conference' held in Prague in 1947.  The correspondence, pamphlets and posters for this conference were so filled with optimism and hope for the future, for a new peaceful future, that was wonderful to read.  Though at the same time quite sad that the optimism and hopes for peace are still just that, optimism and hope. 

World Youth Festival pamphlet,
UWT/D/28A/2 ©Institute of Education Archive

From what I've read so far the NUWT was filled with strong, independent females and finding out more about them is going to be a pleasure, and a privilege to get to do s part of my daily work!  I've got lots of plans for free publicity I can do and connections and links that can be made with other archives and other organisations, in fact I even had a dream about my plans, on a Friday night - a bit strange granted, but I wouldn't have it any other way, better to over-think and enjoy my work than the other way around.  I think I'll be keeping the majority of posts about the project confined to the Newsam News blog but I'm sure the occasional one will stray over here.  I'm still going to keep this blog up though as there's plenty of other archive related events I can talk about, like a recent exhibition I went to at the Barbican...

more reflections on working in a film archive

I've been thinking more about what I've learned whilst working at Wessex Film and Sound Archive, and the things I listed in my last post on the subject.  One thing I didn't really touch upon but which is really the biggest revelation for me was that maybe my idea that a film archive is where I want to work in the long-term isn't necessarily as set in stone as I thought.

For years my ultimate goal in terms of where I would like to work long-term is in a film archive.  However after my, admittedly very limited, experience of working for five months in a film archive I realised that without all the paper records and research I'd be lost!  I understand that when films come into a general archive (such as John Grierson films at the Stirling University Archive) then it makes sense to pass them to a specialist film archive where they will have the skills and equipment to look after the films and make them available.  However this often means separating the films from the paper records that tell us about the creation/inspiration behind the films.  Again I understand this, specialist film archives don't have the space to look after all the paper records relating to the filmmaker.  Obviously they'll keep accession records relating to the films, and in WFSA there are also paper records created by the filmmakers or their families, such as cataloguing notes, photographs, biographical information.  However these paper records are considered secondary to the films, which in a way they are, although in my view they're also essential in understanding the context of the creation of the films.  A qualification I'll make here is that as a project worker, I know I have had the luxury of full-time devotion to cataloguing which of course means much more time to research each film, including looking at the related paper records.  If I was a permanent member of staff at WFSA, or in any Film archive, there would be so many things competing for time, such as enquiries, researchers, administration tasks, reports, funding applications etc.  Also, from the other direction, if the filmmaker is well known and their films are available on DVD then it isn't necessary for those working with the paper records of the filmmaker to have access to the original films themselves... Unless, of course, the films have been cut/altered.   Or also, as with the Lindsay Anderson Archive at Stirling University, there are so many unmade films discussed in the paper archives that of course you would never know about if you were only looking at the films themselves.  It seems like every line I write here has at least one qualification so I guess it indicates that my mind is still a bit muddled.

Ultimately working in a film archive has just convinced me even more of my love of archives, film and paper, and my ambition to continue working with both - yes, I want to have my cake and eat it!

I am enjoying my four days off now before I start my new job (which I will post about once I start) and have more nice plans for my time off.  Spending some time with a friend before she moves home (it's great to have time to spend with her, and am excited for her plans for the future, but of course it'll be bittersweet too as having only just lived in the same city again for 6 months I'm going to miss her!) One of my other plans is to continue the sewing/crafting I have started with the draft excluder I made.  Now, given that it took me months to make then it isn't a very auspicious start but I hope that my sewing skills, and my concentration/dedication will improve as time goes on.  In order to give myself a kick-start I thought I'd start another blog for my crafty goings-ons and inspirations - however I've yet to come up with a name for said blog, yet again not a very good start - and... I haven't done anything crafty! 

I've got back into cooking the past two days instead.  Yesterday was Refried Beans and Smoked Mackerel Tostadas, courtesy of Thomasina Mier's excellent book, Mexican Food Made Simple', which turned out great, as all the recipes from her book have.  Today I've just finished making Chana Daal and Saag Paneer - of course, it's important to taste as you go along so I can already confirm that dinner tonight is going to be a good one.  Maybe I'll get started on a crafty/sewing project on Thursday!

Fun with statistics

Now, if you'd asked me any time up until this if I could have fun with statistics the answer would have been a very quick and very clear No!  However I've since rediscovered the StatCounter account I set up when I started Archives and Auteurs and I am amazed to find myself idly browsing my blog's statistics.   The reason I remembered about the account was thinking about the work Flickr I recently set up with Zoe Viney for the Wessex Film and Sound Archive.  We couldn't find any way for collecting statistical information through Flickr beyond the basic page views information.  I remembered about StatCounter and surprised myself by remembering my user name and password as well.  It had still been running even though I haven't been logging in but as I hadn't added my new IP addresses (work and home) to the list of addresses not to count then I think my results might be slightly skewed.  So, if anyone else is setting up StatCounter or any similar statistical service then it is always best to block your own computer's IP address so your figures are more accurate, unless your memory is really bad and you want to keep count of your own views of course.


The images I've included below show the breakdown by country of visitors to my blog over the course of last week, then the second one lists in more detail every country that views have come from.  you can narrow this down to city as well.  Other useful things you can check are which pages are the most popular, which websites people are directed to your site from, how long they stay (this can sometimes be a bit painful), and lots of other useful, or useless, information depending on your point of view/general inclination to nosiness.

What I found most useful was information on how people had found my blog - what terms they had searched for or what website they had come from.  This made me think more about the tagging I use on my posts and I have resolved to try and be a bit more thorough in my tagging - treating it more like my actual cataloguing work than I have done in the past.  

I haven't started using it yet for the WFSA Flickr account for two reasons, the first being I thought I would try it first with my Flickr account to see if it worked.  With StatCounter, and I assume it is similar whatever software you use, you have to input the HTML code in to your profile on Flickr then add the web pages to your statistic software account.  I'm find doing this with my own account but I was a bit unsure with the work one - does this give them access to other information on your Flickr account, do they have rights over the statistical data as it is displayed on their account?  These questions are things I would rather investigate more fully before using it for workplace statistics - but for now I'll keep enjoying using it for my own web pages.