Recent Acquisitions
Carlton Lake Collection
André Breton, undated photograph.
An extensive collection of rare autograph letters and manuscripts, most of them unpublished, together with original photographs, artwork, and other documents related to the modern movement in literature and the arts of twentieth century France.
- The manuscript for three essays by Guillaume Apollinaire in defense of modern art and literature.
- Correspondence between Lise Deharme and André Breton, initiated during the formative stages of the Surrealist movement.
- Correspondence between Lise Deharme and Jean Cocteau, featuring a number of original artworks by Cocteau.
- Manuscript of Paul Eluard's exercises in "automatic writing" which includes several original poems.
- Two manuscripts by André Gide: one on Chopin's music and its relationship to Baudelaire's poetry, the other a translation into French of Goethe's Prometheus.
- One of the most important compendium of Henry Miller correspondences, entirely unpublished, beginning from the time immediately following the publication of Tropic of Cancer.
- A complete set of the first proofs of Gertrude Stein's Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded.
- Manuscript of a reproachful analysis of the work of Marcel Proust by Louis Aragon, and another titled Systèm Dd (Introduction à une marale moentanée) which is the most important Dada manifestation in the launching of the movement.
- Manuscript for "le cadavre exquis," a word game popularized by the Surrealists around 1925, with evidence of participation by Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Roland Tual, and Max Morise.
- Original photographs, autograph letters, and art objects by or relating to Man Ray.
Russell Banks
Russell Banks, photo by Marion Ettlinger,
undated.
American writer, nominated for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and Pulitzer Prize, who has received the O. Henry Award and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. The archive includes:
- Fiction manuscripts: Locus (unpublished), Searching for Survivors (1975), Family Life (1975), Hamilton Stark (1978), The New World Stories (1978), The Book of Jamaica (1980), Trailerpark (1981), The Relation of My Imprisonment (1983), Continental Drift (1985), Success Stories (1986), Affliction (1989), The Sweet Hereafter (1991), Rule of the Bone (1995), and Cloudsplitter (1998).
- A vast collection of correspondence with writers, actors, directors, including Margaret Atwood, Frederick Barthelme, Ken Burns, Raymond Carver, Willem Dafoe, Richard Ford, Jorie Graham, Jane Hamilton, John Irving, William Kennedy, Barbara Kingsolver, Elmore Leonard, William Matthews, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, Octavio Paz, George Plimpton, John Sayles, Jane Smiley, and Ronald Sukenick. Also included are Banks' publishing correspondence, submission letters, and other miscellaneous correspondence.
- Poetry manuscripts for two collections published in the late 1960s: The Crossing Back and Waiting to Freeze.
- Nonfiction manuscripts in the form of reviews, interviews, criticism, and more for publications such as the New York Times, Gentleman's Quarterly, Atlantic Monthly.
- Miscellaneous manuscripts including plays, telescripts, diaries, research notes, and unpublished poetry and short stories.
- Audio recordings of interviews and readings.
Thomas Pynchon
The manuscript for an unproduced musical called Minstral Island by Pynchon and Kirkpatrick Sale. Early notes, outlines, and drafts for the 1958 collaboration between Pynchon and Sale which explores the year 1998 when IBM dominates the world and artists (including musicians, sailmakers, and prostitutes) are pariahs who have yet to be assigned roles in the new world order. Pynchon collaborated on the manuscript with Sale in 1958, prior to the publication of Pynchon's first novel, V. Kirkpatrick Sale has written extensively on the political, economic, sociological, and environmental impacts of technology, even going so far as to reconstitute the term Luddite to describe a contemporary movement that is skeptical of uncontrolled technological advance. Pynchon manuscripts are notoriously rare, which makes this unpublished gem particularly exceptional.
Bananas
Bananas, no. 10, 1978.
Archive of the literary periodical Bananas, during the tenure of editor and author Emma Tennant, from 1975-1978. Archive contents include original manuscripts and typescripts by contributors such as Martin Amis, Beryl Bainbridge, J.G. Ballard, William Burrough, Angela Carter, Ted Hughes, Ian McEwan, Sylvia Plath, Stephen Spender, and Paul Theroux, as well as financial records and correspondence.
