A window into David Foster Wallace’s mind
The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has acquired the archive of David Foster Wallace (and numerous collections of stories and essays):
The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace’s books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace’s college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.
Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed “Infinite Jest,” the earliest appearance of his signature “David Foster Wallace” on “Viking Poem,” written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.
Find out which words Wallace circled in the dictionary, how the archive came to the Ransom Center, and what the archives will reveal.
A selection will be on display in the Ransom Center’s lobby through April 9, and are being processed and organized to be available to researchers and the public by fall 2010.
(thx, John)
