Uncatalogued
Somewhere on the Northeast Corridor, July 25, 2024: I’m typing this on the train back to DC from Princeton, NJ, where I spent the last 24 hours poking around the library and my old undergrad haunts. A friend asked if I wanted to tag along on an archival pilgrimage in honor of her late mother. How could I say no to that?
We spent a morning in Firestone Library’s Special Collections reading room, looking at letters from T.S. Eliot to his longtime friend/muse Emily Hale. She’d been my friend’s mother’s drama teacher in the late 1940s. The Hale-Eliot papers became available during the pandemic, too late for Ms. Hale’s former student to dig into them, and my friend wanted to complete the mission.
We didn’t have a research agenda to pursue or burning questions to answer. (For some insights into what the collection reveals, read this update. I’d love to know what more has been uncovered since that post.) But it was a thrill to handle (with bare hands, freshly washed, no gloves) notes and letters that TSE had written/typed up, often on Faber & Faber stationery, and signed with his distinctive swooping initials.
My unscholarly impression: Eliot was more fun as a correspondent than I’d expected. I think of him as a bit stuffy, but in these letters, he’s sharp in his assessments of modern poets and deft, even funny, in shrugging off unwanted social or creative invitations.
Given how much I’ve written about libraries and archives, it surprised me to realize on this trip that I’ve spent very little time actually working in special collections. I researched and wrote a lot of my senior thesis in Firestone. It was hard but satisfying work at the time, and great prep for a lot of the writing I’ve done since. But all the material I needed could be unearthed in the regular stacks—or I thought it could anyway. (Speaking of stacks, I’m bummed that my college library apparently doesn’t own a copy of Clutter. Maybe I should mail them one. At least WorldCat tells me that the Princeton Public Library and UPenn have it.)
Back in the day, the card catalog got me where I needed to go, or close enough. Now it’s wall decor—a trend I found delightful the first time I encountered it in an academic library. Like the head of a dead animal mounted on the wall, the sight makes me a little sad. I still try to open the drawers, even though I know I can’t. The internet and digitization have opened up whole new worlds of research—such access, so much knowledge!—but I still miss the sensation of flipping through catalog cards. There’s not much tactile satisfaction to be had in browsing online databases.
This is not an argument to ditch databases and reinstate card catalogs. (Although I hope/imagine the cards themselves are being preserved—so much metadata.) I told myself at the beginning of the Princeton jaunt that I wasn’t going to get nostalgic about college. That includes not romanticizing the tools we had to work with. Don’t get me started on the agony of having to use Wite-Out when typing up a paper due NOW. It was many moons ago, and there’s no going back.
If I were in college now, though, I would do some things differently. I’d ask profs, librarians, and other students to collaborate more. I’d work harder at getting to know and staying in touch with people. I’d remind myself that it’s only four years, and there will be a lot to learn and a lot to do afterward.
Yes, I’d tap into all those digital resources. So many possibilities have opened up. But I’d also find reasons to get my hands dirty (metaphorically!) in the archives.
Writing: For the NYTBR, I wrote about two new middle-grade novels by Lois Lowry and Gayle Forman. The review’s online now and should run in the print section soon. (Yeah, it’s still a kick to see something in print.)
Reading: The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing. My garden’s become a modest obsession in recent years, as I work on making it a mini-oasis in the city for wildlife and for people. Laing’s new book describes how she restored a historic garden in England, and digs in (see what I did there?) to the tension between gardens as private retreats and as a public good. I asked for the book for my birthday, and so far it’s great.
Watching: Season 3 of “Bridgerton” and Season 3 of “The Bear.” I miss “Hacks” and “Shogun.”
Hope you’re staying cool wherever you are this hottest (so far) of summers.
Cheers,
Jen
I wrote my senior thesis in a Firestone Library carrel in 1973 and just got rid of my claustrophobia a couple of years back