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Texas State University recently paid $2,000,000 for the papers of Cormac McCarthy. Many other research libraries have collections of the papers -- original manuscripts, draft manuscripts, and letters -- of famous authors. Scholars burrow into these papers to discern more about both the famous authors and the books they wrote. They are priceless resources for literature.
But what happens in the dawning digital age? All of the editing of my last book was done electronically. My editor and I exchanged e-mails with attached documents (using the "show changes" function of MS Word) to hammer out the book. There was no hard copy of the final version, unless she printed one out. I didn't -- I just saved the file.
So how will these scholarly repositories change in the future? Will the next generation of famous authors donate their hard drives? And what about all the stacks of letters authors of previous generations wrote? Will they now donate their e-mail archive from gmail? Finally, all these electronic files can be easily changed. An old typescript of McCarthy that has marginal notes and scribbled changes is a permanent thing, there for the scholar to study. What will the future bring?
This issue was the topic of a recent commentary in the March 13 issue of the Times Literary Supplement (which you need a subscription to access, unfortunately). The author believed that the coming change will also affect the "magical value" of literary manuscripts. I agree, but I have no idea how things will work out eventually.
But what happens in the dawning digital age? All of the editing of my last book was done electronically. My editor and I exchanged e-mails with attached documents (using the "show changes" function of MS Word) to hammer out the book. There was no hard copy of the final version, unless she printed one out. I didn't -- I just saved the file.
So how will these scholarly repositories change in the future? Will the next generation of famous authors donate their hard drives? And what about all the stacks of letters authors of previous generations wrote? Will they now donate their e-mail archive from gmail? Finally, all these electronic files can be easily changed. An old typescript of McCarthy that has marginal notes and scribbled changes is a permanent thing, there for the scholar to study. What will the future bring?
This issue was the topic of a recent commentary in the March 13 issue of the Times Literary Supplement (which you need a subscription to access, unfortunately). The author believed that the coming change will also affect the "magical value" of literary manuscripts. I agree, but I have no idea how things will work out eventually.
