Crates and Crates of Norman Mailer
The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center just announced that they've acquired Norman Mailer's papers.
Based on the New York Times article, it seems that Mailer is a bizarre mix of profligacy (25,000 letters, nine kids) and discipline (all carbon-copied, saved on disk, or sent to college).
Mailer's 20,000 pounds of paper will have illustrious company at the Ransom Center, which is home to the world's first photograph, a Gutenberg bible, and all manner of flotsam & jetsam (like D.H. Lawrence's paintings) as well as some phenomenal literary archives. Mailer said that his decision to sell his archive to the Ransom Center was largely due to the fact that it has has "one of the finest, if not the finest, collections of American literary archives in the world."
The NYT article mentions that Mailer served with a lot of Texans during World War II, and the University press release gets Mailer's take on them: "Most of them were dirt-poor and damn tough. (For years afterward in New York, when trouble was brewing on the street, I would do my best to talk in a Texas accent.)" That press release also includes this intriguing comment: “To this, I can add a splendid few days I spent in Austin as a lecturer back in the very early ‘60s..."
