There is no experience like the experience of working with he actual papers in the archive. But this is not practical with these papers at this point in time. But I can safely safe archives fever can get a grip virtually, through surrogate researchers. This is what I am experiencing at the moment. The brain will not shut off; it keeps me up at night as if I were in the library itself during the day. And the anticipation stirs me before sunrise. Winter nights are long; but fortunately they are growing shorter.
Emily has done so many kindnesses for me---and by extension you---with the work she had done with this collection. There are a few folders I have asked her not to photograph and sometimes I think this might have been a mistake. (But the materials are there now and in the future perhaps the part of me that is a completest will want them.) Anyway, boxes 2 and 3 have been thoroughly gone through and now it is a process of reading through these files. (Boxes 1 and 4 will be seen to next.)
Picture the scene last Friday... I've take a couple of modes of transportation to get to New York City to see Gail Crowther on her visit to the US. She is meeting with her editor going over some chapters of her new book manuscript. I have some minutes to kill, so I take advantage of free wifi at a place that specializes in selling expensively priced burnt-tasting coffee to see if there are new files for downloading. There were. These were from Box 3, folders 7 through 14 (folder 10 was previously done; folder 11 skipped, those this one is really gnawing at me).
Anyway... so I start downloading. Emily is great and sends me a file count each night so that I can be certain to have downloaded everything. So going into this, around 3:30 in the afternoon, I realize not all the files may have synced up. But folder 9 has me so impatient; I was itching like a rash to see what is in it. I downloaded that one first. I saw many new letters that are not in The Letters of Sylvia Plath. I thought how unfortunate it took so long for these papers to find a home; and how sad it was the Rosenstein refused to help us with the project when I first requested help in 2013. Well, no use in crying over spilled soy milk...
In looking through the letters, the new recipients were familiar names: David Freeman (two letters); Anthony Thwaite (five letters); those letters to the Macedos (four letters); and then letters that I had seen already to Marcia Brown Stern (Volume I) and to Michael Frayn and Wilbury Crockett (both in Volume II). There are two letter excerpts from 1954 and 1955 sent by Claiborne Philips Handleman...all pieces of the Plath puzzle. But there was one letter that instantly swelled my heart when I saw it and lead my eyes to water and to also slam my laptop shut.
Emily has done so many kindnesses for me---and by extension you---with the work she had done with this collection. There are a few folders I have asked her not to photograph and sometimes I think this might have been a mistake. (But the materials are there now and in the future perhaps the part of me that is a completest will want them.) Anyway, boxes 2 and 3 have been thoroughly gone through and now it is a process of reading through these files. (Boxes 1 and 4 will be seen to next.)
Picture the scene last Friday... I've take a couple of modes of transportation to get to New York City to see Gail Crowther on her visit to the US. She is meeting with her editor going over some chapters of her new book manuscript. I have some minutes to kill, so I take advantage of free wifi at a place that specializes in selling expensively priced burnt-tasting coffee to see if there are new files for downloading. There were. These were from Box 3, folders 7 through 14 (folder 10 was previously done; folder 11 skipped, those this one is really gnawing at me).
Anyway... so I start downloading. Emily is great and sends me a file count each night so that I can be certain to have downloaded everything. So going into this, around 3:30 in the afternoon, I realize not all the files may have synced up. But folder 9 has me so impatient; I was itching like a rash to see what is in it. I downloaded that one first. I saw many new letters that are not in The Letters of Sylvia Plath. I thought how unfortunate it took so long for these papers to find a home; and how sad it was the Rosenstein refused to help us with the project when I first requested help in 2013. Well, no use in crying over spilled soy milk...
In looking through the letters, the new recipients were familiar names: David Freeman (two letters); Anthony Thwaite (five letters); those letters to the Macedos (four letters); and then letters that I had seen already to Marcia Brown Stern (Volume I) and to Michael Frayn and Wilbury Crockett (both in Volume II). There are two letter excerpts from 1954 and 1955 sent by Claiborne Philips Handleman...all pieces of the Plath puzzle. But there was one letter that instantly swelled my heart when I saw it and lead my eyes to water and to also slam my laptop shut.