[Read "Writing in the Margins," by Scott Thill.]

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRC), home of Don DeLillo's papers, was begun as a "center of cultural compass, a research center to be the Bibliothèque Nationale of the only state that started out as an independent nation," by Harry Huntt Ransom in 1957. Since then, the University of Texas and a plethora of private donors have worked to ensure that a highly trained staff of archivists, preservationists and librarians are able to preserve and exhibit some of the nation's greatest art and literary treasures.

As the archivist who processed and arranged DeLillo's papers it saddens me to see that you have used your column to obliterate the difference between those who treasure the lessons of history through art and literature and those who may wreak havoc on our culture. I spent several months of my working life engrossed in DeLillo's writings and personal correspondence. It was my job, duty and pleasure to ensure that the body of work he entrusted to the University of Texas was processed and arranged in such a way that its provenance was preserved. Thus, scholars for generations forth will be able to learn from the primary sources of a great man who has spent his life crafting stories to illuminate his vision of our world and her people.

It is true that DeLillo is a New Yorker, but a New York institution did not come forward to house his papers. A Texas institution recognized his influence on American culture and cared enough to step up, purchase his papers, and provide a permanent and safe home for this important collection. I understand (and share) your disgust regarding Bush's reelection, but to use that as a catalyst to degrade the fact that a Texas institution received Don DeLillo's archive is a sophomoric jab. To conflate the whole of the state of Texas with George W. Bush demonstrates, at best, intellectual dishonesty and basic ignorance. At worst, it shows exactly the kind of closed-mindedness that you believe makes Austin a city less worthy to house DeLillo's collection than New York, Yonkers, or Newark. Beware that provincialism comes with more faces than those shown in the South or in supposed "red states." Not everyone in Texas is benighted and toothless, and the stereotypical resident of Crawford is not representative of the state. In fact, even Crawford has a few residents who see beyond the media shine of their pseudo-hometown boy.

Here are the Web sites to the HRC and the Web page outlining its history.

If you have not seen it, the finding aid for DeLillo's collection may also be found here.

The finding aid is an interesting document to read, at least for those of us who find literary archives, regardless of location, to be fascinating capsules of history. Other notable collection finding aids that are available online include those for Ernest Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.

If you ever make it to Austin I would be happy to show you around and perhaps open your mind to the idea that there can be goodness, beauty and culture (sometimes even in the variety of hipper-than-hip cool) in Texas.

-- Katherine Pelletier

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