Making Connections

Abstract

PreludeThey gave me a job title: Special Collections Librarian. I curate writers' papers. I see their successes, their chaos and their attempts to produce order as they go through a creative process that can be messy, frustrating and ego-breaking. I have to understand these writers. Sometimes it is hard. But I try because their families have entrusted me, and the organisation I represent, with the responsibility of protecting their heritage and making it accessible. I am the absent and silent friend. So, sometimes I get scared too because of this responsibility.Another one of my roles is that of a conduit for researchers using these papers. So I prepare guides that help them find what they want from these archives. I often wonder whether researchers are finding what they want, and I am always thinking, How can I do this better?Overall, there is pleasure. I do not think they suspect how much pleasure I derive from this job. Pleasure in new archival discoveries made; pleasure in reading new writings based on the resources in the archives; pleasure in meeting the writers and their families. Pleasure in seeing joy on the faces of researchers.Literary archives at the UWI, St AugustineLiterary archives, also referred to as papers and collections, have traditionally been used to probe the works of writers. Within recent times, the cultural studies approach used in the study of literature has made literary archives more prominent as these resources are used to unveil the circumstances impacting on authors' lives, writing, artistic production, and reception, as well as post-publication afterlives of their works.The nature of such archives varies and may consist of any combination of the following: manuscripts; reviews; correspondence; diaries; ephemera surrounding the research and publication of the works; photographs; art; multimedia; and electronic files from personal computers. The archives of Caribbean writers held at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine campus repository in the Alma Jordan Library are of a similar character, with a cross-section of these material types. The collections hold the papers of authors who have contributed significantly to the development of literature in the Anglophone Caribbean; and collectively, these materials provide primary resources on the evolution of Caribbean literature and cultural thought. Among the holdings at the St Augustine campus library are the collections of celebrated Caribbean writers including Derek Walcott, Sam Selvon, C.L.R. James, Monique Roffey, Eric Roach, and materials from individuals who broadcast on the BBC radio series Caribbean Voices, 1945-58. While academia benefits from new discoveries of unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, diaries and so on, there are also insights to be derived in unearthing connections among writers and anecdotes about their lives which can further contribute to scholarship. Having these resources housed in a single repository has made the interrelationship that existed among these writers even more apparent to the curator's eye.Using the St Augustine West Indiana and Special Collections as my primary source, and focusing on the collections of Derek Walcott and C.L.R. James in particular, in this essay I demonstrate how these two archives reveal a wider web of correspondence and interconnections between other literary figures in the repository.Literary encountersThe relationship among Caribbean writers emerges clearly in the correspondence they shared. The Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James communicated with a wide cross-section of influential persons in Caribbean literature. James was a political activist and Marxist intellectual whose ideas continue to be debated and to generate scholarship. He was also an avid reader and prolific writer, and as such he accumulated materials in several locations, leading to an amassment of his papers in at least two repositories, at UWI St Augustine and Columbia University, New York. …

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