Out of the Box

The previous questions posed about the ranking of pace and preservation culminated in the processing of the ledger sized galleys. Previously kept folded like a book proof and nestled into inefficient letter-sized record boxes, the galleys are now in ledger-sized containers allowing for the papers to be housed flat.

Images: (Left to Right) folded galley chapter, organized galleys, flat galley chapter

The emphasis on the preservation of the documents will ultimately prolong the usage of these archival records by minimizing physical deterioration—increasing the prevention of information loss and capacity for the archives to house the records most productively.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

The 2015 Smithsonian Institution article, “Putting Archival Audiovisual Media into Context: An Archival Approach to Processing Mixed-Media Manuscript Collections” by Megan McShea, provided insight into the practices of processing, arrangement, and accessibility for audiovisual materials. A key element was delving into the value of “traditional processing workflows” that offered structure to planning and guidelines. The objective: “unlocking the content” of these records.

The term of “audiovisual” affords a differentiation between written records and nontextual media. The SAA Dictionary of Archives Terminology outlines “audiovisual” as media with “sound and pictorial attributes.” In a mixed-media collection, like-materials are housed together due to different condition requirement (acidity, preservation, reformatting, etc.). However, as McShea outlined, audiovisual materials should still be “effectively described in the aggregate” and not isolated from the collection completely.

The Irving Wallace Papers contain a variety of audiovisual materials including, VHS tapes, vinyl, cassettes, DVDs, illustrations, posters, photographs, and book cover proofs—all woven throughout the collection. An audiovisual item that I recently encountered was a 1987 audio cassette series of a recorded book reading for The Prize. Produced by the “Hear a Book” Service in Tasmania, Australia, this cassette series is narrated by Bobby Roberts. The book reading unfolds the story of The Prize as “an imaginative insight into the minds, motives, and morals of six fictional Nobel Prize winners.”

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Works Cited

Dictionary of Archives Terminology. SAA: Society of American Archivists, 2025. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/audiovisual.html

McShea, Megan. “Putting Archival Audiovisual Media into Context: An Archival Approach to Processing Mixed-Media Manuscript.” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2016. https://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/McShea.pdf

“The story was started by a gossipy French observer, who distorted what he had seen… We hope our readers will find that everything else that survived our fact checking to surface in this book is true. And we also hope these facts are full of wonder and surprise.” (xxiii)

Significa, originally published in 1983, is a collection of facts traversing a broad subject range including animals, history, law, literature, science, transportation, health, and more. From Queen Elizabeth II’s interest in heavy mechanics, Sybil Ludington’s midnight ride in 1777, corsets saving lives in 1840, flock of sheep on the White House lawn in 1917, astronauts passing customs, and the world’s biggest 1,400-pound camera in 1899 for the Paris Exposition, the facts and figures of this book are indeed “full of wonder and surprise.”

From “Chapter 4: Remarkable Animals” comes a story about a local postmaster and his dog. Jim Stacy took in Dorsey, a black-and-white shepherd dog, who would go on to deliver correspondence for the town of Calico, California from 1883 to 1886. When Stacy was unable to complete his route due to an illness, Dorsey was sent off with his saddlebag harness to boldly become a mail carrier of his own. Knowing the route from following Stacy for so long, Dorsey assuredly undertook the task and eventually received his own official mail route before moving to San Francisco with Stacy. Dorsey is still remembered in Calico, California today.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

While filtering through research files, I came across a transcript titled “The Writers and How They Talked.” On June 15, 1969, a conversation between Henry Miller, Robert Nathan, Jeanne Rejaunier, and Irving Wallace occurred discussing films, directors, travel, art, generational differences, and literature.

A key subject of this discourse was the controversy of their writings. The authors, in question, all explored sexuality and relationships in the pages of their novels from Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939), Robert Nathan’s Portrait of Jennie (1940), Jeanne Rejaunier’s The Beauty Trap (1969), or Irving Wallace’s The Sins of Philip Fleming (1959) and The Chapman Report (1960).

The novel Tropic of Cancer (1934), a book that underwent obscenity trials much like Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by D.H Lawrence, was highlighted by Wallace as a catalyst for his book The Seven Minutes (1969). Delving into the dynamics of the freedom of speech colliding with sexual themes, Miller expressed how his books were prohibited imports, printed on the cover of the first edition with “not to be imported.”

Wallace: And — this really flipped our mind out, because, you know, we couldn’t get it in the United States. I want you to know I got it into the United States. I put on a cover of a book from the Vatican.

Miller: I threw my copy overboard when I came in. Being a New Yorker you know, I didn’t want to go through, you know, an ordeal.

Concealed with an alternate cover and thrown overboard, the impact of the novel is evident through this transcript. The authors were uncompromised and fixed in their prose whether or not that meant access was withdrawn. For Wallace, Miller’s book was worth the searching for, worth the risk of confiscation. What book would be worth it for you?

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

“Foley followed Minna into a parlor that glittered like El Dorado. He stood breathless, gaping at what he saw. ‘The Golden Room,’ announced Minna happily. ‘You can see the furniture is all gilt, the hangings gold, the fish bowls edged in gold.” (8)

Just like in The Golden Room, when I first encountered a wall of yellow or “golden” boxes, I was lost for words. The Irving Wallace Papers collection included over 110 individual archival boxes that contained letter-sized manuscripts and galleys. However, various components required consideration including reviewing the condition of records, the archival quality of boxes, and their accessibility for research. All these considerations lead to a prominent question of whether these items needed to be rehoused into records boxes. Spoiler alert: yes!

The archival term “rehousing,” according to the SAA terminology, is “the physical transfer of archival resources into new containers.” Despite this term seeming rather trivial, the rehousing of records underpins preservation in operations such as arrangement and processing. Transferring items can valuably impact longevity of preservation, convenience of research, and allow for additional storage of records. Now that the manuscripts and galleys are rehoused, the records are more conveniently obtainable and no longer are entangled with paper clips and rubber bands.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Works Cited

Dictionary of Archives Terminology. SAA: Society of American Archivists, 2025. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/rehousing.html.

“Tomorrow morning he would go into the publisher’s office, remove the pictures from the wall, sweep the massive oak desk clear of its artifacts. It would be his alone. And now, for the first time, he felt confident that anything was possible and it could be his for all time.” (35)

While coming across an array of unprocessed boxes including research notes, galleys, and manuscripts, I was confronted with the question: what are the priorities of the archivist? Two principal concerns came to mind: pace, promptly providing access for researchers; and preservation, tending to the longevity of the records. But what happens when priorities are at odds?

A variety of the newly found galleys are ledger sized (11″x17″) rather than letter sized (8.5″x11″) and were previously kept folded like a book proof. Pace and preservation collide through this instance as one must be compromised for the other. The galleys could have been kept folded to accelerate the processing; otherwise, to be able to adeptly preserve these galleys it would take time to acquire the materials for the pages to be housed flat. When considering how proper containers allow for many more years of research, the answer to my question was simple—preservation over pace.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

“I brooded about this approach for two months, with the dark suspicion that it was dreadful. Finally, I wrote it off as a false start. The hero was empty; his women were unreal. The story line was contrived, lacked depth, said nothing, and, worst of all, was not gripping. The approach was too trivial for a series subject I had in mind.” (23)

How do you write a book about writing a book? Originally published in 1968, The Writing of One Novel delivered the account of developing Wallace’s 1962 novel. Befittingly titled The Prize, the novel delved into the annual Nobel Prize ceremony, detailing the significance of that gold medallion for a writer.

Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Editor, reported on The Writing of One Novel in 1968, stating, “The whole of this book might be an answer to the question posed by a writing instructor: ‘How long does it take you to write a novel?’” Another prominent endeavor for Wallace was answering how an author unearths, as he put it, the “so-called theme” of a novel.

Kirsch also underlined the profusion of outlines, drafts, notes, correspondence, readings, and studies that Wallace maintained while writing his works—many of which are now here at Special Collections! The images above are pulled from a 1986 notated galley for The Writing of One Novel.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Works Cited

Kirsch, Robert. “The Book Report: Writing a Novel—It’s More Than Finding Theme, Typing.” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995), Nov 27, 1968. http://ccl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/book-report/docview/156002342/se-2.