Month: July 2025

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 The authors were uncompromised and fixed in their prose whether or not that meant access was withdrawn.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.

Questions surrounding the principles of archives emerge when looking through practices and guidelines of records. The American Archivist, an SAA journal published from the 1930s to the 2020s, speaks to a key term one learns early in their archival studies expedition: respect des fonds. Defined in a 1974 SAA article titled “A Basic Glossary for Archivists,” the term is elucidated as a usage of provenance. As the “principle of sanctity of the original order,” the objective is to maintain the integrity of the creation, the reception, and the accumulation of the records.

Respect des fonds was discussed in the “First Conference of Archivists” in 1909, an early instance of documented archival principles. Waldo Gifford Leland, an archivist who worked for Carnegie Institutions and the Library of Congress, wrote an SAA article in 1950 discussing his support for the “classification of archives” as observed at the conference. Though Leland stated that his underpinning of the terminology was “to show that [his] two years in the French archives had not been wasted.”

But what does respect des fonds look like for the Irving Wallace Papers? Processing the records book by book, draft by draft, and page by page, the collection is pieced together in an arrangement parallel to when and how Wallace initially wrote or compiled the records. Therefore, the collection is accessible for researchers as if you entered Wallace’s office and uncovered his inspirations, methods, and unfinished drafts still resting on his typewriter.

Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox

Works Cited

Evans, Frank B., Donald F. Harrison, Edwin A. Thompson, and William L. Rofes. “A Basic Glossary for Archivists, Manuscript Curators, and Records Managers.” The American Archivist 37, no. 3 (1974): 415–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40291669.

Leland, Waldo Gifford. “The First Conference of Archivists, December 1909: The Beginnings of a Profession.” The American Archivist 13, no. 2 (1950): 109–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40283836.