New Books in Literature: December 2018

With winter break coming up, it’s a perfect time to get some reading done. The books we recently received have something for everyone—whether you’re looking for poetry, prose, or criticism.

Check out the rest of the new acquisitions!

Want a book that we don’t have in the library? Request it here.



New Books in Literature

November is upon us and, with it, what passes for cold weather in the Bay Area. It’s the perfect opportunity to curl up with a book! The volumes we recently received include something for everyone—whether you’re looking for poetry, prose, or criticism.

Check out the rest of the new acquisitions!

Want a book that we don’t have in the library? Request it here.



New Books in Literature for October

As fall approaches and the weather begins to cool down, it’s the perfect time of year to curl up with a slice of pumpkin pie and a good book. Where better to find your next read than the library literature collection? The books we recently received have something for everyone—whether you’re looking for poetry, prose, or criticism.

Check out the rest of the new acquisitions!

Want a book that we don’t have in the library? Request it here.



New Books in Literature

April showers bring May flowers, but April acquisitions may just lead you to your new favorite read! The books we recently received have something for everyone—whether you’re looking for poetry, prose, or criticism.

Check out the rest of the new acquisitions!

Want a book that we don’t have in the library? Request it here.


Follow Lit at the Library!
Subscribe by email
Twitter: @doe_lit
RSS
</div

Catalan Futurist Manifesto digitized

Manifest Català

From the early 20th century until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Spain witnessed a flourishing of literary and artistic forms (painting, poetry, prose and film) on par with the experimentialism taking place across Europe and Latin America. According to Jennifer Duprey in Avant-Garde Cultural Practices in Spain (1914-1936), self-taught poet and radical journalist Joan Salvat-Papasseit found inspiration in both the formalist attributes articulated in F.T. Marinetti’s Manifesto del futurismo (1909) and in the social terms of compatriot Gabriel Alomar’s El futurisme (1905). “He was the only Catalan writer that had the conscience of the revolutionary character that the Futurist movement had from a social point of view, yet sustained that his particular point of view was a dialectical concept of tradition,” explains Duprey.

Last fall the UC Berkeley Library became one of three libraries outside of Spain to own an original broadside of Contra els poetes amb minúscula: primer manifest català futurista (Against lowercase poets: the first Futurist manifesto) published in 1920 and is now the first institution in the world to have digitized it. Salvat-Papasseit’s famous collection of poems L’irradiador del port, i les gavines (1921), now housed in The Bancroft Library, was featured in the exhibition No Legacy || Literatura Electrónica installed in Doe Library’s Brown Gallery last year.

L'irradiador del port, i les gavines / J. Salvat-Papasseit.

L’irradiador del port, i les gavines (Barcelona: Atenes A.G., 1921)

COLLECTIONS as CONNECTORS Holdings from Off-Center

by Steven Black, Bancroft Acquisitions

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
–William Butler Yeats, from “The Second Coming”

As they do in a teeming metropolis, connections occur naturally among collections in libraries and other repositories. These linkages may involve ideas and people, whether by description (cataloging and metadata), archival arrangement, researcher access and review, or, in the case of a new exhibit at The Bancroft Library, by time-shifted serendipity.

“The Summer of Love, from the Collections of The Bancroft Library” fortuitously brings together two representative figures who, in 1967, circled each other warily, but never met.

Joan Didion
Joan Didion in Golden Gate Park’s Panhandle, near Oak and Ashbury, 1967, photographed by Ted Streshinsky, BANC PIC 2004.132–NEG, M674-2, frame 9A

Joan Didion’s reportage in “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” is highlighted in a timely Bancroft exhibition along with images of the hippie scene in San Francisco taken by photographer Ted Streshinsky.

One thread running through her piece (in a reproduction of her typescript essay as submitted for later book publication) is a search for the Communication Company printer and publisher Chester Anderson.

Chester Anderson
Photo of Chester Anderson from the back cover of The Butterfly Kid. New York : Pyramid Books, 1967., p PS3551.N358 B8 1967

Funded by proceeds from his cult-hit novel The Butterfly Kid (1967), Anderson arrived in the Haight district of San Francisco just as the seeds for the coming “Summer of Love” were sown.  In January 1967 he purchased a state-of-the-art mimeograph machine from Gestetner “to provide quick & inexpensive printing service for the hip community.”

Among the works issued by this newest member of the Underground Press Syndicate were innumerable Diggers flyers and handbills, a chapbook by Richard Brautigan (All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace), revolutionary manifestos, notices for performances, the Invisible Circus, other happenings, and street level public service announcements.

Gentleness: a play in infinite acts ., 1967, The Communication Company, publisher Chester Anderson papers, BANC MSS 92/839 c, box 1, folder 3

In her quest, Didion describes meeting Com/Co’s co-founder, who (she writes) “says his name is Claude Hayward, but never mind that because I think of him just as The Connection.”

As she is on assignment for a mainstream publication, Didion is considered (in a Diggers phrase-du-jour) to be “a media poisoner.” The Connection urges her to dump the photographer she is with “and get out on the Street” leaving her cash (“You won’t need money”) behind.

Responding to her request to speak directly with Chester Anderson, The Connection says:  “If we decide to get in touch with you at all, we’ll get in touch with you real quick.” Although she crosses paths with The Connection again that spring in the Panhandle during an agitprop intervention by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, his passive refusal to hook her up rebuts his street-inflected nickname.

Joan Didion was unable to find the oracular man who could ostensibly help her understand “the scene,” or genius loci. Despite this missed connection with Chester Anderson, by detailing her forays into the Haight-Ashbury and other hippie enclaves around San Francisco, Didion captured in prose a time in violent flux. “Slouching” became the title essay of her celebrated first book of non-fiction, securing her reputation as a caustic and insightful social seismograph.

janis didion excerpt
Joan Didion papers, BANC MSS 81/140 c, carton 1

Today their works are co-located in Bancroft’s Summer of Love retrospective: two radically different writers can be seen in a long-delayed meeting that eluded them in real life.

*                          *                          *

Provenance notes:

Joan Didion (1934-) Joan Didion’s manuscript (BANC MSS 81/140 c carton 1) came to The Bancroft Library as a gift of the author.

Chester Valentine John Anderson (1932-1991) Chester Anderson’s papers (BANC MSS 92/839 c) came to The Bancroft Library via friend and fellow underground journalist Paul Williams.

Paul Williams (1948-2013) founded Crawdaddy, the first zine of rock and roll journalism (predating Rolling Stone), authored many works of hippie (Apple Bay: or, Life on the planet) and new age journalism (Das Energi), books on Bob Dylan and Philip K. Dick (whose literary executor he was, for close to 20 years). Through his imprint Entwhistle Books, he published two books by Chester Anderson:  Fox & hare : the story of a Friday night (f PS3551.N358 F6 1980 Bancroft) and Puppies (p PS3572.A395 P9 1979 Bancroft) under Anderson’s pseudonym John Valentine.

Ted Streshinsky (1923–2003) Ted Streshinsky’s photo archive (BANC PIC 2004.132) was a gift of his wife Shirley.


Trial: Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginning to the Present

Until June 6, The Library has access to a trial of Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginning to the Present.

 Tabs lead the user to a brief overview of an author, a list of writings, a brief life (with bibliography of sources), an overview of life/writing (each with bibliographies), a lengthy timeline of events in the author’s life, and links to mentions of the author in other parts of Orlando. The timelines are quite helpful as is the ability to search by occupation, place and genre. Most interesting, perhaps, is the tag search, which allows the user to combine many different aspects of authors’s lives to create a dataset. I recommend you look at the PDF guide, which provides simple instructions for accessing the many features of the database.

A review of Orlando in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature provides some background on the project and suggestions on how to best exploit its features. Excepts from additional reviews can be found on the Orlando site.

Please send your comments to Michaelyn Burnette.

(Miranda Hickman. “Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present (review).” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 27.1 (2008): 181-186. Project MUSE. Web. 13 May. 2014.)