The Inevitability of Death and Texas

British author Jim Crace during his January 2008 trip to Austin (photo by Bret Brookshire)

The University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center – unsurpassed in both the quality of its collection and in its ability/buying power to lure talent – figures strongly in a recent article in the UK's Guardian. (Last year, The New Yorker ran a fascinating profile of the HRC and director Tom Staley here.) The gist of the Guardian piece is that better-funded American universities are monopolizing the archives of British writers.

In a bit of a bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you move, British author Jim Crace, who recently sold his papers to UT (and was interviewed here in the Chronicle), had this to say about his recent trip to Texas:

"When I was at the Ransom Centre [the Texas university archive], I held Blake paintings and Coleridge notebooks in my hand. I couldn't help thinking that they didn't belong there." Many a British university archivist would say amen to that. "Two things are inevitable: death and Texas," one of them was heard to sigh.

(Hat tip: The New Yorker's Book Bench)