Ransom Center Magazine

Allen Ginsberg

Cold War culture

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Erik Mortenson discusses his book Ambiguous Borderlands and the pervasiveness of shadow imagery in Cold War materials.

Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016) investigates the role shadows play in Cold War literary and popular texts. Informed by research at the Ransom Center, it examines Beat literature, postwar photography, film noir, Twilight Zone episodes, and more to explain why shadow imagery had such a hold on American imaginations in the mid-twentieth century. [Read more…] about Cold War culture

Beat Generation poet Peter Orlovsky’s archive acquired

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Peter Orlovsky’s notebook titled Rolling Thunder, Oct. 29, 1975.
Peter Orlovsky’s notebook titled Rolling Thunder, Oct. 29, 1975.

The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the archive of American poet Peter Orlovsky (1933–2010), an important figure in the Beat Generation.

Orlovsky was the companion of fellow poet Allen Ginsberg for more than 40 years, and his papers reflect significant aspects of their relationship. Orlovsky’s collection comprises manuscripts, journals and notebooks, correspondence, tape recordings, photographs, and other personal documents, including unpublished poetry and prose works.

Around the time that Orlovsky met Ginsberg, he began to keep a journal, filling more than 140 notebooks before his death. Some of Orlovsky’s published poems appear in the journals, yet none of the journals have been published.

Correspondence in the collection highlights Orlovsky’s many connections with other poets, authors, and artists. There are more than 1,600 letters written to Orlovsky and/or Ginsberg, including 165 letters written by Ginsberg himself. Some notable correspondents include Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, and Robert LaVigne. Orlovsky also wrote regularly to his parents and siblings, and more than 65 of his letters are included in the archive.

The collection features more than 2,650 photographs taken by or of Orlovsky, documenting the years between 1970 and 2010. Also included are eight reel-to-reel tapes from the 1960s and more than 120 audiocassettes made by Orlovsky during the 1970s and 1980s, some recording conversations with Ginsberg.

The Ransom Center has extensive collections of Beat Generation writers, including materials related to William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Corso , Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

The Orlovsky materials will be accessible once processed and cataloged.

Related content:
Ransom Center Humanities Coordinator Gregory Curtis writes about a piece of correspondence in the archive, revealing how a misunderstanding began between Allen Ginsberg and Diana Trilling.

"America's Best Magazine?: Commentary in the 1960s"

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A case of materials from the Commentary magazine archive is on display in the lobby for the Morris Dickstein lecture. Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
A case of materials from the Commentary magazine archive is on display in the lobby for the Morris Dickstein lecture. Photo by Alicia Dietrich.

In conjunction with tonight’s lecture by author Morris Dickstein, an accompanying display case in the Ransom Center’s lobby features items from the Center’s Commentary magazine archive. Dickstein’s lecture, titled “America’s Best Magazine?: Commentary in the 1960s,” takes place tonight at 7 p.m. in the Prothro Theater. The Commentary magazine archive was donated to the Center in 2011.

Materials on display include a 1961 subscriber survey, a 1986 exchange of letters between Allen Ginsberg and Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, and the May 1952 issue of the magazine, which contains the first American publication of “Diary of Anne Frank.”

This program is co-sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. The Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation made a generous donation to support this program and the cataloging of the Commentary magazine archive.

The event will be webcast live at 7 p.m. CST.

Penguin and the Paperback Revolution

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Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

According to popular mythology, the publisher Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, formulated his idea for a press dedicated exclusively to paperbacks while visiting a railway station. Having spent the weekend visiting his friend Agatha Christie, the famed author of Murder on the Orient Express, Lane arrived at the Exeter railway station and realized he had forgotten his book. Frustrated and facing the boredom of a long train trip, Lane tried to buy a novel at the station but found that there was nothing available that he felt worth reading. Bookless for the next few hours, he sat on the train and planned a new line of cheap, pocket-sized, and travel-worthy books, which could be sold at railway stations, grocers, and department stores. Penguin Books—and the paperback revolution—were born.

While this version of Allen Lane’s epiphany may be slightly romanticized, there is no doubt that Penguin Books, launched in 1935, sparked a new phase of publishing that would change the printing industry irrevocably. Mass marketing of paperbacks not only brought classics to a wider audience but also brought pulp fiction—previously published in magazines—to the forefront of the book trade.

The Ransom Center’s book collection is known for first editions, many of them lush volumes with elaborate bindings. Perhaps lesser known is the fact that the Ransom Center also houses multiple volumes that illuminate the development of the paperback book trade in both America and Britain. Alongside important editions of Lane’s Penguins, the Center also houses Tauchnitz editions of paperbacks that pre-date Penguin, as well as the “penny dreadfuls” and dime novels that slowly developed into modern pulp fiction. This slideshow exhibits numerous items from the library’s collections that represent landmarks in the history of the paperback book trade.

"What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. Book cover design by Edward Gorey. 1954.
"What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. Book cover design by Edward Gorey. 1954.