Ransom Center Magazine

Nobel Prize

Thoughts during a pandemic on Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and what ‘it’ is

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by JAMES ARNETT

“Why was it so hard to see while it was happening that that was what was happening?”
—URSULA K. LeGUIN, In and Out [1]

“What’s ‘it’–what do you mean by ‘it’?”
“O, anything–I mean–you know what I mean.”
—VIRGINIA WOOLF, Kew Gardens typescript

The walls have closed in in my Tennessee home. I sometimes stand up blinking from my screen and walk from room to room, unsure of what I’m looking for or doing. My corgi, Phineas Finn, is no help, certain that if I am at home I am at his service. I stand in my front window often, looking at the unchanging suburban street. I retreat to the refuge of books. [Read more…] about Thoughts during a pandemic on Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and what ‘it’ is

ABOUT JAMES ARNETT
James Arnett, PhD, is the UC Foundation Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and a former Harry Ransom Center Fellow.

Public has access to archive of Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro

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The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin holds the archive of novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature for 2017. [Read more…] about Public has access to archive of Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro

The computer poetry of J. M. Coetzee’s early programming career

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Writer J. M. Coetzee’s early poetry is almost undecipherable. That’s because it was written in computer code.

Coetzee’s global reputation rests on his literary output, for which he received a Nobel Prize in 2003. Before he embarked on a career as a scholar and writer, the South African–born writer was a computer programmer in the early years of the industry’s development (1962–1965). I believe that this experience, while short, was vital for the development of Coetzee’s writerly project. While visiting the Ransom Center on a research fellowship, I examined Coetzee’s papers, which offer tantalizing clues about his neglected “other career.” [Read more…] about The computer poetry of J. M. Coetzee’s early programming career

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