The Novels of Kim Young-ha
Graphs, Maps, Trees
The Sunday Times reports on the insidious work of American universities.
ANDREW MOTION, the poet laureate, and Lord Smith, the former culture secretary, have launched a campaign to stem the flow of famous writers’ archives being sold to universities in America.
They are leading a 15-strong group of eminent literary figures demanding tax breaks, government funding and lottery cash to help British institutions match the bids of their rich American rivals.
The campaign comes amid fears that the papers of Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, may go abroad. All three are understood to have been approached recently by agents acting for institutions in America. . . .
Joan Winterkorn, a broker who negotiated the sale of the papers of Laurence Olivier and the writers Kenneth Tynan and Peter Nichols to the British Library, said the cream of British archive material will continue to be “up for grabs” unless the tax laws are changed.
“American universities are increasingly creating a working relationship with younger and younger writers, so this is not something that is going to go away,” she said.
I wonder if our fine universities aren’t jumping the gun a bit here. For instance, it’s no doubt that Zadie Smith is a talented, young author, but who the hell knows what kind of legacy she’ll leave. Should universities really be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars courting papers of hers that may very well end up being of marginal interest?
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I looked up Zadie Smith because I didn’t know who she was.
I think shelling out cash on mostly junk is alright if you hit on a few pieces that’ll end up being priceless. Seems like that’s what’s going on here. And there’s worse things universities could be spending money on.
text as information and as a cultural product is never worthless or marginal. even if zadie smith, or other young, up-and-coming writers, are still creating their legacy, they ARE producing a cultural artifact–all tastes aside. who knows who in the future will find something of interest when reading something from a previous era–regardless how that work was received or perceived at the time of its publication. many writers of the literary “classics” or the “cannon” were never fully appreciated or received well by their contemporaries. And it wasn’t until later that scholars or a new audience found the work of any relevance, importance, or interest.