Subject: Re:Fun stories about Gathering JDS's uncollected fiction
From: Cecilia Baader (cbaader@cubsmvp.com)
Date: Thu Apr 26 2001 - 12:27:32 GMT
"Chris Kubica @Home" <ckubica@home.com> wrote:
>Here's a fun thread (I think):
>
>Give us your most interesting story about how/when/where you were able to
>get your hands on an uncollected JDS story.
Good idea, Chris. Thanks for sharing. Truly. You made me smile.
I remember finding "Hapworth 16, 1924" on microfilm in a local university library. I'd visited library after library, seeking stories. The seeking was a pleasure in itself. What stories I hadn't found by myself came to me out of the skies. Well, not the sky precisely. More like an airplane, as my favorite Canadian smuggled them over the border for me. (Thanks, PK.) But before Paul came to Chicago bearing gifts, I haunted libraries, looking for them. It was no hardship-- I haunt libraries anyway. I thought I'd never find Hapworth. Nobody seemed to have it.
But then I finally located Hapworth at a local college. There's an oddness to visiting a library that is not your own, and I felt like a bit of an interloper as I rooted among the periodicals for the one that I needed. It almost felt like I was using their library for nefarious purposes. I savored the sensation. And then I found Hapworth. (It's in the June 19, 1965 edition of THE NEW YORKER, by the way.) I pulled the film canister out of its box and wandered over to the microfilm machines, where I had to wait in line. When I finally did get a machine, I almost felt guilty that some poor student who needed one for research was having to wait, but then I got over it. I'd waited far to long for this.
Something that I love about finding these stories in the original magazines is reading the other articles and ads in the rest of the magazine. Seeing what people thought when they didn't know what would come after. So I sat there at the microfilm machine, scrolling through the roll and reading everything (I wouldn't let myself read the story; I wanted to savor the experience for as long as possible) and the librarian tapped me on the shoulder and said that there were people waiting for machines and I would only be allowed ten more minutes.
I won't tell you what I muttered under my breath, but I took my fistful of dimes and began copying. But I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to working these things, and some of my pages came out slightly smudged or too dark. I had the whole story copied when she came up to me again to tell me that my time was up. I merely lifted an eyebrow as I stood, and she drifted away. No, not even a snotty librarian was going to take this away from me.
I don't think I'll ever be as excited to find something again.
Regards,
Cecilia.
(And no, no comments about Hapworth disappointing me when I read it. Certainly it confused me, went against everything that I'd believed about the Glass family, but the more that I read it, the more that it makes sense.)
_________________________________________
Sign up for your cubsmvp.com email today!
http://www.cubs.com
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Thu May 17 2001 - 17:47:53 GMT