Henry Miller Memorial Library

Big Sur, California
We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

Posts Tagged ‘Emil Schnellock’

Archives Update!

Posted on: by hmmler

I have not posted on the blog in far too long, and for that I am very sorry. Life has bee busy, busy, busy here at the library. See our new deck?

The new deck during the Animal Collective show!

The new deck during the Animal Collective show!

Another deck shot at the Animal Collective Show

Another deck shot at the Animal Collective Show

New deck in the daytime

New deck in the daytime

You should come down and have a cup of coffee on it, if you’re in the area, or plan on coming to one of our events if you’re too far away for a casual cup of joe. Either way, the deck is a fantastic addition to the library.

My purpose in talking with you now is different than the public events that we have at the library, however. I come to you as the archivist of the library to give you the news of the work we’re doing in the back office with the old papers and the curly handwriting and the Parisian Air Mail envelopes. The work of the archives in this summer season is to have the entire Schnellock Collection accessioned within our system to the point that the rest of the holdings currently are: in an electronic database with an accession number, title, date, and to be properly stored in acid free boxes and interleaved with acid free paper. This is particularly exciting because the Schnellock Collection is the most valuable of the things that the archives owns, holding rare manuscripts, essays, and letters between Emil Schnellock and Henry Miller. These papers, dating back to Miller’s time in Paris are the most exciting and rewarding portion of the archives to sort through for all of us. Currently, our new intern Joey is doing some preservation work on an essay that Miller wrote about D.H. Lawrence prior to the publication of Tropic of Cancer when he was encouraged to write something respectable.

Joey is our new intern! He arrived at the beginning of the week and spent the first few days getting settled in Big Sur and how is sinking his teeth full force into the Emil Schnellock Collection, interleaving, giving titles, and reading insights into Henry Miller’s early writing life. He comments occasionally in the office about Henry Miller’s feelings about James Joyce based on the essay he’s working on right now. The last quotation he read was, “Joyce has nothing whatsoever to say.” I think he’s enjoying his work. I will tell you more about Joey as the summer unfolds. For now, I will only tell you that he has spent the last 18 months in Mongolia, and that is something I can’t wait to hear more about. Perhaps I’ll give him some homework to write us a blog post about an aspect of his time there.

Garen is another intern who has already accomplished a great deal, and is working remotely from San Francisco. Garen is a computer-techie to the max, with a computer science degree and an expressed interest in working with us to be as efficient with the tasks we do on the computer so as to limit our time staring at our little laptops and more time staring at the redwoods, old and fun papers, and each others smiling faces. I completely agree with this goal. So far he has taken the Shifreen and Jackson bibliography (updated constantly by William Ashley), which is the most comprehensive source for all printings of Miller titles, and turned the word file into a keyword searchable database with each book as its own record. Now, this is work that if I had sat down to cut/copy/and paste all of the pieces of information into their respective fields, would have taken me months. MONTHS of computer time was broken down into a week of Garen writing a computer program that would automate the entire process and tell the computer to pull out bits of information and call each piece a title, a date, or so on based only on where it falls in relation to the rest of the information. He explained it to me so well and I am butchering the relaying of that information to you, but I hope you can understand what an amazing feat this has been. Before the summer is over he will also be implementing a Henry Miller Library Archives website (which I will design, and he will code) AND will show me how to make updates with, as he describes, little to no coding experience. Which is more or less where I sit.

So it’s exciting times here at the Henry Miller Library, especially in the dark back office where we’re all sitting plodding through the stacks of work that pile up while we’re busy making coffee, holding all night music festivals or hanging out with each other and having a barbecue (which the library and Folk Yeah! crew did last night in order to reconvene after a busy week, enjoy each others company, and prepare for a summer filled with concerts, festivals, and rock stars).

Part of the work of this summer for me is a little less fun than treasure hunting through the Schnellock Collection, but essential in order to keep the archives afloat. That task is to find a grant (or a couple of grants) to support the Henry Miller Library Archives. We are currently hoping to find $25,000 for the implementation of a climate control system in the storage facility here at the library. We have been working with libraries in the peninsula (a MASSIVE thanks to CSUMB and their library director Bill Robnett) to protect our holdings this winter but we would like to be able to store our holdings safely here onsite. It is a reachable goal, but we need support, as archiving is not a particularly lucrative business, yet the preservation of literary history is essential. Please consider making a donation of any size to the Henry Miller Library Archives fund.

Additionally, I am looking for a sponsor for a printing of the first installment of a quarterly Archives Newsletter that will be issued in the fall of 2009. If this is a project you would be interested in supporting, please email me at keely@henrymiller.org

Thanks all for reading, and I promise to be more with it with the updates!

And to leave you, this is how I feel right now about the state of California.

Whatever, California...

Whatever, California...

The Library Room is naked!

Posted on: by hmmler

If I might take some more of your time to tell you more about exciting changes under way at the library.  I’ve already told you about our plans for an exciting new deck, I’ve already told you that the lawn has been under siege by gardeners, hoses, seeds, soils, sands, and loving pokes with a pitch fork (what kind of poke from a pitch fork ISN’T loving?).  In my discussion of the lawn attack, I neglected to tell you that our friend Marcello has been putting in wonderful pathway edges using rocks from the property.  They’re beautiful and I encourage you to look all over the place when you next visit.  The improvements are not only on the outside of the library, no!  We’re giving the library room a bit of a facelift.  Those musicians out there might better know this as the adopted waiting/practice room for open mic.  Either way, it’s a small room within the library that has, since I’ve been here, had many different uses and many different layouts.  When I first came here, it was largely used for storage, and when I came out to Big Sur for a January break from Smith, Megan (one of my best friends and the girl who introduced me to Big Sur) and I used it as our workspace for some serious scanning time.  It has also been home to a large collection of local interest books, used books, and most recently a hearty donation of used, rare, and collectible Henry Miller titles.  Now it is where I sit, surrounded by painting supplies, a vacuum, drills, screws, ladders and straight edges.  The walls are a warmer white (and cleaned up after all the holes from nails and screws, scratches from errant frame corners and heartily handled hardcovers), the shelves are all removed, and the room has an open, airy feel.  As a matter of full disclosure, the airy feeling I have might be more from the paint fumes, but either way, it’s a lovely looking re-vamp.

Megan and I at work in the library room as it was in 2005

Megan and I at work in the library room as it was in 2005

There are several plans for these newly blanked walls.  First, it becomes the perfect space to showcase all of the beautiful posters that have been made for us by the artists at Hatch Show Posters in Nashville, TN.  This company has been making stand out and quite distinguished concert posters forever, and we are so glad to have six of them for our annual benefit.  The lineup includes Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Henry Rollins, Matmos and Zeena Parkins, DJ Spooky and Philip glass.  The back wall is my baby – I’m filling it with facsimiles of notes from Henry Miller’s desk.  My idea is that it will look, with the strategic placement of a typewriter, similar to a space Miller could have worked in, but with a breadth of information on the wall spanning his entire working life.  I want people to be able to sit down and look at the notes that he jotted to himself and, thanks to our archive, to Emil Schnellock, Miller’s boyhood friend from Brooklyn (boyhood friend turned literary trustee as Miller’s writing life brought him to Paris and points European).  The rest of the walls will be home to many of the framed pictures that will return to the library from CSUMB where the wonderful Bill Robnet, director of the library, has been keeping an eye on them for us in their state of the art special collections, out of the way of potential Big Sur mudslides (mudslides which, by the grace of us all, did not happen in Graves Canyon, and which, knock on wood, will not happen here).

This is Theo on his adopted bed (the shelf has been removed and Theo got so pissed that he moved back to San Francisco with his person, Susanna)

This is Theo on his adopted bed (the shelf has been removed and Theo got so pissed that he moved back to San Francisco with his person, Susanna)

The other new and exciting change has more to do with the bookstore room.  There are lots of shelves in the library room with gates over them, which held at one point all of the foreign titles that the library holds.  We have found a new storage space for these (see also: hanging from the ceiling) and so will be removing the cages and opening that space up to hold the books (largely Penguin Classics and other trade paperbacks) that Miller outlines in Books In My Life.  Fleshing out this collection and moving it to the Miller-specific room in the back is going to free up all the space they currently hold in the center of the library for us to feature the… are you ready for this guys?!?! … NEW BOOK ORDER!
Now, I’ve told you seventeen different ways that I simply cannot ever get enough of the new book orders.  I turn into a kid in a candy store (perhaps we should call a spade a spade and say I turn into a book-lover in the midst of hundreds of books).  Eric is responsible for keeping up the bookstore stock and I have to say; he’s VERY good at it.  Magnus and I let Eric know the few titles that we’ve run into since the last book order that we want and he fleshes out our suggestions with a ton of amazing books.  He tells me this is going to be a fiction heavy order, which I am thrilled to pieces about.
Don’t worry.  I’ll let you know the SECOND these books that I hear him ordering now come in.  I’ll take pictures, I’ll detail the titles, I’ll describe the fonts, the smells, and the covers of each book.  Oh goodness.  I just can’t wait.

And lastly, Magnus, our fearless leader has left Eric and I in charge of the HML while he makes his annual pilgrimage to his home country of Sweden.  I’ve made him promise several different times to send me frequent photos and updates so I can give you all the play-by-play.  When I told him about my plan he came up with a clever title for the stream of updates.  His title won’t work for the blog though, because it’s just “Magnus in Sweden” but with a really killer Swedish accent.  It doesn’t work online.  And for that I am forever sorry, because hearing Magnus pick on Swedish accents is really quite funny.

Submitted to the Big Sur Roundup, and here for those of you outside of its readership

Posted on: by hmmler

Life at the Henry Miller Library is busy despite the season – preparations for the upcoming summer concerts, work in the archives, writing workshops, and, of course the massive amount of leg work for the Big Sur International Short Film Screening series that we all love so well.  Just a few things we want to make sure you know about:

We are introducing a new regular event – Second Sundays at the Miller!   So come by for an all day concert on the second Sunday of every month from June to September.  Likewise, we are very interested in featuring local bands and musicians for these events, so if you’d like to play, come down to the library and talk to us, there’s an application on our website (http://www.henrymiller.org).  We really want to be able to feature all you wonderful local musicians!

Also, look forward to May 30th when we will bring Alisa Fineman and Don Usner (author of Natural History of Big Sur) to the library to attack the question “Where is Big Sur?”  Those of you who knew about this program that was set to run last year will remember that it was scheduled for June 28th, a time when the answer to that question was largely, “at the Carmel Middle School.”  Keep in touch for more information about this community gathering.

Work in the archives is buzzing along, as well.  We are looking for new interns for the summer.  If you know students interested in library science, please let them know to visit our website to find more information about our internship in the archives. Keely has been in hiding among the wealth of letters, manuscript pages, and notes that passed between Henry Miller and Emil Schnellock from Paris to Brooklyn in the time around the 1930s.  So if you haven’t seen her in a while, trust she’s doing well and is in her element amidst engrossing Miller history.

Also!  If you haven’t seen Magnus for a while you can trust that he’s been busy, among other things, planning and carrying out two successful writing workshops.  The annual children’s writing workshop was held in December, and the young adult and fiction workshop in March.  Participants come back year after year for these unique and important workshops in the rapidly growing genre of young adult writing.

And, if you have been missing Eric it’s because he’s been in the thick of the planning stages of the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series.  With invitations out to 2000+ filmmakers internationally, submissions are already streaming in.  This year we are proud to announce a slight change in the regular program – we have invited guest judges to have a say in the process.  We’ve not found just any guest judges, but Academy Award winning (and local!) cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, Academy Award nominee and legendary composer Philip Glass, cutting edge musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson, Academy Award nominated actor Woody Harrelson, feature film editor Susan Littenberg, and film producer Lawrence Inglee.  So get ready for Thursday nights!

We are all very busy, but we promise that if you’ve been missing us there are two things you can do to solve this problem: you can get ready for all of the wonderful events we are working so hard to bring you, or you can come on down to the library, which contrary to popular belief is open and we are excited to see you all.  Don’t forget about our local discount.  We’ve got a wonderful selection of books now and will have even more soon – if you want to see something on or shelves, let us know, we love suggestions.

I promise I won't forget how much I love Henry Miller again

Posted on: by hmmler

I have fallen back in love with Henry Miller today.  I do it about once every couple of months.  I will admit, I have not read an entire book by Henry Miller in a long time (I did pull out Sexus a few months ago and started in on that, though not too long after that, became too engrossed in Angels and Demons by Dan Brown).  Today, though, I want to go home and curl up with Tropic of Cancer, which I haven’t read since I was in high school.  I want to re-read Black Spring, and I want to sink my teeth properly back into Sexus, and then read the entire Rosy Crucifixion.  I want to read it all again!  I normally find myself picking through my two favorites: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch and The Colossus of Maroussi, but today nothing but the sordid tales of a hand-to-mouth living, sex crazed, dingy apartment dwelling, wine slugging, chain smoking, letter writing fool will do.  I don’t care how peaceful he felt in Big Sur or how majestic he found Greece and all he met there.  I want to know how warped he was by the loss of his June, and I want to hear him borrowing money from friends, acquaintances and sometimes, complete strangers.  I want to hear an account of eating food and drinking wine and staying up in bars until dawn.  I want to hear the earth shattering philosophy that he tucked into these accounts.  I want to place myself with Henry in Paris, and I want to live through it all, and I want him to take me there.

Why this sudden rebirth of the love I have always felt for Henry Miller’s writing?  I have started to import onto my computer the scanned images that we have of the Emil Schnellock Collection in the archives here.  As it takes around five minutes for each CD to transfer, there is wait time that I am more than happy to spend by reading selections of each disc.  The first one I popped in had an eight-page letter that Miller had written to Emil Schnellock, his childhood friend who he wrote numerous letters to during his time in Paris.  There is no better way to understand someone’s life than by reading the letters of someone who Wrote Letters.  Miller, a pathological writer, would write prolific letters to his friends when he could not figure what to add next to whichever novel he was working with at any given time.  They act as extensions of his novels – it is easy to select portions of his novels that stemmed from portions of his letters.  Miller’s work is all based in a romantic ideal of his own autobiography (with the exception of Smile At the Foot of the Ladder), and so it is no stretch to connect his letters with his novels and his life.  It is an incredibly organic and interesting relationship, and makes the pieces in this archive even more interesting, I would say, than the letters from a writer for whom the work and life and correspondence was more separate.  Henry’s zest for writing manifested itself in not only a huge body of work, but also an astounding number of letters to an incredible number of correspondents.

So, I’ll leave you here as I head home to read some Henry Miller (I will also be picking up Letters to Emil edited by George Wickes, which are more letters written to Emil Schnellock by Henry Miller.  If you’re interested in a copy of this book we have a few at the library, so come on down or give a call) and maybe I’ll even write a letter.  I will also leave you with an image of my favorite find of the day.  This is the closing of a letter to Emil Schnellock from Henry Miller from March 16, 1931.  It makes me realize that I would have been good friends with Henry.  Good friends, indeed.

hemmorroides

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