4 ms·

Did you learn anything shocking that hasn't been published?

• eitally 11y ago
  His handwriting was so bad I often needed one of the expert scholars to decipher it. I essentially learned through exposure, and realized how valuable studying the original manuscripts of authors can be. Whitman, for example, wrote on scraps of paper (essentially like Post-Its), and then tacked them to a large wall and rearranged, crossed out, rewrote, and edited everything like that, eventually getting to a point where he was happy, upon which time he rewrote everything again in the final manuscript he sent to his publisher. This was for Leaves of Grass. UVA also has the papers of William Faulkner, so I learned quote a bit about him, too. Additionally, four original copies of the Declaration of Independence. No, I didn't learn anything shocking, but I learned an awful lot about the history of the book, and archiving, and digitizing, and publishing. Terry Belanger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Belanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Belanger), a MacArthur Fellow, was my mentor.