A writer's notes …

… Saved From The Bonfire: The Tom Wolfe Papers | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It is hard to think of a greater stamp of literary respectability the city could bestow on a writer. Ascend the stairs of the library’s imposing Fifth Avenue entrance, passing Patience and Fortitude, the marble lions that guard the doors, and you are entering the cathedral of literary New York. Its reading room, currently closed for restoration, is an inner sanctum long used by writers escaping the noisy distractions of the city outside. My particular pilgrimage takes me to the library’s Manuscripts and Archives division. Among its treasures are some 700 cuneiform tablets, hundreds of medieval illuminated manuscripts and renaissance documents, a copy of the Declaration of Independence annotated by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington’s Farewell Address (as well as his recipe for beer: “a larger sifter full of Bran Hops”, “3 gallons Molasses”). Researchers can read manuscripts and letters by Washington Irving, Herman Melville, James Joyce and Ezra Pound. With the library’s acquisition of his papers, this is the company Tom Wolfe finds himself in. He is now, officially, an Important Writer.