The University of Texas at Austin announced today that it has acquired the papers of David Foster Wallace, the author who committed suicide in 2008.
According to the UT press release:
Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed “Infinite Jest,” the earliest appearance of his signature “David Foster Wallace” on “Viking Poem,” written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.
The university will keep the Wallace material at its Harry Ransom Center, an archive and library. The Ransom center also owns a Gutenberg Bible, papers from Don DeLillo, Graham Greene, Norman Mailer, and Carson McCullers, and Edgar Allan Poe’s writing desk.
The Ransom center reportedly sent Wallace a letter asking about his plans for his personal papers back when the author was still alive, though Wallace did not respond.
UT declined to say how much it paid to acquire the papers, presumably from Wallace’s widow, the painter Karen Green.
