Tag: Beinecke Library

The Beinecke Library at Yale University has become hallowed ground for me as a writer. Since discovering that I could visit as an independent researcher, I’ve had some magical experiences there.

I’ve made my way through the papers of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edmund Wilson, Thornton Wilder, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller, even holding parchments containing sonnets by Petrarch in my own hands! So many of my diary entries here contain knowledge I learned from these excursions so I am truly grateful that a library of this magnitude is open to me as someone not affiliated with the college. One of my favorite posts about visiting is What Libraries Might Teach Us. It contains lessons I gleaned from going through the papers of people I admire so greatly for the literary legacies they’ve left.

These include: look to the writers who have come before you to help you make a map; destroy what you hope will remain private about your life and your work because someone WILL find it if you don’t; just because you aren’t participating in some historic event, such as a world war (which the Lost Generation writers lived through), it doesn’t mean someone in the future won’t want to study your life as an example of the period in history in which you are living; don’t allow fear, a lack of confidence or distraction to waste your time; celebrate men who can bond over the literary; don’t beat up on yourself if you feel you didn’t get a good enough education; in terms of relationships, be aware that none of us, not even those who achieve fame, get off Scott-free when it comes to love and loss; try to find writers who have already paved the ground you are hoping to cover, but ones who support you with an open heart and without jealousy or competitiveness; and find your passion, and fight tooth and nail for it. You can bet I will be returning to the Beinecke Library time after time and I will be writing about the magic things I find there so stop back by if you are a fan of literary history.