The Downtown Collection: Documenting the Scene

The result is a unique object showcasing the talents of over 40 Unbearables including Hakim Bey, Judy Nylon, Tsaurah Litzky, Mike Topp, Elizabeth Morse, David Sandlin, Joe Maynard, Sharon Mesmer, and William Anthony. It is a slice of Americana—a window into the lives of late twentieth-century bohemia turning the structures of the literary profession into a playful indictment of the industry.

Since The Ron Kolm Papers found a home in the Fales Library in 1996, the Downtown Collection has expanded by leaps and bounds. Through a combination of purchases and donations, the Fales Library acquired several major collections of Downtown work, all of which overlap in interesting ways. The complete runs of Between C & D and Redtape in the Ron Kolm Papers are supported by the archives of both magazines which include correspondence with contributors, business files, ephemera, and production notes recording the complete life of each title. Similar insight into the business of literary production is provided by the Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Archive—an a publishing venture dedicated to bring underrepresented voices to a mainstream literary audience. High Risk Books was the American imprint of Serpent’s Tail Press in London (see: www.serpentstail.com/home/ for their newest works) and published authors as diverse as William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Tim Dlugos, Diamanda Galas, Robert Glück, Gary Indiana, June Jordan, Cookie Mueller, Lynne Tillman, Pagan Kennedy, John Giorno and Sapphire. Many of these writers also appeared in the pages of Between C & D, Redtape, and other publications in the Downtown Collection.

Archives of individual artists and writers were acquired alongside those of publishers and magazines. The personal papers of David Wojnarowicz, Dennis Cooper, Martin Wong, and Tim Dlugos are invaluable resources for understanding the Downtown scene. The Wojnarowicz Papers also demonstrate the archival challenges of collecting Downtown work. In addition to the usual diaries, correspondence, scrapbooks and manuscripts, the Wojnarowicz Papers contain hundreds of photographic prints and negatives, unfinished canvasses, paper mache birds, 8mm film, videotape, and audio recordings. Future biographers will surely treasure the incoming answering machine message tapes which Wojnarowicz saved for several years.>

Books and magazines from Wojnarowicz’s personal library, as well as the libraries of Cooper, Dlugos, Wong and others, have been added to the Downtown Collection. Not only does the Downtown Collection preserve and provide access to these scarce publications, library patrons read copies of these works that bear the inscriptions and marks of the participants in the downtown scene.

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The Downtown Collection: Documenting the Scene

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The Downtown Collection: Documenting the Scene

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