Cultural Nationalism and Modern Manuscripts: Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, Franz Kafka Zachary Leader In September 1960, with the encouragement of the Standing Confer- ence of National and University Librarians (SCONUL), Philip Larkin sent a questionnaire to ‘twenty “leading writers”’, among them T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and Graham Greene, asking about the disposition of their literary manuscripts.1 The results were to be reported back to SCONUL at its an- nual conference. The writers were asked three questions: (1) ‘Have you ever been asked for a gift of your manuscripts by a British library, an American library, or any other library?’; (2) ‘Have you ever been asked to sell your manuscripts to a British library, an American library, or any other library?’; (3) ‘Would you care to express any general opinion on this ques- tion to the conference?’2 The idea of the questionnaire was inspired by a letter Larkin received from an American library asking him if he would donate his own papers.3 The letter arrived sometime before 10 October 1958, when Larkin wrote to the Times Literary Supplement about ‘the grow- ing practice of American libraries of soliciting the gift of manuscripts or worksheets from living authors for study and preservation.’ In the letter, Larkin declares that ‘the time has come for British librarians to consider adopting a more positive policy.’ Larkin’s election to the Poetry Panel of 1. Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (London, 1993), p. 339; hereafter abbreviated PL. 2. Kingsley Amis, completed questionnaire, The Letters of Kingsley Amis, ed. Zachary Leader (London, 2000), pp. 580–81. See also Amis, letter to Philip Larkin, 24 Sept. 1960, The Letters of Kingsley Amis, pp. 578–80. 3. See Larkin, ‘A Neglected Responsibility: Contemporary Literary Manuscripts’ (1979), Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982 (London, 1983), p. 103; hereafter abbreviated ‘NR’. Critical Inquiry 40 (Autumn 2013) © 2013 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/13/4001-0009$10.00. All rights reserved. 160 This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 23:07:05 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2013 161 the Arts Council in January 1961 led to just such a policy, a collaboration between the Arts Council and the British Museum in creating in 1963 the National Manuscripts Collection of Contemporary Poets (NMCCP), which made its first purchase in 1964.4 Larkin’s friend Kingsley Amis was among the twenty writers surveyed, and he answered questions 1 and 2 by saying that no British library had ever approached him either for a gift of his manuscripts or to sell them, but that he had been approached by American libraries, had given a dozen or so items (corrected drafts of poems) to one of them, and might well sell other manuscripts ‘in the future’ to another. The ‘general opinion’ he wished to express to the conference was this: I will sell any of my manuscripts to the highest bidder, assuming such bidder to be of reputable standing, and I have no feeling one way or the other about such bidder’s country of origin. It seems to me no more incongruous that the Tate Gallery should have a large collection of Monets (say) than that Buffalo University should have a collection of Robert Graves manuscripts (say). I view with unconcern the drift 4. In 1969 the NMCCP became the NMCCW (National Manuscripts Collection of Contemporary Writers) and began purchasing prose as well as verse manuscripts, beginning with the only two surviving folios of Stella Gibbon’s Cold Comfort Farm (1932). For a variety of reasons, the Arts Council withdrew its support for the NMCCW in 1979, thus ending its existence; see Jamie Andrews, ‘What Will Survive of Us Are Manuscripts: Collecting the Papers of Living British Writers’, Journal of the History of Collections 20, no. 2 (2008): 259–71; hereafter abbreviated ‘WWS’. In its twenty-plus years of operation, significant manuscript material of writers, magazines, and small presses was purchased for British institutions, dispelling the idea that British libraries were not interested in contemporary manuscripts. In 2005 the campaign for preserving contemporary British literary manuscripts was reinvigorated by the creation of two lobbying bodies: the Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts (GLAM), made up mostly of archivists, curators, and librarians of literary collections, and the United Kingdom Literary Heritage Working Group (UKLH), spearheaded by writers such as Motion and Michael Holroyd, as well as prominent curators, academics, and publishers. These organizations campaign in the public press and with the government for the retention of modern literary manuscripts in Britain and for tightened export regulations and tax incentives to benefit living authors and British collections. They also provide advice to authors wishing to sell their archives or seeking guidance on the care of electronic archives. Z ACHARY L EADER, professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton, is at work on a biography of Saul Bellow. He is the author, among other books, of Reading Blake’s Songs: Revision and Romantic Authorship and The Life of Kingsley Amis (a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in biography) and the editor, among other books, of Shelley’s The Major Works, On Modern British Fiction, and The Letters of Kingsley Amis. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 23:07:05 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 162 Zachary Leader / Cultural Nationalism and Modern Manuscripts of British manuscripts to America, where our language is spoken and our literature studied.5 In an accompanying letter to Larkin he explains: ‘I’d have said “my work belongs not to England, but to the world” if I were a different type of chap. (I use this last phrase so often these days that I’m beginning to wonder whether I may not actually be a different type of chap.)’6 Nine years later, in 1969, Amis sold one and a half boxes worth of man- uscript material to the Harry Ransom Humanities Center in Texas, includ- ing two unpublished works (an essay assignment book, written at age eleven, and a copy of his failed Oxford BLitt thesis), typescript and holo- graph manuscripts of five novels, plus extensive notebook material for three other works. The most important of these items is the partial type- script of the first version of Lucky Jim, originally titled Dixon and Christine. The differences between Dixon and Christine and Lucky Jim are striking, beginning with the fact that Jim, disconcertingly, is called Julian, quite the wrong name. In the Ransom Center catalogue, the manuscript is described as containing numerous pencilled annotations ‘by Amis and others.’ But when I was able to examine a photocopy of the manuscript (easily ordered and quickly posted), I immediately recognised that almost all the annota- tions were in Larkin’s hand. Larkin’s crucial role in revising Lucky Jim has long been recognised, but its extent has been a matter of controversy. What the Dixon and Christine typescript makes clear is how Larkin improved the novel not just in large ways but in numerous small ways, with many warn- ings ‘against overwritten or artificial dialogue, as in “terribly unnatural” or “This speech might come from a stage play TOO BAD to be produced” or simply “Horrible smell of arse” (subsequently “HS of A”) or “GRUESOME AROMA OF B” (presumably “BUM”).’ Other suggestions concern pacing, as in ‘“not going quickly enough” or ‘“too detailed for their purpose.”’ The best of these annotations reads: ‘“This speech makes me twist about with boredom.”’7 Fifteen or so years after Amis sold the Dixon and Christine manuscript to the Ransom Center, he turned to America again, selling the remainder of his papers (483 catalogued items) and rights to all future papers (plus all books in his library, many annotated) to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The Amis archive had been put up for sale, through his agent, Jonathan Clowes, by the London book dealer Bernard Quaritch, and the purchase was arranged by George Robert Minkoff, a dealer in the 5. Quoted in Leader, The Life of Kingsley Amis (London, 2006), p. 448. 6. Amis, letter to Larkin, 24 Sept. 1960, The Letters of Kingsley Amis, pp. 578–80. 7. Leader, The Life of Kingsley Amis, pp. 268–69. This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 23:07:05 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2013 163 United States. A dozen American libraries expressed interest, but only the Huntington bid, offering $90,000, rather a low figure for the time. Accord- ing to Minkoff, the figure was low chiefly because the archive lacked the material in the Ransom Center, the Lucky Jim or Dixon and Christine man- uscript in particular. The Ransom Center was the logical American buyer, but the Ransom Center had just purchased the Pforzheimer Library of Early English Literature (1,100 first editions of works by the most influen- tial and representative English writers from the years 1475 to 1700). It claimed not to have the money for a second big purchase.8 There was also the question of Amis’s reputation. The archive was offered at the lowest point in Amis’s life, after the publication of the weakest of his novels and a string of pot-boiling nonfiction works (anthologies, jokey books about drink).