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In the Spirit of Collaboration

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By Martin Sanders

Literary scholars tend to be solitary animals who prefer to stalk their prey alone. Most of us are as territorial as badgers. We mark our areas of expertise with peer-reviewed publications, we meet trespassers by gently nudging them off our turf, or, should somebody insist on encroaching, by hindering them in ways that range from passive aggression to active sabotage.

What I would like to offer here is a different scenario, an alternative to the solitary-hunter paradigm. I wish to tell the story of a pack of literary critics who stalked their prey in collaborative fashion and in the process made a rather good killing indeed.

I am the founder of a small literary association devoted to the promotion and study of a half-forgotten British author who was once a prominent literary figure. As is common with such projects of recovery and revival, the movement crystallized around a core of dedicated aficionados who were motivated not so much by scholarly opportunism as by genuine literary admiration and avid critical interest.

Said group hatched a project to put together a collection of the best as-yet uncollected or unknown writings of their admired author to fuel the figure's slow but growing renaissance. That involved going to the archives where most of the author's papers are located. And since the idea was conceived together over wine and hors d'oeuvres in a living room, it was felt that that happy mode of work should be continued.

In other words, we wanted to maintain the cohesion of the group instead of approaching the archives individually on our own time. It was a small step for our literary society but potentially a big step for the cause of collaborative research.

We duly set about putting that plan into action, which first required some concerted fund raising. Our efforts netted $3,500 from private and institutional sources, which was just enough to fly the four of us to the archives, where we would share a Residence Inn suite, cook our own meals, and drive to the archives in a common rental car.

Fast forward half a year and you would see us walking toward the special collections of a private library, housed in a handsome neo-Gothic building in the American heartland. Apart from a shared interest in "our" author, we were a motley crew: one assistant, one associate, one full professor, and -- here it gets interesting -- one co-executor of our author's literary estate.

It is easy to come across horror stories involving protracted warfare between literary critics and literary estates, the example of James Joyce's grandson Stephen Joyce being only a small outcropping on a much larger stumbling block. But when I founded the literary association, I made sure that the author's relative was part of the process from the beginning, and she has been a member of the board of officers ever since.

Walking into a revered author's archives together with a blood relative of that author is definitely noteworthy, and not only from the perspective of the scholars. The co-executor herself was rather excited to immerse herself in her relative's letters, drafts, newspaper clippings, etc., and to see the operations of scholarly pursuit unfold in that dimly lit, aggressively air-conditioned, stately reading room.

When we arrived, we found that another scholar had already installed himself at one of the tables, reading the papers of a different author. Seeing us enter en masse, he looked up suspiciously, and it occurred to me that he might have been considering us trespassers on "his" territory.

But when we briefly explained what we were doing there, he seemed intrigued. His one comment was disarmingly honest: "How ethical." He spoke without sarcasm and, moreover, made a valid point by invoking the root meaning of "ethos," as a code of conduct regulating the behavior of kindred spirits.

Our ethos, however, quickly modulated into boundless enthusiasm. It took one of us exactly 10 minutes to fish a major find out of the sea of documents: Inside a BBC correspondence file was laid a neatly penned parody of T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," written in our author's own hand.

Although it was an established fact that our author was a fierce critic of Eliot, her hilarious parody of Eliot's poem was completely unknown. Trying to keep her voice down, the finder recited that poem to us, drawing out a storm of barely suppressed laughter, all of which was met with stern looks from the presiding librarian.

It just so happened that the colleague who found the parody actually came to the archive to do research on, among other things, our author's relationship to Eliot. We knew then that our author, wherever she was, was looking kindly upon our endeavor.

A little while after the buzz created by that sensation had died down, the resident librarian again had cause for concern: Having come to the archive to comb through our author's personal library of several hundred books in search of significant marginalia, I lighted upon the author's literary guest book, a volume that had never been opened by scholars before.

The book, lovingly dedicated by one of literature's Greats, held a treasure trove of fun: On facing sheets were such pedantic questions regarding literary taste as "Who do you think is the greatest poet now living?," "Who is the best critic alive?," or "Who is the most deplorable writer ever to have been published?"

All in all there were some 50 questions, and neatly penned in the blanks were answers our author had recorded from the likes of H.G. Wells, Violet Hunt, and many others. Can you imagine the fun we had going from one entry to another, as those artists and intellectuals gave their variously sincere and cheeky answers dating from 1917 through 1926?

At that point the librarian had to step in, shushing us energetically. But we were not easily contained. For instance, our author commented on the tendency of a certain type of highly eligible bachelor to insist on "marrying a mousey woman. Not actually ugly, but not at all like Helen of Troy, whose face was said to have launched a thousand ships. The face he wants could launch a small but serviceable dinghy." Well, who can be blamed for failing to maintain dignified composure after reading statements such as that?

So we cracked up and calmed down by turns, we exchanged documents, recited passages in hushed tones, and showed each other marginalia. The reserved scholar at the other table was soon included in our shared enthusiasm, seeing letters and book reviews flutter down on his desk whenever one of us dug out something relevant to his subject.

Toward the end of our stay, he came over to me, somewhat timidly, showing me the summary of an interview with our author that he had located among the papers of his subject. Collaboration was catching on.

Of course, our doings in the archival reading room were only part of the story. When we got to our hotel suite in the evening, our plates were hardly empty when they were pushed to the center of the table to make room for laptops and notepads. We proceeded to share readings, reminiscences by the author's relative, comments, debates, connections, questions, answers, suggestions about how to make our author more visible, and so on.

Through it all, we would talk about our separate research interests, but we never lost sight of our collective goal to compile a collection of the author's best work.

Maybe what we experienced can only happen to scholars working with a previously marginalized writer, i.e., a literary figure whose status in the canon is still precarious. The common purpose of raising the profile of a half-forgotten but intensely loved writer is a strong bonding factor; and so is the lasting intellectual and aesthetic stimulation that a writer affords who is as complex as our author.

Maybe the zoological metaphor I began with has been ill chosen: After all, we were not really hunting our author. Rather, we were studying and observing her in a sympathetic, curious, and indeed "ethical" manner.

That does not mean that we were blind to the occasional shortcomings that attach to all writers, including our own. But the more we study her, the more we find that there is something intensely rewarding in this author's kaleidoscopic output.

When I reflect about the good times we had while studying our author, I wonder if having so much fun is in keeping with serious scholarly work. The sheer joy we experienced in our collaboration is a product of the discovery stage of research. Once we receive the copies of original documents that we individually requested from the library, we will turn again into solitary academics brooding over pieces of paper. But I doubt that we will ever lose the sense of pleasure, both aesthetical and intellectual, that attends the study of our writer.

Moreover, the memory of having brought to light the various items of our research in the company of enthusiastic, friendly, and ethical colleagues will always color our attitude to those materials.

We are, then, living testimonies to an important realization: Collaborative research is more enjoyable, more inspiring, and more productive than anything we could have achieved individually. Plus, what academic would decline an offer to combine fun with learning? It doesn't take a committee to answer that.