{"id":2291,"date":"2017-04-19T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T12:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.diasporicarchives.com\/?p=2291"},"modified":"2023-08-18T18:34:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T17:34:03","slug":"acquiring-winklers-archives-for-the-national-library-of-jamaica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/diasporicarchives\/acquiring-winklers-archives-for-the-national-library-of-jamaica\/","title":{"rendered":"Acquiring Winkler\u2019s Archives for the National Library of Jamaica"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kim Robinson-Walcott<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Jamaican writer Anthony C. Winkler died in September 2015. His death was a personal loss for me in many ways. First of all, I was the person who \u2018discovered\u2019 him as a Jamaican novelist: I found his manuscript of The Painted Canoe<\/em> sitting in a dusty pile when I first started working at Kingston Publishers in 1981, took it home to read that weekend, couldn\u2019t put it down, and on Monday morning (easily) persuaded the publisher, Mike Henry, to offer Winkler a contract. The Painted Canoe<\/em> was first published in 1983. I would subsequently edit another four manuscripts by Winkler for Kingston Publishers over the next decade, and when he moved to Macmillan I edited another three books of his for that publisher. Meanwhile, in the mid-1990s I decided to do a PhD on Winkler\u2019s work, which I was awarded in 2001; and I converted that thesis into a book which was published in 2006. In all of this, Tony Winkler became my dear friend.<\/p>\n

In September 2015 when I attended Tony Winkler\u2019s memorial service in Atlanta, I visited the Winklers\u2019 home and was shown Tony\u2019s study by his son Adam; it was overflowing with manuscripts and papers and the family was overwhelmed and unsure what to do with it all. I had been invited by Alison Donnell to a workshop on Caribbean literary archives in Trinidad the previous year, and the thrust of that workshop was the politics of location in relation to diasporic literary archives (see http:\/\/www.diasporicarchives.com\/trinidad-workshop-review\/<\/a>). This was the first event in the region to raise the question of authors’ papers, and it set us all, especially those of us who had personal connections with Caribbean authors, thinking \u2013 or at the very least articulating thoughts or reservations which we may have held privately before. It is of concern to some, for example, that V.S. Naipaul\u2019s papers are housed at the University of Tulsa; as are those of Jean Rhys. I was particularly impressed by Ken Ramchand\u2019s recounting of his initiatives in spearheading the acquisition of manuscripts or papers of Wilson Harris, Roger Mais, Eric Roach, Earl Lovelace, Michael Anthony and Sam Selvon, among others, by the University of the West Indies (UWI). Ramchand\u2019s efforts were pioneering \u2013 the UWI had never acquired literary archives before; fortunately, these early acquisitions took place before the negotiated price for certain literary archives began to reach dizzying heights. So my main thought when I saw the papers in Tony\u2019s study was, please don\u2019t let Winkler\u2019s papers go to some moneyed US institution!<\/p>\n

A year later, in October 2016, I participated in the 35th<\/sup> Annual West Indian Literature Conference (held in Montego Bay, Jamaica), whose subject was \u201cArchiving Caribbean Literature and Popular Culture\u201d. That conference stirred up memories of the discussions held in the workshop in Trinidad in 2014. At the end of a session in which librarians from the National Library of Trinidad had related the story of their acquisition of the papers of Guyanese-Trinidadian writer Ian McDonald, I was so inspired by what I had just heard \u2013 and\u00a0 so propelled by a conviction generated out of the 2014 workshop \u2013 that I impulsively approached a couple of Jamaican librarians who were also attending the conference, including the National Library of Jamaica (NLJ)\u2019s executive director Winsome Hudson, and asked them whether their institutions might have any interest in acquiring Winkler\u2019s papers. While other responses were restrained (with good reason \u2013 a shortage of storage space), Winsome\u2019s response was enthusiastic and immediate: a resounding YES! Winsome followed up with me aggressively, and I contacted Winkler\u2019s widow Cathy and broached the subject with her tentatively. At first Cathy was hesitant, unsure whether she and her children were ready to part with Tony\u2019s papers; on the other hand, she was certain that if they were to go anywhere, they should go to Jamaica, which was the only place Tony had ever regarded as home. She agreed to have a conversation with Winsome. Winsome also was nervous about approaching Cathy, having never had the experience of acquiring a literary archive before. To my surprise, within a month Winsome called to tell me that she had negotiated successfully with Cathy, and would I be willing to accompany her to Atlanta to go through the papers. On February 4, 2017, Winsome and I flew up to Atlanta. Four days later, we brought home four packed suitcases; in late March two NLJ staff members travelled to Atlanta and brought home another four suitcases; and on April 6, 2017, the archives were officially handed over to the NLJ.<\/p>\n

Why did I feel passionately that Winkler\u2019s papers should be acquired? First of all, why are the archives of any writer important? They are important to scholars who seek to gain a deeper understanding of the writer\u2019s work. By looking at drafts of manuscripts, or at correspondence, or even at memorabilia, one gets a fuller picture of the writer and of his or her creative process. They are part of a country\u2019s cultural heritage. They are a rich inheritance. The value of literary archives had been brought home to me at that 2014 Trinidad workshop, and it had subsequently been reinforced by my editing of a special issue of Caribbean Quarterly<\/em> on Caribbean literary archives, compiled by Alison Donnell and containing many of the papers originally presented at the workshop, which we published in 2016 (see http:\/\/www.uwi.edu\/cq\/cq-issues\/cq-volume-62-nos.-3-4-(september-december-2016<\/a>). So, none of this might have happened had I not attended that workshop.<\/p>\n

Winkler is famous to most Jamaicans as a writer of comic fiction \u2013 principally as the author of The Lunatic<\/em>, his second novel, and the one which established him as a bestselling novelist in Jamaica. That achievement alone would justify having his archives in the National Library of Jamaica. I have never known of any Jamaican novel to be more popular than The Lunatic<\/em>. Anyone who has read The Lunatic<\/em> would of course understand why: it is bawdy, outrageous, side-splittingly funny. Winkler stands alongside other Jamaican fiction\/prose writers whose works have formed the Jamaican literary canon: Roger Mais, John Hearne, Neville Dawes, Lorna Goodison, Olive Senior, Kei Miller, Marlon James. The Lunatic<\/em> is already on its way to becoming a classic in Jamaican fiction. I need to emphasise, though, that Winkler is unique, because in his work he is able to combine outrageous farcical humour with insightful social commentary and incisive analysis of his fellow Jamaicans. Winkler\u2019s books transcend the boundaries between popular and serious fiction. As I stated in my scholarly study of Winkler\u2019s oeuvre, there is a sobriety underlying the farcical humour and a richness underlying seeming superficialities which are often underestimated; there is an artistry in the seamlessness with which these levels coexist; in short, Winkler\u2019s books warrant serious consideration. NLJ\u2019s acquisition of Winkler\u2019s archives will undoubtedly facilitate such consideration.<\/p>\n

What did Winsome and I encounter in Winkler\u2019s study when we went to Atlanta?<\/p>\n