Library of Congress's Blog, page 81

Recovering Silent Films: The Mostly Lost Workshop

This is a guest post by Mark Hartsell, editor of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The post is reprinted from the January/February issue of LCM, available in its entirety online.

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Mostly Lost workshop participants gather outside the Packard Campus theater. Photo by Shawn Miller.

At any other theater, they would be the world’s most annoying moviegoers — the last people with whom you’d want to spend a few hours in a confined space.

They talk endlessly among themselves as the film plays. They shout to acquaintances across the theater. They talk back to the screen. They forever check their phones and furiously type away on laptops.

This behavior, frowned upon anywhere else, is not only tolerated here at the Packard Campus theater but, for one week each June, is explicitly encouraged.

“Please talk loudly. Please bring out your laptops or iPads,” patrons are instructed just before the lights dim and the film rolls — the cinema equivalent of an airline steward ordering passengers to recline their seats, lower their tray tables, turn on all electronic devices and walk about the cabin during takeoff.

All that distraction would make for a nightmarish night at most theaters. But for the Library of Congress, it represents something productive and important: an effective, if noisy, way to preserve film history.

Each June, the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia, holds Mostly Lost, a workshop that enlists cinema experts and movie buffs from around the country to help identify silent films whose titles have been lost to history.

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Workshop participants use laptops to find information to help them identify the film they’re watching on screen. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The four-day workshop taps, in real time, the collective brainpower of the historians, archivists and fans in the seats: As films roll, they shout out clues they see onscreen that might help identify the film and search online databases for titles that match the clues.

Out of the chaos, a more complete understanding of silent film emerges: Since their inception seven years ago, the workshops have identified 403 films — just over half the number screened.

“Before each workshop, we preview the films submitted and often are able to identify a film prior to the workshop, so that submission doesn’t make the final cut onto the workshop program,” said Rob Stone, who, along with Rachel Del Gaudio, organizes the event. “We try not to include any easy ones at the workshop, we want our Mostly Lost attendees to really work, and our high percentage of identifications show that they do just that.”

Moviemakers released some 11,000 silent feature films in the U.S. during cinema’s first few decades. According to a 2013 Library of Congress study, about 70 percent of them no longer exist, and many that survived did so in an incomplete form.

Today, international archives collectively hold thousands of reels that — whether through neglect, human error or the ravages of time — no longer bear the markings that would reveal the identities of the films they contain.

In cinema’s early years, distributors provided films to theaters and didn’t require them to be returned. After a movie’s run ended, the projectionist might keep the whole film, throw it out or just save a few favorite bits.

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A silent film is screened during a Mostly Lost workshop. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Or, some reels from a multireel feature might get misplaced over the decades, leaving, say, only one title-less reel behind. In other cases, a film might deteriorate and the degraded sections get cut out, leaving a partial film with no opening title and credits.

Are these works masterpieces? Lost classics? Without doing some film archaeology, those questions would go unanswered.

The purpose of Mostly Lost is to uncover as much information about each film as possible and identify its proper title. Nothing is known about some of the films screened. About others, archivists know a little — the name of an actor, perhaps, or the production company.

The workshop held this past June drew 191 participants from seven countries to screen about 130 potential titles submitted by collectors and institutions from around the world: the Library of Congress, Lobster Films, the George Eastman Museum, the Packard Humanities Institute, Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Cinematek, EYE Film Instituut Nederland and Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée.

The films ranged in date from about 1900 to the 1960s, in length from about five seconds to nearly 25 minutes and in subject from westerns to slapstick to travelogue to animated clowns banding together to defend Earth from a Martian invasion.

Clues found onscreen help attendees identify unknown films or at least add to the knowledge about them. The typeface used in an intertitle helped date a silent film to the early 1920s. Recognizing a car as a Studebaker President Roadster and an actor as George LeMaire resulted in the identification of one film as the 1929 short “The Salesman.”

At the workshops, questions are raised (“Is that Andy Devine?” “NO!!”), observations offered (“The furniture looks French, but the acting doesn’t”) and jokes made (“The car is a ’39 Mercury, but what year is the fish?” someone quips during a 1940s fishing travelogue.)

After the workshop ends, the work continues. For weeks afterward, the screening notes are researched in databases such as the American Film Institute, the British Film Institute and the Complete Index to World Film, resulting in more identifications.

The workshops, it’s hoped, will not only restore long-lost information about these films but also restore the films themselves to public consciousness.

“I am constantly surprised by the knowledge and research skills of the Mostly Lost attendees,” Del Gaudio said. “They have been able to identify films that I thought would remain unknown forever. Films that seemingly have no visual clues still elicit responses from someone who recognizes that location or are familiar with that particular story. I receive emails years after the fact from attendees who come across helpful information that they want to impart in case it helps to identify a film. It is wonderful.”

New Online: Rare Autobiography by Enslaved West African Scholar

This is a guest post by Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division.

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Omar Ibn Said. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

In the summer of 2017, the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress acquired a collection of unique documents, some dating back to the 1830s. Although the documents are not very old by Library standards — the division and the Library hold manuscripts that are more than 1,000 years old — nonetheless this collection is special. The reason is that at the heart of the 42 documents purchased by the Library is the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, a native of West Africa captured in 1807 and brought to North Carolina as a slave. He wrote his 1831 autobiography in Arabic while still in captivity. It remains to date the only known one of its kind still in existence.

Now, for the first time, the Omar Ibn Said Collection is available online at the Library of Congress.

The autobiography is short, no more than 15 handwritten pages, in addition to which are blank pages. In it, Ibn Said relates how he was captured and brought on a ship from his homeland to foreign shores in Charleston, South Carolina. He describes how his first owner was a small and evil man who did not fear God and who treated him so badly that after a month, he ran away, moving north until he reached Fayetteville, North Carolina. There he was captured and jailed for 16 days, eventually ending up in the home of General John Owen, the brother of the governor of North Carolina, where he spent the rest of his days until his death in 1863.

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The first page of Ibn Said’s autobiography.

But who was Ibn Said before his enslavement? He gives a brief sketch of his life in Africa but enough to create a portrait of a highly educated and well-to-do individual. He says that before he came to this Christian country, meaning the United States, he was a follower of Muhammad the Prophet of God, meaning he was a Muslim. He writes that he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, prayed five times a day, went to the mosque, fought the jihad (holy war) against nonbelievers and gave alms to the poor.

It is from his charitable donations that we can deduce how wealthy he was: “I used to give alms … every year in gold, silver, harvest, cattle, sheep, goats, rice, wheat and barley — all I used to give in alms,” he is quoted as saying in the book “A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said.”

Ibn Said also names the place where he was born: Fut Tur, or Futa Toro, located between the two rivers of Senegal and the Gambia. He recounts how he studied and names his teachers, stating, “I continued seeking knowledge for 25 years.”  He also describes his family in West Africa, saying that his father had six sons and five daughters, while his mother had three sons and one daughter, implying that his father had had more than one wife. He himself never got married in the United States, and he makes no reference to a wife or children in West Africa.

Ibn Said wrote his autobiography in response to a request by someone he referred to as “Sheikh Hunter” and apparently also at the request of Theodore Dwight (1796–1866), a founder of the American Ethnological Society and a member of the New York Colonization Society, either directly or through the slave owner.

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A July 1831 letter from Joseph Jenkins Roberts to Theodore Dwight.

It is thanks to Dwight that much of this collection of documents still exists. It includes his own correspondence with a number of notable individuals who translated, referred to or discussed the autobiography of Ibn Said. For example, the first two presidents of Liberia, Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–76) and Stephen Allen Benson (1816–65), responded to Dwight’s enquiries. Their handwritten responses are part of the documents the Library acquired, as are those of Daniel Bliss (1823–1916), one of the founders of what became the American University of Beirut, and those of the Reverend Isaac Bird (1793–1835), a Protestant missionary in Syria who translated some of Ibn Said’s writings.

Dwight, as well as other prominent colonizationists, wanted Ibn Said to write his autobiography, and wanted it to be translated, to undermine claims justifying slavery in the United States. The autobiography was meant to bolster an argument linking literacy and monotheism to manumission, or the freeing of slaves. Dwight was also interested in Islam and in educating Americans about Africa and the people they were capturing and enslaving.

So, what was it that roused the interest of Dwight and others in Ibn Said? There is no doubt that from the start of his captivity Ibn Said stood out because of his erudition and his demeanor. For example, as documented in a 1925 issue of the American Historical Review, a pastor who met him in North Carolina noted, “His whole person and gait bear marks of considerable refinement.” Articles also appeared in journals at the time describing him and discussing his literacy in Arabic and his conversion to Christianity.

The Ibn Said collection also includes a few items written in Arabic by other West Africans. For example, there are three short texts in Arabic by a man called Sheikh Sana See, which were collected by Frederick Hicks, a Sunday school teacher in Panama. See may have been working on the Panama Canal Railway, which was built between 1849 and 1855. In any case, his texts reveal him to have been educated in the Sufi tradition of Islam. Another important Arabic text in this collection, “On the Origin of Man,” was written in a beautiful calligraphy by Mohammed Dekr. This text appears to have been sent to Dwight by Liberian president Benson or former president Roberts. It combines elements of Genesis in the Bible, as well as Islamic thought and African concepts regarding the origin of the world and of man.

New Online: Rare Autobiography in Arabic by Enslaved American

This is a guest post by Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division.

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Omar Ibn Said. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

In the summer of 2017, the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress acquired a collection of unique documents, some dating back to the 1830s. Although the documents are not very old by Library standards — the division and the Library hold manuscripts that are more than 1,000 years old — nonetheless this collection is special. The reason is that at the heart of the 42 documents purchased by the Library is the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, a native of West Africa captured in 1807 and brought to North Carolina as a slave. He wrote his 1831 autobiography in Arabic while still in captivity. It remains to date the only known one of its kind still in existence.

Now, for the first time, the Omar Ibn Said Collection is available online at the Library of Congress.

The autobiography is short, no more than 15 handwritten pages, in addition to which are blank pages. In it, Ibn Said relates how he was captured and brought on a ship from his homeland to foreign shores in Charleston, South Carolina. He describes how his first owner was a small and evil man who did not fear God and who treated him so badly that after a month, he ran away, moving north until he reached Fayetteville, North Carolina. There he was captured and jailed for 16 days, eventually ending up in the home of General John Owen, the brother of the governor of North Carolina, where he spent the rest of his days until his death in 1863.

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The first page of Ibn Said’s autobiography.

But who was Ibn Said before his enslavement? He gives a brief sketch of his life in Africa but enough to create a portrait of a highly educated and well-to-do individual. He says that before he came to this Christian country, meaning the United States, he was a follower of Muhammad the Prophet of God, meaning he was a Muslim. He writes that he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, prayed five times a day, went to the mosque, fought the jihad (holy war) against nonbelievers and gave alms to the poor.

It is from his charitable donations that we can deduce how wealthy he was: “I used to give alms … every year in gold, silver, harvest, cattle, sheep, goats, rice, wheat and barley — all I used to give in alms,” he is quoted as saying in the book “A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said.”

Ibn Said also names the place where he was born: Fut Tur, or Futa Toro, located between the two rivers of Senegal and the Gambia. He recounts how he studied and names his teachers, stating, “I continued seeking knowledge for 25 years.”  He also describes his family in West Africa, saying that his father had six sons and five daughters, while his mother had three sons and one daughter, implying that his father had had more than one wife. He himself never got married in the United States, and he makes no reference to a wife or children in West Africa.

Ibn Said wrote his autobiography in response to a request by someone he referred to as “Sheikh Hunter” and apparently also at the request of Theodore Dwight (1796–1866), a founder of the American Ethnological Society and a member of the New York Colonization Society, either directly or through the slave owner.

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A July 1831 letter from Joseph Jenkins Roberts to Theodore Dwight.

It is thanks to Dwight that much of this collection of documents still exists. It includes his own correspondence with a number of notable individuals who translated, referred to or discussed the autobiography of Ibn Said. For example, the first two presidents of Liberia, Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–76) and Stephen Allen Benson (1816–65), responded to Dwight’s enquiries. Their handwritten responses are part of the documents the Library acquired, as are those of Daniel Bliss (1823–1916), one of the founders of what became the American University of Beirut, and those of the Reverend Isaac Bird (1793–1835), a Protestant missionary in Syria who translated some of Ibn Said’s writings.

Dwight, as well as other prominent colonizationists, wanted Ibn Said to write his autobiography, and wanted it to be translated, to undermine claims justifying slavery in the United States. The autobiography was meant to bolster an argument linking literacy and monotheism to manumission, or the freeing of slaves. Dwight was also interested in Islam and in educating Americans about Africa and the people they were capturing and enslaving.

So, what was it that roused the interest of Dwight and others in Ibn Said? There is no doubt that from the start of his captivity Ibn Said stood out because of his erudition and his demeanor. For example, as documented in a 1925 issue of the American Historical Review, a pastor who met him in North Carolina noted, “His whole person and gait bear marks of considerable refinement.” Articles also appeared in journals at the time describing him and discussing his literacy in Arabic and his conversion to Christianity.

The Ibn Said collection also includes a few items written in Arabic by other West Africans. For example, there are three short texts in Arabic by a man called Sheikh Sana See, which were collected by Frederick Hicks, a Sunday school teacher in Panama. See may have been working on the Panama Canal Railway, which was built between 1849 and 1855. In any case, his texts reveal him to have been educated in the Sufi tradition of Islam. Another important Arabic text in this collection, “On the Origin of Man,” was written in a beautiful calligraphy by Mohammed Dekr. This text appears to have been sent to Dwight by Liberian president Benson or former president Roberts. It combines elements of Genesis in the Bible, as well as Islamic thought and African concepts regarding the origin of the world and of man.

My Job at the Library: Cataloging Children’s Literature

This interview with Ann Sullivan was first published in the September–October issue of LCM, the Library of Congress magazine. The issue is available in its entirety online. After reading the interview, make sure to take the quiz that follows!

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Ann Sullivan. Photo by Shawn Miller

How would you describe your work?

I catalog children’s books at the Library of Congress. This involves adding the usual suspects, such as author, title and publisher, to the cataloging record, plus elements unique to children’s cataloging — including a 30- to 35-word summary and special subject headings for children and teens. Most of my time is spent determining the headings and composing the annotation. Summary writing is not for sissies. How do you capture the essence of a book in 35 words? It is both challenging and satisfying. In addition to cataloging incoming materials, I meet with colleagues to write cataloging policy — the rules we follow to use the headings consistently.

How did you prepare for your current position?

At the Library, I worked briefly in the National Union Catalog filing unit; the Prints and Photographs Division, where poster curator Elena Millie gave me the cool project of cataloging the Artcraft collection of three-sheet Broadway theater posters; and in the Subject Cataloging Division, where I worked as a shelf lister, completing the call number. It was a great introduction to the bibliographic record. I also shelved books in my mom’s school library, took children’s literature courses at the University of Maryland and earned my master’s in library science.

What have been some of your most memorable experiences at the Library?

In the 1980s, encountering Jacqueline Onassis’ name and business phone number on the Cataloging-in-Publication application form. She was an editor at Doubleday, and her contact details were listed in case a Library cataloger needed to call the publisher with questions about submitted galleys. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to talk to Jackie — her galleys were always perfect.
Discovering the variety and depth in children’s literature and noting the trends over the decades, from farting dogs and celebrity authors to meta picture books and young wizards saving the world. I can honestly say that in 32 years, I have never been bored.
Meeting wonderful people all over the Library as a Library of Congress Professional Association volunteer and board member.
Proofreading the Library’s Gazette staff newsletter on Tuesday night (production night) back in the day when Peter Braestrup, the newsletter’s founder, brought us a bucket of popcorn popped in suspicious oil from nearby Gandel’s liquor store. Peter would kick back, light up a cigar and call me that “nitpicky cataloger” whenever I spotted a typo.

What are some of your favorite collection items for children?

My favorite children’s books are stories by authors who respect children. As author Mo Willems says, “Children are shorter, not dumber.” I love books in which children make discoveries about themselves and the world. Books that say it’s okay to be different. Books that make you laugh and cry. And books with the message that no matter how small you are, you can make a difference in the world.

Name That Book!

Can you guess the titles and authors of these books just by reading the summaries from their Library of Congress bibliographic record?

When a bus driver takes a break from his route, a very unlikely volunteer springs up to take his place.
Mr. and Mrs. Mallard proudly return to their home in the Boston Public Garden with their eight offspring.
The family routine is upset during Ramona’s year in second grade when her father unexpectedly loses his job.

Answers

“Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus,” by Mo Willems
“Make Way for Ducklings,” by Robert McCloskey
“Ramona and Her Father,” Beverly Cleary

New Online: Circus Workers Folklife Project

This is a guest post by Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center. It was first published on the center’s blog, Folklife Today. A companion post about circus life in Hugo, Oklahoma, is available here.

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Juliana Nykolaiszyn (left) and Tanya Finchum (right) of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program with circus worker B.K. Silverlake at the Kelly Miller Circus in Hugo, Oklahoma, in March 2012.

The American Folklife Center (AFC) is delighted to announce the online presentation of an important new oral history collection documenting the lives and careers of multigenerational circus workers in Hugo, Oklahoma. “The ‘Big Top’ Show Goes On: An Oral History of Occupations Inside and Outside the Canvas Tent” was created by librarians Tanya D. Finchum and Juliana Nykolaiszyn.

In 2011, Finchum and Nykolaiszyn, of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University’s Edmon Low Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma, received an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center to research and document oral histories from multigenerational circuses, circus workers and circus families in Hugo, Oklahoma. For several generations, Hugo has been a “wintering over” town for small, family-owned circuses. Many of its current residents are working, semi-retired or retired circus workers. Circus references are found throughout the municipality, from store signs to gravestones.

In the course of numerous research trips to Hugo, Finchum and Nykolaiszyn recorded 24 interviews with circus workers, most of whom had worked a variety of different and colorful jobs during their circus careers. The fieldworkers also obtained digital copies of historical photographs, including images from the Carson and Barnes, Culpepper and Merriweather and Kelly Miller Circuses, and photographed circus-inspired tombstones at the local cemetery, Showmen’s Rest. The resulting collection — which also includes audio files from eight short “Then and Now” programs produced by the fieldworkers and broadcast by KOSU public radio in 2012 — is now part of the Library of Congress’s permanent collection.

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A crowd lines up to see the Al G. Kelly and Miller Bros. Circus. Undated. From the collection of Michael Fulton.

“The ‘Big Top’ Show Goes On” is part of a multiyear AFC project to document workers in contemporary America. Over the past eight years, supported by AFC’s competitive Archie Green Fellowships program, more than 40 researchers and research teams throughout the United States have received funding to document oral histories with workers in a wide variety of trades. Interviewees include ironworkers, hairdressers, electricians, home health care workers, longshoremen, funeral home employees, gold miners, racetrack workers, tobacco farmers and many more working Americans from all sectors of contemporary society.

Through the AFC’s ongoing Occupational Folklife Project, oral histories of hundreds of American workers — stories of how they learned their trades, their skills and work routines, legendary jobs (good and bad), respected mentors and flamboyant co-workers and their hopes for their futures — are now part of the national record. These oral histories not only enrich our current understanding of our fellow Americans, but will inform scholars and researchers for generations to come about the lives of contemporary workers at the beginning of the 21st century.

As AFC Director Betsy Peterson notes, “With the launch of AFC’s innovative [Occupational Folklife Project], researchers and members of the public will have direct access to hundreds of hours of compelling fieldwork. They will be able to hear the interviews and view fieldwork images and documentation that previously could be accessed only by visiting the Library in Washington.”

“The ‘Big Top’ Show Goes On” is a particularly compelling collection. As project co-director Nykolaiszyn notes, “The interviews in this collection not only shed light on the nature of circus work, but also amplify the historically marginalized voices of showmen and women.”

And, Finchum adds, “The traveling tent circus is like moving a small city 200 times a year and, as such, operates as a well-oiled, orchestrated unit. These interviews invite ‘towners’ into the back yard of a traveling tent circus community, and reveal that ‘running away to join the circus’ does not translate to an easy life. Still, these family circuses continue to bring people of all ages, from all walks of life and from all corners of the world together for a few hours of shared entertainment.”

New Online: Congressional Web Archive Adds Content

This is a guest post by Robert Brammer of the Law Library. It was first published on “In Custodia Legis,” the Law Library’s blog.

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The United States Congressional Web Archive

The Library of Congress Web Archiving Program is dedicated to providing reliable access to historical web content from the legislative branch. To that end, the Library has just released an update to the United States Congressional Web Archive.

The archive, which includes member sites from the House and Senate, as well as House and Senate committee websites, now includes content for the 113th and 114th Congresses. The archive has also added subject facets for the 105th and 106th Congresses to enhance access to the older content in the archive.

We invite you to explore this new Library of Congress content, as well as other new archive collections, such as the Foreign Law Web Archive.

 

Letters about Literature: Aiming for the Sweet Spot

This is a guest blog post by Sukanya Barman. She was an 11th-grade student at White Station High School in Memphis when she became a winner of the 2017–18 Letters About Literature contest , a reading and writing competition for students in grades four through 12 that involves reading a work and writing to its author (living or dead). Entries for the 2018–19 contest are now being accepted. Here Barman writes about her experience as a participant.  

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Sukanya Barman

I never expected much to come from the letter.

It was an assignment over winter break in my junior-year English class. My teacher handed out the formatting guidelines and told us that we wouldn’t be graded on content; instead, we would just be getting a completion grade for submitting an entry for the competition.

I wasn’t too concerned about it; my family and I were going on a long vacation, where we drove across the country from Tennessee to Arizona, exploring the incredible national parks in the West together. I was much too busy exploring these incredible sights to even attempt to write this letter, but there was still something intrinsically reflective about standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and staring into the marvels that nature had wrought. I felt small, eclipsed by the beauty and wonder of the world around me.

It was on the drive home that I began to seriously consider what book has changed me the most, out of the countless I’ve read along the way. There was a little bit of casual competition involved as well — my sister had placed second in Tennessee in this same writing contest five years ago.

It was there, in the back of our 2013 Honda Civic, surrounded by my family and on my way home, that I truly started to think about my letter. Book after book flew through my mind — “Harry Potter” shaped my childhood, Brandon Sanderson fueled my love of fantasy and pushed it to greater heights, “Outliers” helped me understand the world. But in the end, instead of choosing a book that shaped me, I chose a book that I grew into.

I remembered “Catalyst” by Laurie Halse Anderson, a novel I had re-read a few months ago. I had initially stumbled upon it in middle school, after I finished “Speak” by the same author. I rested my head against the window and watched the scenery flashing by before my eyes as I thought about how much I had changed in between those two readings. I thought about how much more impactful the book became just a few years later and about how just a few years can make such a difference in my outlook.

This was how I chose the book; the truly difficult part came afterward — the writing. We had returned to our home only a few days before the new semester began, and thus only a few days before the due date for the letter. I couldn’t focus on writing, and every sentence that was forced onto the Word document was worse than the last. At that point, as most teens would do, I took a break to watch some Netflix. In the earliest hours of the morning, I surfaced from my late-night marathon and decided that I needed to at least draft this letter. And so, I did.

Writing this letter so late at night meant that my internal filters had come down, making the letter significantly more genuine. I had been struggling to find the words earlier, but now they came spilling out in a cathartic release, as if they’d been there all along just waiting for me to discover them. These were my deepest fears, my deepest insecurities, my deepest vulnerabilities. I had finally found the words to describe exactly why I had managed to relate to Kate Malone so fundamentally, and they came pouring out (along with quite a few tears in the process).

The next day, or I suppose later that same day, I read it over, slightly mortified by the emotional vulnerabilities I had expressed. I did delete some of the most embarrassing sentences, and I spent some time cleaning up and editing the mess that had exploded onto the document. I assumed that not many people would end up reading this, which made me more comfortable submitting the letter. Eventually, I decided it was good enough and called it a day. The next day, I printed it out and gave it to my English teacher. I got my completion grade, which was the end of it as far as I was concerned.

One day, a few months later, I walked into AP Language and Composition to see my name on the board as the first-place winner in my state. Absolutely shocked, I went back to read the letter I had submitted, and I seriously wondered whether my letter had been mixed up with someone else’s because, to me, the writing seemed terrible — select sentences were cliché, my word choice was lacking in some spots and some parts just sounded bad. My teacher asked me to send her a copy, and when she expressed how much she enjoyed it, I became even more confused. In the end, I accepted the prize gratefully and decided that maybe others could see something in the letter that I could not.

Then, when I got the call that I had been chosen as a National Honor recipient, I became even more flabbergasted. I ran around my house in a frenzy, in absolute disbelief and delight. When I read my letter yet again, it looked like a pile of trash; there are so many edits I would love to make, which makes it even more frustrating to see it published online.

There are multiple ways that I would take this. Maybe I should have written it earlier, so that I could edit it more thoroughly. At the same time, however, when pieces of writing become too edited, sometimes they can lose that spark that made them heartfelt or interesting in the first place. In all honesty, I have never been truly and fully satisfied with a piece of writing in my life. For me, the real trick is about finding when to stop — that sweet spot where the writing is clear and in your style and also has life. For anybody who is planning on entering this contest, my main suggestion would be to hone in on the emotions and try to let the writing flow naturally from there.

Because I never expected much from this letter, the things that it has given me have become more precious. Beyond the prize money or the bragging rights for one-upping my sister, it’s given me a more thorough understanding of the role of emotion in writing and the opportunity to share my personal thoughts and reflections with far more people than I ever would have thought.

Page from the Past: Over the Rainbow, Into the Library

This post is republished from the September–October issue of LCM, the Library of Congress magazine. Read the issue in its entirety online.

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Color plate illustration from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” ranks as one of the greatest American books for children, and its evocative original artwork today is both cherished and exceedingly rare.

The phenomenally successful book, written by L. Frank Baum and published in 1900, soon inspired adaptions for the stage, silent film and, most famously, the iconic 1939 color film starring Judy Garland.

Baum’s book was illustrated by his friend William Wallace Denslow, with whom he collaborated on other books such as “Father Goose: His Book,” “By the Candelabra’s Glare” and “Dot and Tot of Merryland.”

The design of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was lavish for the time, with several color plate illustrations, backgrounds in different colors and illustrations on many pages.

The Library holds, among other Oz-related items, a first edition of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” that’s available for reading online and the original pen-and-ink drawing Wallace produced for the volume shown below (it appears on page 105 of the book).

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Pen and ink drawing by William Wallace Denslow.

The image is a familiar one, depicting the Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow saving the Cowardly Lion from the deadly poppy field with the help of the Queen of the Field Mice and her followers: “Soon they rolled the Lion out of the poppy bed into the green fields, where he could breathe the sweet, fresh air again, instead of the poisonous scent of flowers.”

Baum and Denslow eventually ended their collaboration in a dispute over money, and Denslow used part of his royalties from his work on “Oz” to buy an island off Bermuda and proclaimed himself King Denslow I.

Today, Denslow’s original artwork brings readers back to the original presentation of the classic “Oz” story, long before multiple publications and motion pictures altered the original vision of Munchkins, wicked witches, flying monkeys and the Great Humbug.

Letters About Literature: Writing to a Favorite Author

This is a guest blog post by Malavika Kannan, a senior from Seminole High School in Sanford, Florida. She is a national winner of the 2017–18 Letters About Literature contest , a reading and writing competition for students in grades four through 12 that involves reading a work and writing to its author (living or dead). Entries for the 2018–19 contest are now being accepted. Here Kannan writes about her experience as a participant. 

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Malavika Kannan

Kurt Vonnegut and I don’t have a lot in common – at least, not on the surface.

He was a cynical old man, while I’m a teen who wants to change the world. He spent part of his youth dodging shellfire across war-torn Europe, while I worry more about dodging calculus homework. He was cantankerous, miserable and regrettably sexist. (I pray I age more gracefully than that.) But we’re both writers, and we tell stories because we need to. Because to us, writing is more than just an art, or a creative way of interpreting human society.

It is literally the only way to live.

So, when I discovered the Letters About Literature program, I was excited by the opportunity to explore my connections to my favorite author – to understand how I could use words to provoke with power. To start conversations. To carve my own space in the world. For my letter, I chose to write about Vonnegut’s famous antiwar novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Although that book is dark, twisted and crude – literally, its nonsensical plot follows a traumatized veteran who believes he’s been kidnapped by aliens – I got it. It got me.

I wrote my letter during a long road trip through Texas. At first, when I opened up that blank document on my computer, I felt like I was staring into my own brain – blank, stuck, empty. So, I decided to do something crazy in my letter – I decided to tell the embarrassing, pathetic story behind the first time I read “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which was this: I read it in an attempt to impress someone I liked. And when things didn’t work out with this person, I was forced to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about life, literature and love. (This ended up changing my life.)

Maybe my letter wasn’t the most profound, intellectual piece of writing I’d ever created. It was unflattering and vulnerable and embarrassing, but it was authentic. In fact, the writing process felt so personal that I almost forgot that I was writing for the Letters About Literature competition. Ultimately, I think that’s what made my letter so compelling.

I was at school when I got the call that I had won Letters About Literature. At first, I couldn’t believe it. (I’m serious – I picked up the phone in the loud school cafeteria, so I wasn’t sure that I had heard correctly.) I could still remember visiting the Library of Congress as a little girl – how I’d stared up at the massive columns of books, how I’d wished I could live there – so it meant the world to be recognized by that institution. I cherished the letter signed by Carla Hayden, whom I’ve long admired. Kurt Vonnegut once said that the America he loved exists at the front desks of our public libraries, and on that point, I agree with him.

My Letters About Literature experience was transformative because I applied the knowledge I gained from my letter to everything in my life. As I worked on my own novel, I turned to Kurt Vonnegut for inspiration – whether I needed phrasing references, or modelled dialogue or just the simple reassurance that literary magic may be rare, but it’s real. Knowing that Vonnegut didn’t get his big break until he was 45 gave me the strength to persevere through the 38 times my novel was rejected by publishers.

This summer, I signed my first book contract, and while I’m forever indebted to authors who came before me, I’m excited to create my own literary path. As I take the next steps in my writing career, I believe the Letters About Literature program played a pivotal role in my journey. I’m grateful to have been recognized by the Library of Congress and given invaluable experience, exposure and inspiration for my future.

To my fellow teen writers – whether or not you win Letters About Literature, I promise that the contest is worth participating in. It’s not just that you’re getting a prestigious opportunity to fangirl/boy about your favorite book – although that’s definitely a legitimate perk! The best part of Letters About Literature is the chance to dive head-first into books, find something that speaks to you and take a piece for yourself. Whether you’re texting, pitching, praying, tweeting, verifying, chatting, scheming or recounting, the potential of literature and the written word will stick with you.

Pick your book, start writing and don’t forget to be your authentic, inquisitive and passionate self.

You’ve got this.

Pic of the Week: Battle of the Bulge Vets Visit the Library

[image error]Earlier this week, Battle of the Bulge Association veterans gathered in the Great Hall of the Library’s Jefferson Building for an event marking the battle’s 74th anniversary. While at the Library, they visited the offices of the Veterans History Project and viewed a special display of battle-related collection items prepared for them. Pictures here are battle veterans A. Wayne Field (from left) of the 6th Armored Division; Alvin Sussman of the 106th Infantry Division; George Krakosky of the 29th Infantry Division; and Eliot Annable of the 106th Infantry Division. Francis “Ken” Oakes (far right) is a World War II Navy veteran. Photo by Shawn Miller.