Search Results
Saarinen, Eero & Associates—Bloomfield Hills, Mich. (3 folders), 1949-1963 Box 20, Folder 1 to 3
- Highlight
- Round Table Meeting to be held May 15 and 16.
- Abstract Or Scope
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DH to John Dinkeloo. Eero Saarinen & Associates. 1962; Invites Dinkleloo to Downtown St. Louis Round Table Meeting to be held May 15 and 16.
Series XIX.The Griffin Journal, 1950-1980
- Highlight
- thinker. And later we meet the justly famous author who has absorbed the profound wisdom of humility
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"In my teens, when I was a student at the Lycéee Descartes, in Tours, France," wrote Griffin in the unpublished preface to his Journal, "a man I greatly admired suggested that I begin keeping a journal of my life. He said it was one way of learning to know myself provided I let no one else see it, wrote it honestly and wrote in it even when I felt I had nothing to say.". From the age of sixteen until he was twenty-one, Griffin continued his journal; but when France was about to fall to the Germans, he gave the autograph journals to a schoolmate for safe-keeping, and returned to the states. "Years later when I returned to France [in 19761, I retrieved the journal which had been buried on my friend's father's farm during the war." He began to read his reflections. "It was a sickening experience. Pages were filled with literary analyses, musical analyses, foods we ate, with scarcely a word about the supreme reality of the war which preoccupied us day and night. It was pure escape from that reality rather than any attempt to handle it. I was heartsick to find myself so false.... I burned those pages and did not resume [a journal] until some years later when I was blind and had learned to use the typewriter.". Curiously, it was again on the advice of a man he admired--the theatre critic John Mason Brown--that Griffin began to write. But it was not a journal; it was his first novel, The Devil Rides Outside, written in 1949. His mature Journal was launched in December of 1950, during the third year of sightlessness. When.he was not working on novels or short stories, he poured impressions into the Journal, which became a seedbed for most of work he would publish later. We find in its pages fragments and drafts of stories and novels; essays and articles; voluminous meditations on ethics, religion and philosophy; responses to the music he listened to constantly; discussions of cooking, farming and family relationships; insights into the realities of blindness and how the condition is wrongly perceived by the sighted; speculations on psychology, sociology, anthropology and the arts in relation to the diminishment of culture in America. We hear every tone of voice from the compassionate to the dismissive; styles that range from lyric to polemic, from the scholarly to the absurd. At times he was naive and narrowly opinionated; at other times, measured and wise. He reflected on literature and life--the books he had read (and those which were read to him or recorded on tapes) and all the places he had traveled and lived. He was always a bit nostalgic for the high culture of France and the great joy of learning he had discovered in that adopted land; nostalgic also for the year he spent on a remote island in the South Seas living among the native inhabitants. Conversely, he had been horrified by war--both what he had witnessed working in the French Underground and the devastation of combat while in the Air Force in the Pacific.. Reading the Journal one is always aware that it is an intensely human document--full of contradictions and paradoxes; hope and despair; criticism of the world and self-criticism; fear and anguish over what often did not matter, as well as heroism in the face of what mattered most. The writing is, by turns, elegant and crude; often brilliant and sometimes ignorant; and splattered with passages that roar with comic hyperbole or soar with a spiritual clarity. But always one reads as if one has discovered a secret document; that one is looking over the shoulder of a man who is truely alive in the immense process of becoming a genuine artist and thinker. And later we meet the justly famous author who has absorbed the profound wisdom of humility.. This massive Journal runs to 2,762 pages of single-spaced typed pages. This page count does not include ten autograph notebooks he kept away from the typewriter nor the published books (previously mentioned) that were pulled out of the overall Journal and composed into separate books.. During the period of his blindness--recorded in the Journal from December of 1950 until sight-recovery in January of 1957--he typed almost 900 pages in a span of just slightly more than six years. That is roughly 150 pages each year. Yet, the count for 1951, the first full year of keeping the Journal, is 231 pages (the third highest volume for any year). This was a period of intense introspection for Griffin, he was in the process of making what the French call "the great yes" or the leap of faith from indecision to belief; Griffin became a convert to Catholicism in 1952.. In 1954 we find the second most voluminous year with 255 pages. That year, he was suffering not only from the complications of blindness and diabetes, but he had contracted spinal malaria--a condition which paralyzed him from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair. All he could do was sit at the typewriter, listen to music, and write.. The entries of 1954 record a very real agony and ecstasy. Griffin experienced the most alienating depths of despair alternating with some of the greatest spiritual heights of his life. Without the love and understanding of his young wife (Elizabeth Holland and Griffin married in 1953), as well as his parents and also her parents--and with absolute faith in God--he would not have survived the ordeal. Instead he wrote about everything that year and drafted over 400 pages of Nuni, his second novel.. In the decade of blindness--from 1947 to early 1957--Griffin composed five novels (two were published, two remain unpublished and the fifth was lost); over sixty short stories (most unpublished); a short book on blindness (Handbook For Darkness); music lectures and articles; and nearly a thousand pages in the Journal . Virtually all of his fiction--literally thousands of pages--were written during the decade of sightlessness. Except for revisions of earlier novels in draft and one short piece of humor ("Pilgrimage"), his career as a fiction writer was over when he regained his sight.. During the 1960s he managed to average over100 pages per year in the Journal, including the second highest page count (248) in 1966. In general, however, these entries move away from introspection toward the concerns of a public life--a-decade which found him away from the studio and his expanding family and in a world of turmoil. His writings were much shorter and their focus was temporal not eternal. He published polemical and journalistic articles on racism, injustice, war, censorship, politics, and lectured extensively on these same issues (and, of course, specifically- on his experiences in Black Like Me, its aftermath, and the civil rights battles that followed. He wrote brilliantly and courageously, and his lectures and writings were in great demand. But the public life took its toll on the books he was forced to leave unfinished (novels as well as Scattered Shadows), and what limited private time that remained was spent with his family and friends and in the darkroom (where his photographic career blossomed), but not in the writing studio. Those years also took their toll on his fragile health. He was no longer blind and the paralysis had lasted only one year, but the stress of his schedule far from solitude increased the debilitating effects of his diabetic condition. He experienced blackouts and exhaustion. His Journal records all this activity in a cryptic rather than expansive manner.. With his appointment as the Official Biographer of Thomas Merton, illness turned toward relative health, exhaustion was replaced by energy, and Griffin once again found spiritual joy in solitude and a fascinating long-range project. The Journal, from 1970-1980 runs about 650 pages--about 65 pages as an annual average with only 1975 accumulating more than 200 pages. This drop in production was a result of the work on the biography and that includes The Hermitage Journals factored out of the equation, as well as a tremendous amounts of photographic work--choices that Griffin was pleased to make, of course. But other factors--not of his choosing--also impacted upon the Journal. There was a significant decline in his health (this is why the entries are more than three times the volume of 1970-1974; he was confined and unable to travel to Gethsemani and Europe where so much research had been accomplished); and there was also the countless intrusions of the curious making pilgrimages to his door.. The Autograph Notebooks, which Griffin considered part of his overall Journal, are from widely different time-frames. Written in spiral notebooks or bound composition books that Griffin carried on his travels when having a typewriter was impossible or inconvenient; these generally reflect a specific event or span of days that can be integrated by dated passage into the overall scheme of his personal Journal.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace European Center records, 1910-1954 335 linear feet
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- and Salle de Lecture. The meeting minutes, agendas, and transcipts and related correspondence in the
- Creator
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. European Center
- Abstract Or Scope
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The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace established Le Centre Européen de la Dotation Carnegie pour la Paix Internationale in Paris as part of its Division of Intercourse and Education (Division des Relations et de L'Education) in 1912. The Centre was founded with an Advisory Council composed of representative and distinguished statesmen and public leaders of Europe and Asia. An Executive Committee was appointed from this Council with the authority to carry out the work of the Division abroad. The Centre Européen Records (1911-1940, 316 boxes) consist of correspondence; clippings; meeting minutes, agendas, and transcripts; lectures in typescript and printed form; memoranda; financial documents; books, pamphlets, speeches, reports, and brochures in typescripts and printed versions; invitations; maps; posters; architectural plans and drawings; and photographs, which document the founding, administration, and activity of the Centre Européen specifically and, in a more general sense, the work of the Carnegie Endowment in Europe.
C. L. R. James papers, 1933-2001, bulk 1948-1989 27.75 linear feet
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- speaking tour of the United States. James traveled to Mexico in 1939 for a meeting with Trotsky. The six
- Creator
- James, C. L. R (Cyril Lionel Robert), 1901-1989
- Abstract Or Scope
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These papers contain correspondence; drafts, manuscripts and notes; transcripts of lectures and interviews; printed material; photographs; and audio and video tapes related to life and work of C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel Robert) James--a West Indian athlete, scholar, teacher, writer and political activist.
Ernestine Evans papers, 1890-1968, bulk 1930-1967 15 linear feet
- Highlight
- During these years Evans also worked at the Whitney Studio Club, a meeting place--founded by
- Creator
- Evans, Ernestine, 1889-1967
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Contained in this collection are documents related to the life and career of Ernestine Evans, a journalist, critic and literary agent active in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Personal and professional correspondence and a wide variety of literary manuscripts, likely accumulated during her long career as a literary agent, constitute the bulk of this collection. In addition, the collection includes photographs, drawings and other visual material. Also represented in this collection are clippings of Evans' and other journalists' work; printed material, both periodicals and books; personal documents (including address books, contact lists and journals), financial documents and medical documents.
Leo Lerman papers, 1893-2012, bulk 1937-1994 105.54 linear feet
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- at Columbia. Shortly after meeting Gray moved into Leo's beloved brownstone at 1453 Lexington, a home
- Creator
- Lerman, Leo, 1914-1994
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Personal and Professional papers of writer and magazine editor Leo Lerman. The papers include correspondence, professional papers, topical files, research files, and photographs.
School of Social Work Records, 1898-circa 2010s, bulk circa 1930s-1980s 93.5 linear feet
- Highlight
- covers and other temporary bindings, primarily used for storing meeting minutes, were discarded when they
- Creator
- Columbia University. School of Social Work
- Abstract Or Scope
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Records of one of the oldest schools of social work in the United States, founded in 1898 as the New York School of Philanthropy and affiliated with the Charity Organization Society of New York City. The school merged with Columbia University in 1959, becoming the Columbia University School of Social Work. This collection includes the records of the office of the Dean, Development and Alumni Relations, and the Social Work Library, the bulk of which date from the 1930s through the 1980s.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue architectural drawings and papers, 1882-1980 50 linear feet
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- , Texas. Seeking collaborative assistance with this large project, Goodhue meet with Boston architects
- Creator
- Goodhue, Bertram Grosvenor, 1869-1924
- Abstract Or Scope
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This collection contains architectural drawings, photographs, business records and reference materials related to the projects and designs of Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and his successor firm, Mayers, Murray & Philips, primarily in the New York City region. A large portion of the collection consists of personal and professional correspondence to and from Goodhue from the early 1900s until his death in 1926. Relatively few architectural drawings from his professional practice survive.
Spanish Refugee Relief Association Records, 1935-1957 168 linear feet
- Highlight
- hall. A mass meeting to pressure the United States government to lift the embargo on the sale of arms
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- Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign
- Abstract Or Scope
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Records of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy and Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy, two New York City-based American organizations working to raise funds and provide medical and humanitarian aid for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and to refugees who fled Spain after the defeat of the Republican forces in April 1939. The organizations formally merged in January 1938 and became known as the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign. These files include the organization's official reports, correspondence, pamphlets, broadsides, photographs, and publicity material, as well as several scrapbooks of news clippings.