The Brookner Papers

Brooknerianism offers scope for Brookner-themed tourism. In my time I've been, of course, many times to Paris; and the South of France (Family and Friends, A Private View, The Bay of Angels); and Vevey (Hotel du Lac - which, some time this year, I've half a mind to stay in); and even a strange border town called Vif (Altered States), which I once passed through quite by chance.

The University of Texas at Austin doesn't immediately, however, connote. Yet this is where a cache of Brookner's papers is stored, purchased in 1995 (no doubt for a not inconsiderable sum).

The papers of Anita Brookner consist of ten notebooks containing untitled drafts of her novels and reviews. The notebooks are undated but appear to date from about 1986 to 1994. As a novelist, Brookner writes a first draft by hand, with little revision, and then types a subsequent draft. Handwritten drafts of her novels A Closed Eye (1991), A Family Romance (1993), Fraud (1992), Latecomers (1988), and Lewis Percy (1989) are present. The notebooks for Fraud and Lewis Percy also contain drafts of Brookner’s reviews of works by authors Margaret Atwood, Alice Thomas Ellis, D. J. Enright, Alexandre Jardin, Erik Orsenna, Marcel Proust, Andrew Stephen, Alain Robbe-Grillet, François-Olivier Rousseau, Colin Thubron, and John Updike.

Time to fire up Expedia, I wonder?