Noon today--strong offshore wind

Equestrians and horses yesterday

Would anyone want hundreds of 19th century reviews of 19th century American poetry?--Copied from newspapers and magazines.

Well, into the trash.

Now I have thrown in the trash can all my 1970s Income Tax Returns; on to academic periodicals?

What will I do with runs of periodicals like NCF SSF REVIEW and many years of AMERICAN LITERARY SCHOLARSHIP volumes?

Emptied into the Trash Can--1 Document Box stuffed with 5 1/2 inch disks, some with Osborne and Word Star labels

Well, go little words . . . .
Trash Pick Up is Monday

Who is Kinkier Sexually, Trump or Greitens?

I am reluctant to say this, but Greitens wins. He does not just grab them right there where he shouldn't, he takes photos of what he has grabbed. Will he resign?

Warmer, and wind not as fierce

I still wore goggles to keep the sand from my eyes.

This was not the week to read about being killed by being sucked into an MRI machine

Well, I survived a CAT scan this week. But this reminds me of the time in Delaware when I needed an MRI and was sent out through the snow to the MRI trailer which the nurses and doctors had converted into their smoking lounge. How many patients did they kill with smoke?
I turned around back into the snow and raised hell.

The New MOBY-DICK at the Norton Booth at MLA this month

photograph by SJM

8:20 a.m.--cool, muddy

Sleepy time playing--Geni says Rob Roy is a cousin. And if Clark Gable is my Cousin on the German side, he is Kevin Costner's

Who would have thought we could go Costner, Rudisill, Neff, over to the Hubers and Hershelmans (or Hershelmen) and arrive at Clark Gable, 10th cousin twice removed for me and thrice removed for Kevin. But Rob Roy is much more fun, since this depends upon the story of the man who arrived in Virginia taking the name Mackayhee or something like that. The family was told that his real name was MacGregor but that MacGregor was being forbidden so as to obliterate the family. Hooey Hooey, I thought. Now, our Magruder cousins wrote long dissertations showing THEY were MacGregors. No, no. But us scoffers were wrong. Our McGehee / McGee DNA proves that we are MacGregors, Rob Roy's kin. I love it when DNA cuts through all legends. I love it when Senator John Glenn turns out to be one of our Renfrewshire Glenns. What a surreal feeling a few weeks ago, watch a 2nd cousin once removed playing a composite character in Hidden Figures, so that the man played by the cousin was sort of fictional, and then seeing in the same movie a very attractive young actor playing a distant but genuine cousin behaving admirably. Surreal. Bedtime.

Unbearably cold. You Easterners have no idea. Only a couple of 20 year old guys were shirtless.

AT 7:45 A.M.

BOX 25 TOP LAYER--HIRAM POWERS

BOX 25—POE LETTERS, HM AS LECTURER, MELVILLE'S PRISONERS, PUETT DISS ON MRS MELVILLE, LEYDA IN "CHIEF GLORY" art book on POWERS, THORP'S MELVILLE SELECTIONS & MORE

From 41--deserted still

From a mile north just before high tide

A trooop of muddy birders at high tide

Horseman, yesterday

Identifying a 10 Great Grandfather

Pretty thrilling, until you remember that you had 2048 of them.

The Boxes--I can save on colored ink

BOX 24 the top layer--The bottom layer has Si-Lan Leyda's FOOTNOTE (a gift from her) as well as others named

BOX 24--PAUL METCALF, DAVIS & GILMAN TO HAYFORD; PAUL WATSON TO ME; GALLIMARD; MUMFORD

Cats--the very stupid animals that cannot communicate

Scalini has been down here in the study all day because workmen are going in and out of both the upper floors. She had a very good sleep and was up for a while. I was typing about the Melville great grandchildren when she honked honked ten time to me. I got up and asked if she wanted to be brushed but she raced to the Mission Chair which I bought for myself but never get to sit in and jumped up and waited to be covered with her Serengeti sheet. I wish she could communicate the way dogs can.

Of course, once she is covered she is invisible and cannot be disturbed by noises from outside or inside.

Box 24 will contain Paul Metcalf's signed GENOA and other really important association copies

Paul Metcalf on the opening and closing scenes of my first volume---how can I give away this and all the letters from HM's great grandchildren?

BOX 24--ONE SPECIAL 1960 ASSOCIATION COPY--HM LETTERS--ALWAYS USE DARK INK WHEN YOU INSCRIBE BOOKS

BOX 23 imp Biographies--Weaver, Freeman, Howard (with piece of Leon H's tappa), 2 vols THE MELVILLE LOG and misc books & Shroeder's [sp sic] 1951 article

Remembering Phil Young's voice

I have been thinking about Phil Young since I packed THE PRIVATE MELVILLE. Hayford never forgave me for the blurb I wrote for it even though I did not say I agreed with anything in it. I had admired Phil Young, without meeting him, for many years because at an MLA I heard him talk about Hemingway. He talked like a man, not a professor. He had a voice, and I was already trying to create a voice. I never heard a better MLA talk. As things worked out, I saved his voice. After his death I was asked to read the copy-edited manuscript of his Melville book. The copy-editor, I saw after three or four pages, had relentlessly, ruthlessly, suppressed Phil's voice, levelling every sentence down to dullness. I did some telephoning, and Katherine Young ended up copy-editing the book, and letting Phil speak. Purely by coincidence, my old friend Paul Seydor was a student of Young's. The following letter is from a popular novelist, another student of Phil Young's, who testifies to the voice of the man.

As I divest myself I am finding all sorts of documents that cause me to pause and reflect.
Probably few people now heard Phil Young talk. Oh, maybe many more than I think. Lucky crew.

Why do I have a clean copy of Leland Hickman's TIRESIAS

and does anyone want it?

BOX 16--3 PHOTOS--HM'S 2 VOL MELVILLE & HIS DANTE; CONCORDANCE OF MD; RHETORIC BOOK; COWPER

MAILER IS NOT THE ONLY ONE BAFFLED BY MATTHIESSEN----A KNOWN LETTER? STUFF THAT I HAVE . . . .

BOX 20--TOP BOOKS--PAUL WATSON, ROBILLARD

BOX 20--MIDDLE LAYER--PERRY MILLER, ROBILLARD

BOX 20--LOWER LAYER 4 VOL FREDONIAD, 2 VOL TENNYSON, E. H. MILLER, GRANDIN

1848 Herman Melville: they have God's right to come; 2018 Grover Beach Mother deported

SLO TRIBUNE
Deporting Grover Beach mother showed complete lack of judgment
January 10, 2018 10:29 AM ---a letter

Complete lack of judgment in deportation action: A Mexican woman from Grover Beach with a history of 25 years of clean living in the United States is deported. She works as a maid and cares for her 16-year-old daughter.
Deportation reasons: no green card, harsh new rules from Washington. Fun facts: The distance to nearest immigration field office is 170 miles, open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., weekdays only.
Naturalization application assistance fee at affordable outfit in Oxnard: $300. To have fingerprints done and actually file the application costs much more. Sadly, this woman has no legally acceptable reason to be allowed to remain in the USA.


Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article193957284.html#storylink=cpy

THROWING OUT MASSES OF PAPER--salvaging this page from 1983

Maybe this became Ch. 2 rather than 3. A succinct description of what I was about for several years--and a lonely journey it was.

BOX 19--A RESEARCH TREASURE TROVE--WILLIAM H. GILMAN'S DISSERTATION NOTES & RESEARCH NOTES LATER

Gilman interviewed people now long dead and went to building that do not exist any more. Some of his significant notes have never been followed up, by Gilman or anyone else. This is a research treasure trove.

BOX 18 PARKER'S SUMMER 1962 NOTES AS TYPED IN FALL 1962

This is what you did. You took longhand notes then typed some of them up.

Surviving without Chris Matthews

Well, I have not watched him since 8 November 2016 so if he is fired over the Bill Cosby "joke" I will survive just fine.
My problem with him in earlier times was that he brought good people on, sometimes, and then talked right over them so they never got to express themselves.

What the President Actually Said, revealed by SLO TRIBUNE: "shith-ole countries."

Now will everyone stop accusing him of being vulgar?

Things that stop you--paragraphs on the importance of Jim Meriwether in my life

I have only one copy of the Summer & Fall 2006 MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY, I see, but it is not going in my pile of material to donate.

Sometimes you meet the one person you need to meet. I really did start looking for a new job the day after this meeting with Meriwether. If I could not talk to anyone about what I was discovering at the Newberry Library I could begin to write to everyone about what I was discovering.

BOX 17--NN Correspondence on top of NN books

This may be so revealing that it should be tossed out.

BOX 17--Clean NN volumes--first layer

BOX 16 SEVERAL 19TH C EDITIONS --e.g., E. B. BROWING, CRABBE, JOHN LLOYD STEPHENS

BOX 15--19TH C HAWTHORNE BOOKS, NN CORRESP VOLUME, NA FILES ON GM AND HM--IMP BOOKS

BOX 14 MANY SIGNED OFFPRINTS & GILMAN

Filming (already) CAPTAIN RINGBOLT: ERIC GREITENS AS NAVEL SEAL

A pretty vulgar title which I am sure they will change.
Can you see the film crew at work?
They say this is a prequel to the new stories about the Governor as sexual predator and abuser. They think they are playing on the name of a real sailor of the 19th century called, salaciously, Codman, and they are alluding to something about rings to fasten beautiful objects to so they can't slide away. This seems, to me, exploitative, but they have enthusiastic actors and Park permission to film against the Rock.

BOX 13--HAYFORD'S DISSERTATION and LIFE OF NELSON on top

BOX 13 BOOKS HM CONSULTED OR USED--HM'S G GRANDSON PAUL'S SIGNED WILL WEST

BOX 12--LOWEST LEVEL MANY BOOKS OF POETRY & ESSAYS IN EDITIONS MELVILLE OWNED

THE MORE I THINK ABOUT ERIC GREITENS DEMANDING TO STAR IN THE TV MOVIE

THE MORE I BELIEVE HE IS GOING TO GET TO STAY AS GOVERNOR AND THEN TO BECOME HARRISON FORD'S REPLACEMENT. HE IS AFTER ALL A NAVY SEAL, A NATIVE MISSOURIAN, A PROUD HUSBAND AND FATHER, AND A POLITICIAN.

BOX 11--Misc treasures--rare pamphlets, KGL's Memorial to her brother

BOX 11--Books and Pamphlets & Ana of unusual value--KGL's Memorial volume for HSG

Box 10--most precious books so far, Vasari, Spenser, Shak, Wdswth

Hard to let these out of the office.