The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the great archives of twentieth-century literature and art in the world. It holds the first photographs taken by Lewis Carroll, one of only five known copies of the Gutenberg Bible in the United States, and the original manuscripts of Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, and dozens of other major writers.
It was founded by a university administrator named Harry Huntt Ransom who had a vision — somewhat unusual for a state university in Texas in the 1950s — of creating a research collection of the primary materials of modern literary culture. He pursued this vision with remarkable energy and a talent for persuading people to donate things they might otherwise have sold.
What Ransom shared with the Route 66 impulse was the conviction that the stuff along the way matters. Not just the finished product — the published novel, the released record, the completed painting — but the process, the drafts, the preliminary sketches, the letters written in motel rooms while traveling.
The Ransom Center holds, among other things, materials related to many of the writers who drove Route 66 and wrote about it: Steinbeck’s papers, Jack Kerouac’s papers, various archives that trace the relationship between American literature and American roads.
Some of the best Route 66 stories were never published. They exist in letters and diaries and notebooks in archives, waiting for someone to read them. The road produced documents as well as mythology, and the documents are often more interesting than the myth.
We are offering licences for ROUTE 66® Beer in specific territories. An invitation to others to become part of this story. To carry a piece of the road with them and to contribute to the story. We will share a percentage of royalties with Route 66 associations to keep the story alive.
The journey continues. This story is brought to you by ROUTE 66® BEER. Find us at ROUTE66BEER.COM
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