Vance Bourjaily papers
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Please use the Collection Organization section below to place requests.
Scope and Content
The collection contains letters; reviews; drafts of television plays, an opera, published and unpublished fiction, drama and poetry; magazine and newspaper articles and essays; audio tapes; and the final manuscripts of ten published novels, most as originally arranged by Bourjaily. Correspondents include John Cheever, Malcolm Cowley, John Irving, Norman Mailer, William Styron, Gore Vidal and Kurt Vonnegut.
Dates
- Creation: 1942 - 1984
Creator
- Bourjaily, Vance, 1922-2010 (Person)
Access Restrictions
The collection is stored offsite and must be requested at least 1 full business day in advance for retrieval. Contact Special Collections & Archives before visiting. Otherwise, no restrictions.
Biographical/Historical Note
Vance Bourjaily (Bowdoin 1944) was born in 1922 and was a noted author of books, magazine articles, stage and television plays, and other works. Much of his early material was drawn from his experiences with the American Field Service (1942-1944), where he served as an ambulance driver in Syria, Egypt, and Italy, and the U.S. Army (1944-1946), where he served as an infantryman in Japan. He was a journalist, co-founding and editing the journal Discovery (1951), a faculty member at the University of Arizona and the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop, and the first director of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Louisiana State University.
Bourjaily's novels include The End of My Life, Brill Among the Ruins, Now Playing at Canterbury and A Game Men Play.
In 1947 Bourjaily married Bettina Yensen, with whom he had three children. Bourjaily married Yasmin Mogul in 1985. He died in 2010.
Extent
11.25 Linear Feet
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The collection contains letters; reviews; drafts of television plays, an opera, published and unpublished fiction, drama and poetry; magazine and newspaper articles and essays; audio tapes; and the final manuscripts of ten published novels.
Location note
Collection stored offsite.
Subject
- Bourjaily, Vance, 1922-2010 -- Archives (Person)
- Cheever, John -- Correspondence. (Person)
- Cowley, Malcolm, 1898-1989 -- Correspondence (Person)
- Irving, John, 1942- -- Correspondence (Person)
- Mailer, Norman -- Correspondence (Person)
- Styron, William, 1925-2006 -- Correspondence (Person)
- Vidal, Gore, 1925-2012 -- Correspondence (Person)
- Vonnegut, Kurt -- Correspondence (Person)
- Title
- Guide to the Vance Bourjaily Papers
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine 04011 Repository