Not an insignificant journey: I had pulled a very bad number in the parking lottery. I put the papers and my laptop with its transcriptions and notes into my briefcase, dodged the hallway vermin and walked to my car. Someone had clearly just stuffed it into the back of a stack, where it sat, hidden from The manuscript had never been catalogued at all. In fact, there was not even a back-cover card to stamp. There was not a single checkout stamp on it. The manuscript had not been read in years, or perhaps ever. I wheezed a slightly magnified version of my usual office-wheeze and turned the first crumpled page. It mixed with the other particulate matter that sifted down from the ceiling voids and leaked out of the walls. “You can just have that,” the kid at the table said.īack in my office, I stared at the hunk of papers exhaling dust on my desk.
The lost Sheppard memoir? The scholars in my field had scoured the records, debunked everything they’d found. Wandering by one afternoon, riffling through the University’s entire collection of philosophy, linguistics, and postcolonial theory, I spotted it.Ī mashed and mildewed pile of papers, easily overlooked. Surrounding the tables were huge posterboard mock-ups of the dining-atrium-to-be. Tank-top-clad guys hulked over the piles of books doing curls and glaring. Some fraternity had received community service credit for manning the tables. The University was proud to display its “optimization” of the library. The book sale took place out in front of the building, right where new-student tours marched past. Deans’ offices and a dining atrium for upper-echelon adminstrators. I had known I’d get wrapped up in it.īut I was more than wrapped up. The manuscript was confounding, its authenticity indeterminate. I hadn’t been planning to leave, and yet I was becoming-not exactly anxious about the manuscript, but overcome. They’d demolish the whole thing soon enough.
Many of the fluorescents were burned out or broken, and since the building had been condemned, Facilities Management had declined to fix them. The hallways were dark, but then they were also dark during the day. Some time ago-never mind how long precisely-I slipped off the map of the world. He is the author of the scholarly monograph, Critical Enthusiasm. Jordy Rosenberg is a transgender writer and scholar, who teaches 18th-century literature and queer/trans theory. It details the life of Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess-the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of their time. Voth recently discovered a long-lost manuscript from 1724. The following is from Jordy Rosenberg's debut novel, Confessions of the Fox.
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