Document Type

Book Chapter

Common-Man Biography: Some Notes By The Way

Authors

Edward D. Ives

Editor

Linda Degh

Henry Glassie

Felix Oinas

Publication Title

Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson

Publisher

Indiana University, Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies

Publication Date

1976

Publisher location

Bloomington

First Page

251

Last Page

264

Abstract/ Summary

"An entire library devoted to the life and deeds of one man, and I'm standing on it!" I had come to Austin, Texas, to attend the 1972 Oral History Colloquium, and the immediate occasion of my yokel wonderment was a cocktail party in the sumptuous reception room atop the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Library. The massive accumulation of documents represented by the many floors of stacks below me all but made my feet tingle, and I wondered how Johnson's biographers could ever hope to deal with it all. The contrast with my own problems as a biographer was almost too perfect. I had written about the lives and works of two folk poets, Larry Gorman and Lawrence Doyle, was well along toward completing a third on Joe Scott and the entire accumulated documentary material available to me for all three I could have held in one hand. It was a neat irony, I felt, and somehow significant if not even symbolic of something or other. Over the cocktail hubbub I told my lovely companion of the moment about it. She thought it was significant too, and maybe symbolic. We had another drink on it.

Repository Citation

Ives, Edward D., "Common-Man Biography: Some Notes By The Way" (1976). Dr. Edward D. Ives Papers. 11.
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ives_papers/11

Citation/Publisher Attribution

Edward D. Ives, "Common-Man Biography: Some Notes by the Way," in Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson, ed. Linda Degh, Henry Glassie, and Felix Oinas (Bloomington: Indiana University RCLSS, 1976), pp. 251-64

Publisher Statement

©1976 by Indiana University-RCLSS

Version

publisher's version of the published document

Rights and Access Note

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