I'm engaged in the melancholy task of sifting an accumulation of my old papers; and throwing-out as much as possible.
The thing is, my Filing System is that - when I've decided something must be kept, I put it in a box.
When that box is full, I put the newer papers in another box.
After more than thirty years, I have a series of boxes in roughly chronological order (except when I later stuffed some papers into an earleir box) - each representing a phase of my professional life; each containing mostly-disposable stuff such as photocopies of academic papers, background reading and drafts for long-completed writing project - but as well as the disposable, also things I still want to keep; such as copies of my own magazine, journal and newspaper publications.
In sum, I need to sort-through every last piece of paper.
I find it a wrench even to discard material I haven't looked-at for thirty years - for example, material related to my long-abandoned MD research on neuroendocrinology of psychiatric disorders, MA research on Scottish author Alasdair Gray, or the papers from 1989-94 relating to the function of the human adrenal gland.
Some stuff I am pleased to be rid of: bad scientific papers by dishonest authors; nasty reviews of my books that I had kept 'for the record'; detritus of dull conferences...the turgid tedium that is 99% of academia...
I have been, since the mid 1980s, a pretty prolific writer; and there are some things I had completely forgotten I had written. An article for Living Marxism magazine!* Some-things in the NHS manager's journal (presumably done for money?). An amusing column about 'pinch-me words' for the British Journal of General Practice (provoking the wistful obervation that I used to be a pretty adept comic columnist). These were retained.
Obviously, I need to press-on - and not be distracted. But then I find scraps of evidence of how I developed ideas which I consider to be quite good; and these sometimes hold me up for a minute.
...Such as a sheet of paper summarising the nature of mania, dated 1998, and which was absorbed into my Psychiatry and the Human Condition book. I stalled on this, examined the notes; and was quite impressed at the line of reasoning... but it still has to go into the bin. Or, from about the same time, one side of A4 notes which were for a pro-atheist lecture I gave as one side of a debate, at the invitation of the local Christian Union: describing how there was no longer any need for Christianity. Was that really me?
This is the kind of stuff which would presumably be marvellous evidence for the biographer of some worthy genius like Coleridge or Tolkien - but not for me - so into the 'recyling bag' it all goes.
But not without a shrug of regret.
*Note: Although I have been an atheist, socialist and many other bad things - I never have been a Marxist of any kind, whether Living or not. But before I began blogging, I used to publish journalism all over the place, with whoever asked for something. The Living Marxism group were a pleasant bunch; and they are still going - producing the online magazine Spiked - and I'm still not sure what their covert agenda really is. Although I am sure that they have one, and nowadays it isn't mine.
Interesting post. I am not terribly fond of destroying old papers either, at least without looking over them first.
ReplyDeleteIt can be quite pleasant to spend a few hours with reminiscences spurred by forgotten papers.
As far as saving papers go, you're in good company. Much of Newton's papers, including school exercises (of no interest except that they were written by Newton) have been saved. One of the most extreme examples was Kurt Godel who seems to have saved almost all his papers, even to the extent of bringing library slips from Vienna with him when he moved to the United States!
@NLR - I suppose mathematicians are used-to saving their 'working', because they need to show them to get maximum marks in exams...
ReplyDeleteI had saved the lab books from my last 'wet' experiments nearly thirty years ago, and my calculations from some scientometric analyses more recently, just in case somebody challenged the results - this was the old style of things in science.
Just before I retired I was throwing away my fresher maths notebooks - everyone keeps such things for more than forty years, no doubt - when a colleague strolled in, picked a notebook out of the rubbish bin, and laughed. "What's so funny?" says I. "This notebook starts with your solution to 'problem number 632'; that was the way we all learnt maths, eh? Did you reach number 1,000? None of our students do such numbers of problems these days."
ReplyDeleteHe carried on burrowing into the bin, and retrieved some physics lecture notes. "When did you do this?" he demanded. "Field theory? First year, second term." Ah, he said, nowadays this is reckoned far too difficult for freshers. It's second year material, but not compulsory - just an option." I goggled - how the devil can you be a physicist without field theory?
As ever, facts are chiels that wanna ding.
Your notes and manuscripts to Thought Prison and Addicted to Distraction will certainly be of interest to historians and those interested in our current age, the books definitely merit a place in as many libraries as possible. As an archivist and packrat I understand the situation of having far too many papers that have mostly outlived their usefulness. If I can fill a few archival boxes by the end of my life with material that could offer some benefit to my posterity or others and write a decent book or two, it will be enough.
ReplyDelete@Nick - Thanks for the implied compliment! - but it's a minority view, clearly. But the notes and MS to these particular books are, ironically, in the public domain already - since they are This Blog, and the posts and comments in the year or so leading up to the books.
ReplyDelete