From family to institutional memory: a conversation with Stephen cooper

Abstract

This conversation with Fante’s biographer revolves around the complex acquisition trajectory of John Fante’s papers (manuscripts, letters, business records) and memorabilia (his typewriter, a lock of hair, etc.). Their transfer in 2009 from the writer’s family to the institutional space of UCLA Library Special Collections represented Fante’s entry into that very world of immortality he had unabashedly pined for, along with his literary alter ego Arturo Bandini. The conversation contributes to the debates on archives as repositories of past and future knowledge and on private versus public memory.