The Snell Archives collection– I am talking about the magazine archives, located on the 3rd floor– is an impressive archive collection; certainly more impressive than I ever expected. But I only discovered it late last semester, during the lazy spring days when I had nothing much to do and was in a limbo between the summer (spent in New York) and Boston (the rest of the year.) Old editions of the New Yorker filled that limbo.
But it wasn’t only the New Yorker. I only mention the New Yorker because I’m obviously a Latte-sipping leftist-elitist. They have everything from Psychology Journals to The Partisan Review. Each archival volume comes in a large, hardcover binding with no words on it save the spine. Each volume is a little bit dusty, making it look more nostalgic and making you feel as if your participating in some secret ritual. (Whenever I’m in this area, I never see anybody else looking through the archives. Only today, when some lost-seeming soul walked past and peered down the aisle at me in incomprehension, was it confirmed that this is indeed a secret ritual.) Each volume is color coded: the New Yorker is blue, for example. Harpers is black.
My only qualm with the archives section is that it is cut in two by several rows of books. I understand that there may be problems of organization, but can’t these books be moved elsewhere? But I really only have this problem because I’m an obsessive of a certain kind. I’m an information junkie. I like things of the past that are long and gone. I have become, quite unintentionally, a lover of magazines. Above all, I like flipping through the 1978 editions of the New Yorker and seeing what Pauline Kael had to say about movies in those glorious days.