Public Reading of Don’s Work (IU)
April 29, 2010 | Posted by admin2 Next week, Wed. May 5, there will be a Celebration of Don Belton’s Life in Literature. This event, organized by Don’s students and Christoph Irmscher, will be held in the Slocum Room of the LILLY LIBRARY, from 7-8 on the IU Bloomington campus.
The celebration will consist of readings from Don’s published and unpublished writing. A reception will follow.
Categories: Don Belton | 
Tags: | 
7 Comments »
Any recollections or pictures?
Here are some pictures from the event:
http://picasaweb.google.com/christoph.irmscher/DonBeltonReading?feat=directlink#
Thanks, Justin. These pictures are great, and I am sorry it took us so long to post them.
One highlight of this event was seeing the materials from Don’s archive showcased at the Lilly Library. This archive is still being sorted through and organized, so I’m not sure when it will be available. But there were some gems: a fantastic picture of a young Don (undated), probably taken in his twenties. A page from one of his many daily journals, in which he celebrates his happy life. A draft page from his new manuscript. Typed pages and handwritten ones. At some point, I presume, these materials and many like them will be available for scholars and friends to comb through.
An update on Don’s papers and books: We have sorted through Don’s vast library, which the family kindly left to the English Department. While the English Department will create its own library in Ballantine Hall devoted to his memory, the many, many first editions and signed copies in his library ( with moving dedications from bell hooks to Edmund White) are now at the Lilly Library, which has also independently acquired Don’s manuscripts, especially the invaluable journals he has left.
It will take a considerable amount of time to process and catalogue all these materials, of course, since there are just so many of them. But the good news is that everything will be publicly available at some point in the future. Thanks are due to Breon Mitchell, Director of the Lilly Library, who was involved in all the negotiations and spent days at the office of the the family’s representatives reading Don’s manuscripts ; Joel Silver, the Lilly’s Associate Director and Curator of Books; and Cherry Williams, the Lilly’s Curator of Manuscripts–as well as Alita Hornick and Alex Teschmacher, who helped me go through the books, and, of course, Ross Gay, who brought many of the boxes over to the Department in the first place. It’s heartening to know that Don’s literary legacy will now be preserved at one of the finest Rare Books and Manuscripts libraries in the world. It’s also one of the most accessible ones: the Lilly’s collections are open to everyone, with or without a research agenda. Anyone with an ID can walk in and ask to see Don’s manuscripts once they’ve been treated conservatorially and catalogued. I will keep the users of this site updated when new information becomes available.
Christoph
I am pleased that you have saved Don’s papers and books as well, I hope his extensive record collection. I am having a new collection of poems and I have included Don in my dedication. It is difficult still to know that he is gone. I spoke with him just two days before the tragedy and he was so pleased to have met new friends, a family as he described them, with whom he would be having Christmas dinner. I am sorry for the young man who did this but I am not pleased that he has made a false accusation as his motive. Don was not a person of violence. Rape is a violent crime. Don did not drink to such excess that he would lose his sense of balance and reasoning. I hope that the young man who took his life will have some kind of punitive allocation. Prison is not a pleasant place to be and I am sorry that he may be incarcerated. On the other hand, my friend did not deserve such cruel and fatal violence.
I would like to thank you for the kind words spoken about my uncle. He waz most definately not a violent man. I thank you for sharing that with all that might think other wise.