This week, my encounter with the Olive Allen Biller fonds unearthed questions about personality, performance, and authorial intent in what are typically considered ‘ordinary’ or ‘personal’ forms of writing. In her introduction to The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing, Jennifer Sinor contextualizes that, canonically speaking, narrative and story are the elements that distinguish “ordinary writing” from other more valued forms of literary works. Sinor remarks that the narrative lens through which we tend to approach and understand all forms of writing, further divides texts into those which are “crafted”, and those which are not – namely, ordinary diurnals (Sinor 6).
This reductive line of distinction being drawn between genres of writing has inherent consequences. The artificial binary, either/or approach imposed on how we view narrative in literary works effectively denies a writer authorial intent. However, as Sinor hopes to make visible in her reading of Annie Ray’s diary, personal documents and ordinary writings do participate in a process of story-telling: “of the self presenting or representing the self” (Hobbs 131). To me was clearly apparent in Olive Allen Biller’s collection of “ordinary” documents.
Allen Biller’s fonds included pocket-book diaries documenting day to day happenings, journals which recorded summer vacations in Trebarfoot, artwork, illustrations, poems, and photographs of both her time in England and Canada. While these documents may be classified generically as “personal”, not once as I was reading Biller’s journals did I have a moment where I felt I was encroaching on the individual’s privacy. In fact, the Trebarfoot Volumes were arranged in a way that would suggest Biller clearly intended these journals to be viewed and appreciated by eyes other than her own. A clearly meticulous, detailed, and aesthetic hand went into the creation of these journals. The lettering was polished and legible, decorative markings embroidered the pages, and there was a clearly intentional authorial voice emitted from the words on the page. Sketches, illustrations, poems and other works were included to further suggest that for Olive, such an ordinary genre was nothing but ordinary (in the canonical understanding of the term). Her Trebarfoot Volumes were something akin to a communal scrapbook in its layout and aesthetics. While the unstructured, scrapbook-like arrangement oftentimes made context difficult to follow as a reader not privy to the full details of Allen Biller’s day, the inclusion of photographs and signatures provided the journal’s potential reader with a fuller picture of vacation happenings.
I want to draw attention to evidence of authorial intent found Trebarfoot Volume 1, where Olive Allen Biller seems to be offering a commentary on the very practice of journaling. After providing a simple, daily log of activities occurring over the course of two-weeks, where the weather and evening pass-times were briefly recorded in point form, Olive writes:
“By the amount of snow, drizzle, and downright rain entered in this journal, the uninitiated might think we didn’t have a jolly time – but we did. Log fires are hosts in themselves. It takes a lot of people to blow them and pull them down, pile them up again, fetch more…”.
Allen Biller clearly appears to be addressing someone in her journals. After her previous, point-form mentions of daily remarks, Olive takes the time to further explain her two weeks for the “uninitiated” (us, the reader and researcher) in a more literary way.
Here’s is another example of Olive’s authorial intent surfacing in her ordinary writings:
“Nobody kept a journal. Perhaps five weeks of everyday doings might become a stale read. However, some of the principle events are chronicled in a certain blue diary…but she didn’t write it up…consequently much valuable information has been lost”.
Olive Allen Biller’s intent in creating these journals becomes evident as she addresses the potential reader -“the uninitiated”. These instance of personal, ordinary writing appear to be a deliberate attempts to create and memorialize the “self”. The creation of the “self” within personal archives, whether elaborate, mundane, authentic, or fabricate, is a narratological construction, similar to that seen in literary works. As Sue McKemmish and Catherine Hobbs’ argue, personal archives are “narratives of the self”.
Works Cited:
Allen Biller, Olive. 1890- c.1950. Box 1. RBSC-ARC-1033 Olive Allen Biller Fonds. University of British Columbia Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver. 23 February 2016.
Hobbs, Catherine. “The Character of Personal Archives: Reflections on the Value of Records of Individuals.” Archivaria 52 (2001): 126-135. Web. 28 February 2016.
Sinor, Jennifer. The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray’s Diary. Iowa City: U of Iowa, 2002. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.