This week I finally began to send my ten years of files to the shredder. These files contain my research for The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.
My biography has been out for a month in the midst of this time of shut-down for many bookstores and of Amazon hiring new warehouse workers—so it is likely that the monster will gobble up most of my sales. But like many independent bookstores, my Santa Fe neighbor, Garcia Street Books, soldiers on, taking orders by email and telephone in the morning and delivering in the afternoon—including a copy going to the staff at Shangri La in Hawaii. Most of my postponed readings will probably take place in the fall.
So it’s time to let go and move on, to my next book and the next phase of my life.
As I put my files, copies of the originals at Duke, into boxes for the shredder, I glance at a few that came as such pleasant surprises when I first found them eight or nine years ago: a letter about Buck Duke cavorting as a young man with an uncle and cousins, a visit fueled with plenty of alcohol and high jinks including pouring buckets of water on the girls present; a tiny announcement of Doris’ birth in New York; copious photos that for one reason or another were not included in the thirty printed in The Silver Swan, the distinctive handwriting of the many letters to Doris from friends and lovers that I quoted to make her portrait—the portrait of a woman who was nearly silent.
They have all served my purpose, and served it well. Now, on this beautiful spring day with Iris and Lilacs blooming in my garden, I’m saying goodbye to this absorbing project and moving on with you, my faithful readers, into the always surprising future.
[For more on Doris Duke’s silence, please see my guest post for the Central Michigan University History Department blog, [RE]collection, entitled, “Writing the Biography of a Wordless Woman” or watch my video, “Doris Duke’s Legacy.”]
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