In the summer and early autumn of 2005, Mohamedou Ould Slahi handwrote a 466-page, 122,000 word draft of his book in his single-cell segregation hut in Camp Echo, Guantánamo.
"Based on the original diary he kept at the time and an early draft of the book written in the 1960s, this book takes up the story, and carries the reader to Constantinople and beyond".
The papers, including manuscripts of about 11,000 of Mr. Kempton's newspaper columns, plus drafts of books, will be part of Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
The archive contains drafts of books, stories, essays, poems, letters and research, including the handwritten notes for "Infinite Jest," the novel that first gained him attention.
This being an omnium-gatherum of the Thompsonian "gonzo" archive, there are also memorandums, drafts of book-jacket copy and movie treatment outlines.
The house is full of drafts of books on collage, as well as books about his father's story that remain unfinished because the story itself lacks an ending.
It made me want to practise and work at my writing, and then write drafts of books that wouldn't ever come to anything, and then, after years of turmoil, write a novel that finally got published, called The Testimony.
I even sent him the final draft of one book — "American Pastoral" — to read in manuscript.
