Personal File

In Peter Orner’s sprawling novel The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, protagonist Jed Rosenthal conducts archival research to better understand his city, his family, and himself. He tracks down newspaper clippings, photographs, and case files and tries to assemble them in a meaningful way. Among his grandfather’s papers, he zeroes in on the “manila folders marked ‘Personal,'” which contain ephemeral items such as awards, college acceptance letters, articles written for school newspapers, driver’s license applications, report cards, and diplomas. Most collections of personal papers include a series titled “Personal,” which includes documents that have little to do with the individual’s professional life but help give a fuller impression of them as a human being. The “Personal” series in author Andrew Lytle’s collection, one folder of which is shown here, contains Lytle’s stud book registration for his English setter named Hightone Denis, a program for the 53rd Annual Jackson Day Dinner Dance in New York City, an invoice for a used 1961 Falcon Tudor Sedan, and a certificate naming Lytle as godparent of a Vanderbilt English professor’s daughter.