University of Texas at Austin

Parker Tyler:

An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Center

Creator: Parker Tyler Tyler, Parker, 1904-1974
Title: Parker Tyler Collection
Dates: 1910-1982
Extent: 59 document boxes, 4 oversize boxes (osb) (24.78 linear feet), 4 oversize folders (osf), 9 galley files (gf)
Abstract: The Parker Tyler collection was created between 1910 and 1982 and comprises correspondence, manuscripts, proofs, photographs, diaries, clippings, and printed material documenting the life and career of the American film and art critic, poet and essayist Parker Tyler (1904-1974).
Call Number: Manuscript Collection MS-04300
Language: English, French, and Russian
Access: Open for research. A small group of poems and letters are too fragile to handle. The original pages have been removed and replaced with photocopies. The originals are restricted from use and noted in the finding aid. Researchers must create an online Research Account and agree to the Materials Use Policy before using archival materials.
Use Policies: Ransom Center collections may contain material with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in the collections without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the Ransom Center and The University of Texas at Austin assume no responsibility.
Restrictions on Use: Authorization for publication is given on behalf of the University of Texas as the owner of the collection and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder which must be obtained by the researcher. For more information please see the Ransom Center's Open Access and Use Policies.


Administrative Information


Preferred Citation Parker Tyler Collection (Manuscript Collection MS-04300). Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
Acquisition: Purchases and Gifts, 1969-1970, 1978, 1983, 1989 (69-01-060-P (R 4601), 69-05-033-P (R 4849), 70-01-049-G, 78-04-014-P, 78-06-011-P, 83-01-016-P (R 9925), 83-08-010-P (R 10221), 89-07-017-G (G 2182) )
Processing Note: The finding aid for the Parker Tyler papers reflects two main bodies of material. The original twelve boxes of cataloged material listed in the original inventory created in 2012, was based on the item-level descriptions listed in the card catalog. In 2019, multiple unprocessed accessions were integrated into the collection and descriptions were added to the finding aid. The original twelve boxes of cataloged material included a small number of Tyler's works, the major portion of his correspondence sent and received, and "miscellaneous" materials. The bulk of the 2019 addition includes drafts and research material for the majority of Tyler's works. In order to organize the full Parker Tyler papers with as little rehandling of the 2012 project as possible it was decided to retain the first twelve boxes in essentially their original organization and add the additional uncataloged material starting with box 13 and continuing to completion of the collection. The Works series occupies boxes 13 through 40, later correspondence is found in boxes 40 to 44, followed by Parker Tyler's personal papers, material relating to Pavel Tchelitchew, and concluding with reference materials. All of Parker Tyler's works are now in a single alphabetical arrangement at the beginning of the folder list, correspondence is in two A to Z sequences (but accessed by a single index of correspondents), and the final three series following. The group of miscellaneous materials seen in the 2012 folder list has been reorganized topically and placed appropriately either in the Works, Correspondence, Personal Papers, or with the Tchelitchew research materials.
Processed by: Bob Taylor, 2019
Repository:

Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Biographical Sketch


Parker Tyler was the eldest child of Eva Hester Parker and Thomas Zimmerman Tyler, born March 6, 1904, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The family was in New Orleans as late as 1910, but began a series of removals that took them to Birmingham, Alabama and then to Chicago by the early 1920s. In Chicago, Parker Tyler's formal education ended at the secondary school level, but the young autodidact soon began writing verse and publishing book reviews and toyed at least briefly with acting at the Cleveland Play House.
Parker's movements in his early years are hard to reconstruct, but in one note he said he was in New York by 1927. Certainly in the 1930 census his parents were enumerated in Queens, New York, where his father was employed as a salesman. Parker by this time regarded himself as "an advance-guard poet [who] took Ezra Pound, Williams Carlos Williams, [and] E. E. Cummings for my masters".
At about the time Charles Henri Ford started his little magazine Blues he and Tyler began a correspondence that culminated in their co-authorship of The Young and Evil (Paris: Obelisk Press, 1933). This novel of gay life in New York that was initially denied access to the U.S. market, but once admitted, guaranteed instant attention to its young authors. Parker Tyler had now become, with a bang, a part of the American cultural scene.
During the early years of Parker Tyler's writing career in the late 1920s and the early 1930s his prose seemingly appeared in obscure (or perhaps unlikely) weeklies and monthlies and in some cases was issued pseudonymously. Tyler himself wrote that his first published poem had been in Eugene Jolas' Transition. At least some of his poetry was published by Poetry, and he was a frequent contributor to Stanley Mayer's Fantasy Magazine in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Parker Tyler edited and, with his own introduction, published an anthology of modern verse in 1934 under the title Modern Things. Years later he apparently found this presumptuousness somewhat cheeky, writing "If I have a venial sin, it was and is impatience."
By the 1940s things were looking up for Tyler and his protracted literary apprenticeship was at last coming to an end. In 1940, Charles Ford began a new literary journal, View, and offered Tyler a relatively stable platform to pursue his growing range of interests. Films had fascinated Tyler since his adolescence and for the first time he began writing of them as subjects worth of intellectual and cultural inquiry.
In the seven year life of View, Parker Tyler wrote a number of pieces on film as well as more traditional cultural fare like painting and dance. The reception of his film writing in View was positive enough to encourage him to attempt book length treatments of film topics. The Hollywood Hallucination (1944), Magic and the Myth of Movies (1947), and Chaplin: Last of the Clowns (1948) were his first efforts. Tyler intended these not so much for traditional film fans as for a literate readership who ordinarily read little of film.
A companion piece to Tyler's initial film monographs was his long poem of 1945, "The Granite Butterfly". Based on sources both filmic and Freudian, "Butterfly" was extravagantly praised by William Carlos Williams and is generally regarded as Parker Tyler's major poetic accomplishment.
Parker Tyler met Charles Boultenhouse about 1945 and within a short time they became a couple, beginning a relationship that would last the remainder of Tyler's life. Boultenhouse was already a student of film and had become interested in experimental non-commercial filmmaking that was then exemplified by the work of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, and others. It was not long before Tyler's own interest in avant-garde film was kindled.
At about the time View magazine ceased publication in 1947, Tyler was able to continue his film criticism and expositions of film theory in the Kenyon Review, later publishing also in Art News (where he became a contributing editor) and Film Culture. In the 1950s Tyler's writings increasingly focused on avant-garde film and led him to publish several of his recent articles in book form as The Three Faces of the Film: the Art, the Dream, the Cult (1960).
The death of the Russian-born surrealist painter Pavel Tchelitchew in 1957 appears to have had a significant effect on the direction of Parker Tyler's career. Tyler had met Tchelitchew in the 1930s as Charles Ford's companion and had been strongly attracted to his art, writing of it a number of times in the following years.
With Tchelitchew's passing Tyler was moved to collect material for a biography of the artist. Tyler seemingly had a difficult time creating an approach to Tchelitchew's life and art that fully satisfied him. As a result, the Parker Tyler papers contain three distinct voluminous drafts of his treatment of the artist, and only with the third did he achieve the result he sought. This was published in 1967 as The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew.
At about the time Parker Tyler started serious work on his Tchelitchew biography project, he realized the task would be a long and arduous one and sought financial help in the form of foundation grants. His first grant was from the Chapelbrook Foundation in 1959, followed by the Ingram Merrill Foundation (1960), and later in the decade the Ford and Guggenheim Foundations.
Having spent so much time and effort on the Tchelitchew biography--truly Parker Tyler's magnum opus--it is doubly notable that for much of the remainder of the decade of the 1960s he created biographies and studies of a wide range of other painters. Conrad Marca-Relli and Jeanne Reynal were subjects of briefer compass, while Florine Stettheimer was treated in a folio volume. In 1968, Doubleday published four studies (of Cézanne/Gauguin, Degas/Lautrec, Renoir, and Van Gogh) in its World Art Series, selected and described by Tyler.
The final half decade of Parker Tyler's life found him laboring under a medical diagnosis of prostate cancer and with what he clearly regarded as much significant work to be accomplished. In 1969, he issued Underground Film: a Critical History, based in part on previous articles. Three years later Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies was published as the first significant treatment of homosexuality in films. Also in print in 1972 was The Shadow of an Airplane Climbs the Empire State Building: a World Theory of Film, a complex study of film esthetics.
The Will of Eros: Selected Poems 1930-1970 (also a 1972 imprint) combined poems from The Metaphor in the Jungle (1940) along with a corrected text version of "The Granite Butterfly." Tyler's last published work was A Pictorial History of Sex in Films (1974), a popular and irreverent treatment of its subject. Parker Tyler died in New York City on July 24, 1974, survived by Charles Boultenhouse as well as by his sister Phyllis and her children.

Sources:


The principal sources of information on the life and works of Parker Tyler are in his papers. Other sources include the following published works:
"Tyler, Parker," Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series, vol. 5. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1982.
"Tyler, Parker," Gay & Lesbian Literature. Detroit: St James Press, 1994.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Reports of the president and of the treasurer, 1965 and 1966. New York: The Foundation [1967?]
"Tyler, Parker," Twentieth Century Authors. First Supplement. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1955.

Scope and Contents


The Parker Tyler collection was created between the years 1910 and 1982 and comprises correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, proofs, diaries, clippings, and printed material belonging to the American film and art critic, poet, and essayist Parker Tyler (1904-1974). The papers documenting Tyler's broad career as a critical and creative writer are presented in an arrangement devised by the Ransom Center. They are organized in five series: I. Works and Notes on Literature and the Arts, 1926-1974; II. Correspondence, 1933-1974; III. Personal Papers, 1939-1982; IV. Pavel Tchelitchew, 1910-1956; and V. Reference Material, 1930-1974.
Series I. Works and Notes on Literature and the Arts (28 boxes) dominates the papers and contains the notes, outlines, and drafts produced in Tyler's broad literary career. The extent of the collection present is all the more remarkable when it is realized that materials relating to his literary activity before the mid-1940s are largely absent. This absence seems to be the result of an apartment fire in 1963, the lack of a settled existence until he was in his forties, and (perhaps) deliberate winnowing of his earlier creative writing.
There is evidence Parker Tyler made a more concerted effort to preserve his poetry over many years than he did his short prose pieces and general essays. So many of the latter seem to have become recycled paper to which new ideas were committed. Establishing a chronology for his unpublished works is difficult as he rarely dated drafts of creative writings; likewise he frequently omitted dating his letters.
Of Tyler's major monographs the earliest present in the papers with a substantial publication file is The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew (1967). This file also includes drafts and research notes of his earlier attempts at a critical biography of Tchelitchew. Underground Film (1969), Screening the Sexes (1972), Shadow of an Airplane (1972), and Pictorial History of Sex in Films (1974) also represent titles with significant publication files.
Among the unpublished works found in the series are two novels, Clairvoyante and the Crime and I Knew a Dancer, along with plays entitled The Swans, Tiresia, and End of the World. Scattered through the works series are a number of pieces of short fiction which generally appear to have been written before World War Two. Later unpublished works are mostly critical pieces on film, theater, and dance.
Because of the presence of over three hundred individual works found in the Works series, many of which are unpublished or exist in multiple draft forms, it will be useful for researchers using the Parker Tyler papers to consult the title index at the end of the finding aid, both to seek specific titles and to get a general idea of the breadth of material present in the works series. A small group of poems are on brittle paper and are too fragile to handle. These leaves have been removed from their original location and replaced with photocopies. The original leaves are now separately housed in a "Restricted" box.
Series II. Correspondence (14 boxes) embraces Parker Tyler's personal and professional correspondence for the years 1933-1974, with representation down to the early 1940s sketchy and from that point on increasingly complete.
Principal personal correspondents found in the papers are Marjorie Borisoff, Charles Boultenhouse, Joseph Cornell, Charles Henri Ford, Lincoln Kirstein, Meyer Schapiro, Allen C. Tanner, Pavel Tchelitchew, and Phyllis Tyler. Correspondence with fellow writers is occasional rather than exhaustive; the largest groups of correspondence are with Marjorie Borisoff, Tyler's sister Phyllis, and Charles Henri Ford. The Borisoff correspondence is accompanied by an extensive number of letters from Tyler to her, presented by her husband Norman Borisoff to the Ransom Center after her death.
Business correspondence with publishers is present for specific, mostly later, writing projects and involves most significantly Doubleday; Grove Press; Holt, Rinehart & Winston; and John Martin's Black Sparrow Press. Seligmann & Collier, Tyler's literary agent, is also notable. Correspondence dealing with short pieces for periodical publication is not extensive, and for the early years essentially nonexistent. In addition to correspondence to and from Tyler there is a group of Third Party Correspondence at the end of the series.
Leaves from letters of Marjorie Borisoff and Phyllis Tyler that have suffered fire damage have been removed from their original location and replaced with photocopies. These leaves, along with a number of similarly damaged poems, are now separately housed in a "Restricted" box.
As explained in the Processing Note, the correspondence from the original twelve boxes were left in their original location and the original description has been condensed to alphabetical ranges for both the incoming and outgoing letters. The 2019 addition was not physically or intellectually integrated with the 2012 group and each is described separately. The Index of Correspondents at the end of the finding aid includes a listing of all incoming correspondents from both groups of material. Also included is the listing of outgoing letter recipients from the 2012 grouping of materials. The Ransom Center no longer indexes outgoing correspondence, so outgoing letters from the 2019 grouping of materials is not indexed.
Series III. Personal Papers (6 boxes) include a number of useful biographical sources for an author whose life is not generally well documented. Parker Tyler's engagement or appointment books for the years 1955 through 1973 (lacking 1962-1963, 1966-1967, and 1970) offer an irregular record of evenings with friends, art openings, theater evenings, and medical appointments.
The three address books in the papers dating from the 1950s and 1960s give assistance in providing surnames to go with forenames in the engagement books, as does his correspondence. Other materials containing Paper Tyler's reflections on his inner life exist here in the form of a journal from the mid-1930s and a diary he kept from February to October of 1952. Of the latter, he noted it was his "only sustained effort at a diary," although the "Diary of P. Tyler's trip to Rome, 1954" (in Series II, at folder 39.2) could also be mentioned.
Series IV. Pavel Tchelitchew (3.5 boxes) comprises materials acquired by Parker Tyler in connection with his biography of the artist. A small but significant group of Tchelitchew letters is present, of which a number are to the art scholar Agnes Rindge Claflin and others to Tchelitchew's friend, the art collector Oliver Jennings.
The personal photographs include a number of early and informal images of the Tchelitchew family in Russia and elsewhere along with photos of the artist from the 1920s to the 1950s. Likewise a substantial group of photographs of the artist's works assembled by Tyler have been organized thematically within broad categories. In addition to the materials collected in this series, there are many notes by Parker Tyler and others detailing interviews conducted in the 1950s with friends of Tchelitchew which have been filed in Series II under The Tchelitchew biographies.
Series V. Reference Material (6 boxes) comprises two subseries, of which the first, Subseries A. Print and Manuscript Material, 1930-1974, includes a significant group of Parker Tyler's writing in the form of periodical articles and minor monographs. Periodical issues containing critical studies of Tyler's work, along with other arts periodicals, catalogs, and manuscripts by others are also found here.
Of these manuscripts, the most significant are likely the transcriptions of talks given by Pavel Tchelitchew in the 1940s (folder 52.1). A mystery surrounds "Man is the Witness," a brief piece on Yves Tanguy in the March 1949 issue of Tiger's Eye (folder 58.4). The editors attribute this essay to "a New York poet" named Paul Borisoff, but it seems to be Tyler's work.
Subseries B. Photos of Art Works and Film Stills, 1930s-1960s consists primarily of photographic prints of paintings by John Marin and Walter Stuempfig, along with a substantial group of film stills. These stills, sorted topically, have been placed here as they appear to have no specific connection to any of Tyler's film books.

Related Material


Additional materials relating to Parker Tyler at the Harry Ransom Center are located in the manuscript holdings for Guy Davenport, Charles Henri Ford, the Gotham Book Mart, the William A. Bradley Literary Agency, and Louis Zukofsky. The majority of scrapbooks and photos in the Tyler Papers were separated from the manuscript material during the 1960s by Ransom Center staff and are now located in in the Center's Parker Tyler Literary File Photography Collection (PH-02656) and Vertical File Scrapbook Collection. Likewise, additional reviews of Tyler's works, material related to Pavel Tchelitchew, art criticism, programs, pamphlets, and other ephemera can be found in the Parker Tyler Vertical File.
Other materials relating to Parker Tyler are present in the Fantasy Magazine papers in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, and in the Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler papers at the New York Public Library.

Index Terms


People

Bewley, Marius.
Borisoff, Marjorie Mason.
Boultenhouse, Charles.
Cornell, Joseph.
Ford, Charles Henri.
Kirstein, Lincoln, 1907-1996.
Kracauer, Siegfried, 1889-1966.
Lamantia, Philip, 1927-2005.
Schapiro, Meyer, 1904-1996.
Sutherland, Donald.
Tanner, Allen C.
Tchelitchew, Pavel, 1898-1957.
Tyler, Phyllis, 1906-2004.

Organizations

Black Sparrow Press.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, Inc.

Subjects

Art, American--20th century.
Authors, American--20th century.
Experimental films--History and criticism.
Homosexuality in motion pictures.

Document Types

Christmas cards.
Diaries.
Drawings.
First drafts.
Galley proofs.
Negatives.
Photographs.
Postcards.
Scrapbooks.
Sheet music.

Container List