--------------------------------------------------------------------------- (C) Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company -- The Boston Globe --------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/134/living/Authors_in_their_SitesP.shtml 5/14/2001 Authors in their Sites Fans turned archivists use the Web to honor their favorite writers By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff The Web is the ultimate library, an assemblage of texts unprecedented in human history. Within its virtual confines, one can even occasionally find good, old, honest-to-Gutenberg authors - the kind who put words on paper as well as screen. There's one big difference, of course: On the Web, authors' writings aren't found on shelves but at sites devoted to their lives and works. The individuals who tend such sites may be the closest thing this global library has to librarians. Actually, as the three individuals profiled here demonstrate, "librarian" doesn't begin to do their self-appointed vocation justice. Each is part fan, part archivist, part technician, using the resources of the Web to pay tribute to an author he or she loves. It's a unique joining of the old fashioned with the up to the minute: for with these sites, as with creation itself, in the beginning was the word. Proprietor: Curt Gardner, 39 Home: San Francisco Work: software implementer Author: Don DeLillo Address: www.perival.com/delillo Began: early 1996 It was in college, as a computer-science major at Wesleyan, that Curt Gardner first heard of Don DeLillo. Surfing the Web some 15 years later, he was dismayed by how little he could find about the author. So Gardner decided to try to come up with a site like the one he'd hoped to come across. ''My vision was to create a place where the average DeLillo reader would feel at home,'' he says. Gardner also had an aim that he describes as ''fairly grandiose,'' which is ''to essentially document everything known about DeLillo.'' The contents of his site include what one might expect (reviews of DeLillo's books, interviews with him) as well as what one might not (the novelist Salman Rushdie reports on attending a Yankees game with DeLillo: ''He goes there with his mitt. He's up there for every fly ball.''). Gardner doesn't find running the site to be at all onerous. During its first year of operation, he recalls, he haunted the University of California at Berkeley library system, tracking down material. Since then, he estimates he's spent no more than two hours a week working on it. ''It's a fun pastime,'' he says, ''and it puts me in touch with DeLillo fans from all over. Almost daily I get e-mail from an appreciative visitor, and I also get many postable items from people who send me links.'' Gardner met DeLillo at a San Francisco reading in 1997 and sent him printouts from the page. ''I respect his wishes to keep some things private,'' Gardner says. ''But let's just say he gave his blessing to the site.'' Proprietor: Richard Lane, 33 Home: New York Work: editor, ''Dateline NBC'' Author: Thomas Pynchon Address: www.pynchonfiles.com Began: May 31, 1998 ''I created the site out of a jaw-dropping admiration for the man,'' says Richard Lane. Thomas Pynchon is an ideal subject for a Web site: a famously reclusive author who has many fanatical readers interested in any scrap of information about him they can come by. In addition, Lane points out, ''The encyclopedic content of Pynchon's work lends itself perfectly to the hyperlink format.'' Site contents range from photos of Pynchon as an 18-year-old Navy seaman (and of the destroyer he served on) to the complete text of an obscure report on public disturbances in Malta in 1919 that helped inspire the epilogue to Pynchon's first novel, ''V.'' Lane sees his mission as ''providing a conduit for information that the novelist isn't providing.'' Sometimes that can lead to a certain strain on the conduit. ''There are foreign visitors who assume I'm [Pynchon], others who wanted all his books and critical work sent along, gratis. And soon.'' There was also a recent query from a prominent Web site wondering how to get Pynchon to review restaurants. Lane, who has had no contact with the author, could offer no help. Such distractions are a small price to pay for the site, Lane feels. ''I've learned more by stepping on Pynchon's shadow than I ever could have imagined from a novelist. The confluence of ideas and tangents that merely thinking about his work induces is a great gift of which he should be justly proud.'' Proprietor: Sandye Utley, 49 Home: Cincinnati Work: administrative assistant, WCET-TV Author: T. Coraghessan Boyle Address: www.tcboyle.net Began: Feb. 21, 2000 ''There's such joy in his writing,'' Sandye Utley says. She was already a fan of his novels and short stories when she met T. Coraghessan Boyle at an award ceremony in Washington, D.C., 16 months ago. He accepted her offer to set up a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for the site Boyle runs, www.tcboyle.com. Utley came up with so many references to Boyle-related articles and reviews she decided to set up a free-standing site. ''It could easily be a full-time job,'' she says, describing the site as ''a never-ending proposition.'' Contents run the gamut from audio clips of Boyle interviews and readings to listings of his public appearances to a recipe (in Dutch, no less) for Baked Camel With Filling, a dish that figures in Boyle's novel ''Water Music.'' Utley estimates she spends $300 a year on tcboyle.net. The biggest expense isn't financial, however, but temporal: the hundreds of hours she has put into site construction and doing Boyle research. She doesn't begrudge the commitment, though. She exchanges e-mail with Boyle, and it gratifies her that he approves of the site (he described a recent redesign as ''Molto cool. Very classy.''). Even more important, perhaps, there's the sense of camaraderie the site inspires. ''The people I hear from are an intelligent, witty band of readers (some of them Tom's own friends) who love the work. In sharing that common bond, they all feel like my friends, too.'' www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/134/living/Authors_in_their_SitesP.shtml --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (C) Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company -- The Boston Globe ---------------------------------------------------------------------------