Another win for Austin – this time it’s the University of Texas’s Ransom Center acquiring the rights to David Foster Wallace’s personal archives. As the release puts it:

The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace’s books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace’s college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.

The real gems seem to be handwritten notes and drafts of ‘Infinite Jest,’ the dictionary he annotated by hand in great detail, as well as heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo (whose archive UT also owns), John Updike and Cormac McCarthy.

The full body of the archive will apparently be available for public viewing by Fall 2010. For now, Austinites and SXSW visitors alike can catch a peek of selected materials in the lobby of the Ransom Center, through April 9.

[via]