University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 77, No. 34, Ed. 1 Wednesday, February 28, 2001 Page: 4 of 6
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University Press | Wednesday, February 28, 2001 • Page 4
Letters show different side of local rock icon
Larry McShane
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The
image of Janis Joplin, dead now for
30 years, remains fixed: a blues-
belting, bourbon-drinking rock
icon who lived fast and died young.
In a series of letters she wrote
in 1965, two years before her
breakthrough performance at the
Monterey Pop Festival, a different
Janis Joplin emerges: a studious
homebody, singing alone in her
room, battling the demons that
eventually claimed her life.
“Eve just been attempting to
look at my life objectively from my
new happy vantage point,” she
wrote in one typically reflective
letter to then-boyfriend Peter de
Blanc.
“I’m making ‘A’s’ in 3, maybe
4, of my 5 classes,” reads another,
written in her neat, perfectly
spaced script.
The letters — 64 in all, written
between July 24 and Nov. 11, 1965
— were sent to de Blanc in New
York. The couple had met in
California, but she returned to her
hometown of Port Arthur, Texas,
while de Blanc moved to
Manhattan.
The Janis Joplin Archive, bro-
ken into 28 lots, goes up for auc-
tion March 1 at the Swann
Galleries in Manhattan. The
gallery declined to identify the sell-
er..
“This is a little piece of her
heart,” said Swann president
Nicholas Lowry, invoking one of
Joplin’s biggest hits. “It’s like her
diary, written to her lover.”
The sale was not approved by
the Joplin estate, but it could not
legally block the auction. Michael
Joplin, Janis’ brother, felt the auc-
tion was linked to the upcoming
Manhattan opening of a play based
on his sister’s life.
“The intensity of interest is
really sparked by that,” he said.
“Love, Janis” — based in part on
some of the singer’s letters —
opens April 22.
The letters are revealing in a
variety of ways. Joplin’s writing is
vivid and articulate, sprinkled with
four-letter words and ’60s argot
(“Sorry to be such a drag”).
In one eight-page confessional,
she confesses that she descended
into heavy methamphetamine use
and experimented with lesbianism
during a stay in San Francisco.
“All I did was be wild,” she
wrote. ”...I really seem to have
been trying to do myself in.”
Eventually, Joplin did just
that. She was found dead of an
accidental heroin overdose on Oct.
4, 1970, at a Hollywood hotel.
These are letters from her
Texas hometown, where she
returned in 1965 to refocus. She
enrolled in a local college, Lamar
Tech; one lot includes a completed
blue book from a sociology exam
(Joplin received a 99).
Another lot features a letter
with a self-portrait — an image
about 180 degrees from the larger-
than-life Joplin who fronted Big
Brother & the Holding Company.
The drawing, on a sheet of writing
paper, highlighted Joplin’s “nice
green Christmas dress,” “groovy
ole sandals,” and “new thin gold
hoop earrings.”
A five-page letter, written on
looseleaf paper torn from a note-
book, detailed Joplin’s efforts to
keep her musical ambitions alive
— practicing in her room as her
father listened to Bach downstairs.
“I can really wail on it,” Joplin
wrote of one blues number, “Come
Back Baby.”
“If you can call it wailing when
you do it all alone in your bedroom
with your door closed,” she contin-
ued. “I call it wailing.”
Later, she writes wistfully, “1
wish I had fans that thought I was
as good as I do.” ,
The entire collection was up
for sale once before — via the
online auction service eBay, where
the unidentified seller asked for
$250,000. When that fell through, it
wound up at Swann, where the lots
were expected to sell for between
$3,000 and $10,000 apiece.
In the latest of the letters,
dated Nov. 11, 1965, Joplin said
she was taking Librium and seeing
a counselor in an effort to cling to
her sobriety.
She was “fairly adamant,” she
wrote, about not descending into
substance abuse — and expressed
fear that, “I’ll end up back in that
hellish jungle.”
Renovations to add classroom,
78-seat amphitheater to Alamo
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Millions of
visitors to the Alamo will soon see the
first renovations in more than 30 years on
the grounds of Texas’ shrine of indepen-
dence.
An amphitheater and outdoor class-
room are planned by the Daughters of the
Republic of Texas, who also are propos-
ing to restore a nearby historic building.
The Daughters, who have been cus-
todians of the Alamo since 1905, plan to
build a 78-seat amphitheater and add an
outdoor classroom.
» The Gallagher Building near the
Alamo will be restored to house adminis-
trative offices and a conference room.
“The education facilities to be built
on the eastern perimeter of the Alamo
complex will enable the Alamo education
staff to provide a more meaningful expe-
rience to a broader spectrum of the more
than 2.5 million visitors who annually visit
the Alamo,” said Helen Burleson Kelso,
president general of the DRT.
The Alamo, where Texas heroes
fended off a siege by Mexican soldiers in
the 1836 battle for Texas independence,
hasn’t been the subject of a large-scale
renovation since it was converted into a
museum in 1968.
Construction won’t began until the
project is fully funded, officials said. But
$350,000 of the $650,000 capital campaign
has already been raised from various
foundations.
“Construction depends on the
response from the public and other foun-
dations,” said Brad Breuer, the Alamo’s
director.
The outdoor classroom will be an
arbor, topped with vine-covered lattice-
work, which will host seminars and lec-
tures, even in inclement weather.
Mary Carmack, chairwoman of the
Alamo committee that is responsible for
the daily operations at the shrine, said the
arbor will serve as a year-round class-
room.
After it is restored, the second floor
of the Gallagher building will house
offices for the Alamo and the Library
Committee. The first floor will have a
conference room with seating for 54.
Breuer said that over the last two
years, the building’s asbestos has been
removed and its roof replaced.
‘Honkering’
for a fight
Spectators watch geese
fight in Mokrin, 160 kilo-
meters (100 miles) north
of the Yugoslav capital
Belgrade, Sunday. This is
the 16th annual tourna-
ment of geese fights tra-
ditionally organized every
February.
AP PixL photo
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Cobb, Joshua. University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 77, No. 34, Ed. 1 Wednesday, February 28, 2001, newspaper, February 28, 2001; Beaumont, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth500630/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lamar University.