One of the newest celebrations, International Monkey Day, began as a whimsy in 2002. Now commemorated annually, International Monkey Day invites us to reflect on our fellow member of the primate, their lives and plights, and the ways we draw upon monkeys for inspiration, insight, or analogy.

University of Arizona’s Special Collections affords opportunities to reflect on monkeys. In fact, a catalog search reveals no less than 102 items in Special Collections which relate to, or allude to, monkeys. Together, they capture the breadth of Special Collections and the materials for use in our Reading Room.

Admittedly, some connections are tenuous. Edward Abbey’s black comedy of eco-activism, The Monkey Wrench Gang, may not focus on monkeys, but the title itself evokes monkey business. (Monkey wrenches, for that matter, likely take their name from a British nautical term for expedient or contrived devices.) The Oxford English Dictionary now recognizes both “monkey wrench” and “monkeywrench” with the latter a term for sabotage, disruption, or damage in environmental protest. Read one of the many editions of The Monkey Wrench Gang or explore Abbey’s papers available in our Reading Room.

From titles to topics, poets, novelists, and playwrights are fond of monkeys. Joyce Carol Oates, Kurt Vonnegut, and Sigrid Nunez writing about Virginia Woolf, amongst many others, weave monkeys into titles and subjects. Still others, such as Harlen Campbell’s novel of the Vietnam War, Monkey on a Chain, evoke images of abject helplessness.

Other works capture monkeys directly. Ken Wolfgang’s documentary film career in Japan led him to document Snow Monkeys in the 1960s, available in his vast personal and professional papers. And one 1975 University of Arizona doctoral dissertation studied the influence of THC, one of the psychoactive chemicals of marijuana, on the competitiveness of squirrel monkeys. Major finding? Really stoned monkeys were not competitive.

However you choose to celebrate International Monkey Day, look again at Special Collections as a place for whimsy, imagination, and joy, or even simply to monkey around.