The Library Book
By Susan Orlean
4/5
()
About this ebook
A WASHINGTON POST TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018
“A constant pleasure to read…Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book.” —The Washington Post
“CAPTIVATING…DELIGHTFUL.” —Christian Science Monitor * “EXQUISITELY WRITTEN, CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINING.” —The New York Times * “MESMERIZING…RIVETING.” —Booklist (starred review)
A dazzling love letter to a beloved institution—and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries—from the bestselling author hailed as a “national treasure” by The Washington Post.
On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?
Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.
In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.
Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.
Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.
Editor's Note
Dazzling love letter…
Part true-crime detective book, part history book filled with fascinating anecdotes, the newest book from Susan Orlean begins with a disastrous fire that consumed the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986 and the subsequent search for the suspected arsonist. Delight in discovery powers this book, and Orlean feeds readers’ curiosity.
Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Twitter @SusanOrlean.
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Reviews for The Library Book
1,290 ratings164 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Best book I’ve read in years! It was just over 300 pages but took me twice as long to read, so full of stories and facts I didn’t want to miss one page. Page one I was hooked and the last page I read twice.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not as well written as her prior efforts, this book is a gripping read nonetheless.She goes back to 1986. the year that the LA central library had a fire, and shows that thefire was probably started by accident rather than a person.She is excellent at describing all of the services performed in a modern library and people who provide them.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a great book to finish this year of reading.I am usually not a nonfiction reader but I really liked the way this book was written. Completely engaging as the author told the story of the fire at the Central Library in Los Angles and the history of that library.But this is more than a factual recounting, it is a love letter to books, to readers , to libraries and to librarians. Thank you, Susan Orlean.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic storytelling. Incredible research.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very readable book that tells the story of the modern library through the lens of the history the Los Angeles Public Library. If you thought libraries are dull this will disabuse you of that idea. I'm a librarian and work in a large State Library and I found myself nodding and saying "yes!" as Orlean laid open the issues ranging from the pragmatic (budgets, staffing and politics) to the eccentric (donations from obsessive collectors of maps and menus, strange reference requests, the story of the purported arsonist Harry Peak), the tragic (services to the homeless) and the dramatic (the fire itself!). I was interested to discover that drug dealing in libraries has a long history with LAPL reporting problems as early as 1926. Libraries are our shared space where no one is turned away, where all can learn and participate and this book shows us how they have adapted over time without losing this core mission. A recommended read for librarians and non-librarians alike.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was certainly a well written non fiction book about the Los Angeles library. At first it appears to be an investigation into the tragedy of the 1986 fire that destroyed or damaged some 400 thousand volumes, but it turns out to also be about the history and importance of libraries, their place in our world. That being said I didn't quite get all the hype. I am glad I read the book and gathered some good insights but can't say I would highly recommend it to others. Some quotes:"The reading of the book was a journey. There was no need for souvenirs.""In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share, one that burns down and disappears when we die. But if you can take something from that internal collection and share it—with one person or with the larger world, on the page or in a story recited—it takes on a life of its own.""It’s like taking away the ability to remember your dreams. Destroying a culture’s books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived."
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I readily admit that I see the irony in reading this book without ever touching a paper page of it or entering a physical library for it. Still, brick and mortar libraries have a very fond place in my heart – their smell, their open doors, and in my day, their hushed and reverent ambiance. So I thought I would love this book about the Central Library of Los Angeles, the fire that destroyed so much inside it, and the mystery surrounding the fire. And I did enjoy it, but not as much as I expected. Sometimes my mind wandered off while I was reading or I got a bit bored with all the detail. I did enjoy some of the stories of the people involved, but didn't get to know them in depth. I also enjoyed Googling images of the library before and after the fire. Still, it didn't grab me as I expected it to. While I am glad I read it, it's not going to get on my favorites list.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I found the subject pretty thin. Despite her purple prose, it was disappointing how shallow Orlean's investigation into the LA library fire ended up being. The building was a firetrap, money had been budgeted to improve it for years, and yet nothing had been done. Who was responsible? I suppose, "It [will] remain a story without end, like a suspended chord in the last measure of a song—that singular, dissonant, open sound that makes you ache to hear something more." Orlean also seems to think it is cute, rather than scandalous, how wasteful some of the library jobs are, e.g., people who answer Google queries over the phone all day. The long lists of library collections are pointless, and the title lists at the beginning of each chapter are precious. Orlean herself says that she never goes to libraries.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Orlean describes her re-introduction to public libraries as a parent, an experience that brings back the fond memories of regular trips with her mother to the local library. Now living in Los Angeles, she becomes interested in the history of the Los Angeles main library when she takes a tour and finds out that the library experienced a devastating fire in April 1986. The cause was determined (possibly in error) as arson but a strong enough case could never be made against the one suspect, Harry Peak, a young man who aspired to be an actor and was prone to exaggeration about his life. This book could have left the Peak investigation behind. The more interesting parts of the book revolve around the library. Orlean occasionally gets into the weeds with side plots she finds interesting but the library's history, the differences of main librarians over the years, details about the fire, how the tragedy affected employees (which is only barely addressed), and the role of libraries in all communities prove to be more entertaining and enlightening than the story of a unreliable fame-seeking failed actor suspected of arson.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Orlean is an amazing writer. In this book she has made the history and librarians of the Los Angeles Public Library seem like a fast-paced novel, and turned the 1986 fire that destroyed much of the Central Library collections into a detective story for the ages. Even the science that saved so many books becomes fascinating. She weaves together the history, the librarians, the fire, the search for the arsonist, the life of the main suspect, with the cleanup and the present. Masterfully done nonfiction writing is such a joy to read!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reading about a giant 1986 library fire in LA now counts as escapism. Orlean is a great writer who moves from the history of the LA library system to the way a fire spreads to an inquiry into the life of the guy who was ultimately blamed for (but never charged with) starting the fire. It’s a great read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On April 29,1986, the most catastrophic library fire occurred in 5e LA Central Library. It reached temperatures of 2000 degrees, burned for more than seven hours, consumed more than 400,000 books and damaged more than 700,000 more. Orlean investigates the fire and in the process showcases the vital role that the public library has played and does play in our indicidual lives and in our communities. She also manages to relate the evolution of the library and its continued importance in our society. A little disjointed at times as she reflects from one period to another, but still an enlightening read for lovers of the written word and lovers of the library.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5300 pages of library—and librarian—love. What's not to like?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a history of the Los Angeles Public Library, with a focus on the 1986 fire that destroyed a good part of their collection and seriously damaged the building. It is a great read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Learning of the devastating fire that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986 set the author on a four-year research path that resulted in this captivating non-fiction work that vacillated between heart-pounding drama as wisps of smoke make a path through overcrowded stacks to tedious descriptions of the librarians who helmed LAPL starting in the 1870s.•Great technical details of methods used to freeze, dry, and salvage over a half million damaged books. •What the Central Library meant and means to its community, and what challenges libraries everywhere face as patron needs change.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a nonfiction account of the 1986 fire at the LA public library, but really the author dives into the history and purpose of libraries in general. Even though she meandered at time, I was interested throughout the book. I loved learning about the librarians’ personal lives and the everyday struggles they face. “On a library book shelf thought progresses in a way that is logical but also dumbfounding, mysterious, irresistible.”
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love books about books but this is so much more. It's a story of the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library that is anchored by a horrendous fire that occurred in 1986. Orlean interweaves her story with the employees, alleged arsonist, firefighters, the books and the building. Her research is outstanding and her elegant writing kept me reading. Thoroughly recommend this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loved this story of the 1986 fire in the Los Angeles Public Library. It is a crime story as well as the story of the many interesting people that have made the library what it is today. It is also a love story to libraries in general--a place where everyone is welcome, there is something for everyone, and a place not just to store books but a place of ideas, dreams, and comfort.There are many interesting characters that inhabit this story from the likable but random young many who was charged with the arson to the 18 year old Mary Foy, the first female librarian in an establishment that allowed only men. Librarians are really the heroes of this story as they have stood against censorship of ideas and freedom of information. Charles Lummis is another memorable character who was a journalist, an adventurist, and a librarian who was determined to make the LA Public Library one of the best in the world. The author also takes a realistic look at libraries today. While technology brought about many challenges, the challenges of homelessness and human needs brings even larger and harder challenges which are harder to remedy. Still today, most cities and town support libraries and see their place in an ever diverse society. Truly an enjoyable read. And, I loved the format of the book including the very realistic book pocket in the back. This is a book for anyone who loves to read and loves libraries.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well-written, engaging, and eye-opening history of the Los Angeles Public Library. The narrative centers on the 1986 fire, and then radiates outward into the past to uncover the history and people behind the library from its beginnings in the 19th century, and into the present, as the library is renewed.If the book has a shortcoming, it is that it could have done with more graphics. If you go online there are some dazzling images of the LAPL. Although these may not have translated well into black and white for this book, at least better images of the building, its layout and signature elements would have not gone astray.This being real life, the story of who set the fire is perhaps anticlimactic, but it can only be what it is. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5librarian, library, books, nonfiction, journalist, grief The book begins with graphic descriptions of the awful destructive fire at the main library in Los Angeles which occurred on the same day as the Chernoble disaster. The description of the actions of the fire and of the bibliophiles who worked so hard to salvage whatever could be done is so clear that the reader feels the pain and frustration of the obliteration of so many unique and irreplaceable books, other ephemera, microfiche, and so much more. Then the book progresses through the librarians and other employees and how things were managed to the other satellite libraries to the logistical problems of libraries everywhere. There is much devoted to the evolution of library services, preservation of historical library buildings, and the processes of archiving and restoration of materials. But this is not just a dry recounting of facts, it is a loving sacrificial offering to beloved libraries the world over, and the humor is found in the books listed at the beginning of each chapter. No Time for Tears: Coping with Grief in a Busy World (2015) by Heath, Judy 157.3 H437. Fire! The Library is Burning (1988) by Cytron, Barry D. X624 C997. If you geek libraries, you need to read this book! Disclaimers:I have geeked books and libraries since forever, as do most of our children and grandchildren. Several of the grands would consider this a book of horror as they are old enough to decide that they prefer print copies. I requested and received a free review copy from Simon and Schuster Publishers via NetGalley. Now I have to get a print copy as soon as available!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Orlean is a nonfiction storyteller who is able to turn a library into a character that we care deeply about. The Los Angeles Public Library is at the center of her tale, and she describes its history in considerable detail, with a focus on its horrific fire in 1986. This book is also a true crime drama, since the fire was determined to be arson, with a primary suspect. To bring this homage to libraries to life, Orlean not only tells about each of the library directors since the L.A. Library's founding, but also enumerates all of the building's architectural origins and changes, as well as the political forces that have affected it. She became acquainted with many of the current library staff, and the portrait she paints of their jobs and the patrons they encounter is a particular strength of the book. This will have particular appeal to librarians and their fans.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Library Book by Susan Orlean will be released in October 2018. I was fortunate to receive an ARC from Net Galley.The book is, superficially, the fascinating story of the 1986 fire that essentially destroyed Central Library in Los Angeles. Orlean discusses the fire itself and the damage it caused to collections, first from smoke and flame, and then from water hoses. Paid staff and volunteers made heroic efforts to save as many books, maps and other materials as they could both from the immediate fire and then later, as the wet books, which had been frozen, were brought back to life.Orlean also pursues the mystery of who started the fire. A suspect was arrested but there simply wasn't enough evidence to convict Harry Peake, a sometime actor whose story of that April day changed often and in startling ways but Peake admitted to setting the fire in at least one or two versions.But, the heart of the book is the story of the libraries in general and the Los Angeles County Public Library,in particular. She traces the history of the Central Library up to the fire, through to the present day and then imagines a bit of the future. Overdrive might change the nature of libraries, making it easier to access digital resources, but the story of the library throughout its history was and is one of service that goes beyond caretaking and dispensing materials. Orlean visits various departments including those who answer the phone and answer questions that, as one of them points out, could often be easily answered using Google. Not everyone goes online and some people just want to talk with a human being. The Los Angeles library system, along with many urban libraries, is on the front line of the homeless crisis. Beyond being a shelter during the day, the library connects homeless people to information and resources in both informal and formal ways as Orleans describes a program in which the librarians invited service providers to an organized fair where homeless patrons could be directed to the services they needed. Librarians carry a strong sense of social justice, deeply embedded concern for the "whole" person. Orlean begins each chapter with four book titles related to the coming text, including their Dewey Decimal number. And, throughout, her own love of books and libraries shine through. We sense a fellow traveler who wrote this book out of love and gratitude. The most touching parts of the book, I think, are the interviews with those who were at the library the day of the fire, whether librarians, patrons or firemen, and those who lived through the years of restoration of both the building and the books.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Los Angeles Public Library suffered a horrible fire on the same day as the Chernobyl disaster, which is one of the reasons that I had never heard about this event. More than 1,000,000 volumes were damaged or destroyed. The author speculates about the cause of the fire, discusses the history of this library and the ways in which libraries have evolved over the centuries. Interesting and informative.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A modern and rambling history of libraries using the skeleton of the history of the Los Angeles library with recurring chapters telling the story of the Los Angeles library fire of 1986.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"...to tell about a place I love that doesn't belong I love that doesn't belong to me but feels like it is mine, and how that feels marvelous and exceptional."
If you love libraries this book will make you love them even more - while it revolves mostly around the burning of the L.A. Central Library in 1986 it also provides a rich history of libraries as a whole and how far beyond loaning books they go. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Library Book by Susan Orlean on the surface is a book about the Los Angeles Public Library fire in 1986 that burned for over seven hours, the single biggest library fire in the history of the US. It’s actually a love letter to libraries, their history, their place in our communities, and the tireless men and women who work there. I’m a lover of libraries, have used them in many capacities throughout my life, but was amazed what I did not know (and what I learned). The author writes not simply about the Los Angeles Library but the history of libraries, their evolution, their future. It gave me a renewed appreciation for the vast role libraries play within communities and how that will continue to evolve. I highly recommend this for bibliophiles and history buffs alike. I received an advanced reader copy (eGalley) from Simon & Schuster through NetGalley. This review reflects my honest and unbiased opinions.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting but too much flowery prose.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I found this really interesting and even as a librarian I learned a few things. It’s a great book advocating the relevance of libraries and telling a snapshot of their history.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an excellent book about libraries, primarily the LA Central Library. It is part history, part biography, part mystery. It starts out with the events around the LA Central Library fire in April, 1986, then goes into the history of the library, biographies of the main head librarians and some about the investigation of the fire, mixed in with some auto-biographical information and current and past information about libraries in general. Very interesting, very well written.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great writing and the intertwining of a detective story with the history of the LA library. I am a library nerd and a detective story geek so I was in heaven. This book could stand alone on its history component, detailing the different librarians and the fights to establish a respectable facility in downtown LA. But the description of the fire and resulting damage and repair plus the search for the origin of the blaze adds another dimension to this book. Even included is thoughts and trends on the future of our libraries.
The writing was a pleasure, clear and expressive and capable taking you into the center of the fire or watching patrons vying for computer time. I enjoyed the way her words sounded to my inner ear, if you know what I mean. So a double treat of a well researched book and very lovely words.
Book preview
The Library Book - Susan Orlean
For Edith Orlean, my past For Austin Gillespie, my future
Memory believes before knowing remembers.
—William Faulkner, Light in August
And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering.
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
—Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers
1.
Stories to Begin On (1940)
By Bacmeister, Rhoda W.
X 808 B127
Begin Now—To Enjoy Tomorrow (1951)
By Giles, Ray
362.6 G472
A Good Place to Begin (1987)
By Powell, Lawrence Clark
027.47949 P884
To Begin at the Beginning (1994)
By Copenhaver, Martin B.
230 C782
Even in Los Angeles, where there is no shortage of remarkable hairdos, Harry Peak attracted attention. He was very blond. Very, very blond,
his lawyer said to me, and then he fluttered his hand across his forehead, performing a pantomime of Peak’s heavy swoop of bangs. Another lawyer, who questioned Peak in a deposition, remembered his hair very well. He had a lot of it,
she said. And he was very definitely blond.
An arson investigator I met described Peak entering a courtroom with all that hair,
as if his hair existed independently.
Having a presence mattered a great deal to Harry Omer Peak. He was born in 1959, and grew up in Santa Fe Springs, a town in the paddle-flat valley less than an hour southeast of Los Angeles, hemmed in by the dun-colored Santa Rosa Hills and a looming sense of monotony. It was a place that offered the soothing uneventfulness of conformity, but Harry longed to stand out. As a kid, he dabbled in the minor delinquencies and pranks that delighted an audience. Girls liked him. He was charming, funny, dimpled, daring. He could talk anyone into anything. He had a gift for drama and invention. He was a storyteller, a yarn-spinner, and an agile liar; he was good at fancying up facts to make his life seem less plain and mingy. According to his sister, he was the biggest bullshitter in the world, so quick to fib and fabricate that even his own family didn’t believe a word he said.
The closeness of Hollywood’s constant beckoning, combined with his knack for performance, meant, almost predictably, that Harry Peak decided to become an actor. After he finished high school and served a stint in the army, Harry moved to Los Angeles and started dreaming. He began dropping the phrase when I’m a movie star
into his conversations. He always said when
and not if.
For him, it was a statement of fact rather than speculation.
Although they never actually saw him in any television shows or movies, his family was under the impression that during his time in Hollywood, Harry landed some promising parts. His father told me Harry was on a medical show—maybe General Hospital—and that he had roles in several movies, including The Trial of Billy Jack. IMDb—the world’s largest online database for movies and television—lists a Barry Peak, a Parry Peak, a Harry Peacock, a Barry Pearl, and even a Harry Peak of Plymouth, England, but there is nothing at all listed for a Harry Peak of Los Angeles. As far as I can tell, the only time Harry Peak appeared on screen was on the local news in 1987, after he was arrested for setting the Los Angeles Central Library on fire, destroying almost half a million books and damaging seven hundred thousand more. It was one of the biggest fires in the history of Los Angeles, and it was the single biggest library fire in the history of the United States.
Central Library, which was designed by the architect Bertram Goodhue and opened in 1926, is in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, at the corner of Fifth Street and Flower, on the downslope of a rise once known as Normal Hill. The hill used to be higher, but when it was chosen as the site of the library, the summit was clawed off to make it more buildable. At the time the library opened, this part of downtown Los Angeles was a busy neighborhood of top-heavy, half-timbered Victorians teetering on the flank of the hills. These days, the houses are gone, and the neighborhood consists of dour, dark office towers standing shoulder to shoulder, casting long shafts of shade across what is left of the hill. Central Library is an entire city block wide, but it is only eight stories high, making it sort of ankle-height compared to these leggy office towers. It projects a horizontality that it probably didn’t in 1926, when it debuted as the high point in what was then a modest, mostly four-story-tall city center.
The library opens at ten A.M., but by daybreak there are always people hovering nearby. They lean against every side of the building, or perch half on and half off the low stone walls around the perimeter, or array themselves in postures of anticipation in the garden northwest of the main entrance, from which they can maintain a view of the front door. They watch the door with unrewarded vigilance, since there is no chance that the building will open earlier than scheduled. One recent warm morning, the people in the garden were clustered under the canopy of trees, and beside the long, trickling watercourse that seemed to emit a small breath of chilled air. Rolling suitcases and totes and book bags were stashed here and there. Pigeons the color of concrete marched in a bossy staccato around the suitcases. A thin young man in a white dress shirt, a hint of sweat ringing his underarms, wobbled on one foot, gripping a file folder under his arm while trying to fish a cell phone out of his back pocket. Behind him, a woman with a sagging yellow backpack sat on the edge of a bench, leaning forward, eyes closed, hands clasped; I couldn’t tell if she was napping or praying. Near her stood a man wearing a bowler hat and a too-small T-shirt that revealed a half-moon of shiny pink belly. Two women holding clipboards herded a small, swirling group of kids toward the library’s front door. I wandered over to the corner of the garden, where two men sitting by the World Peace Bell were debating a meal they’d apparently shared.
You have to admit that garlic dressing was good,
one of the men was saying.
I don’t eat salad.
Oh, come on, man, everyone eats salad!
Not me.
Pause. I love Dr Pepper.
Between each volley of their conversation, the men cast glances at the main entrance of the library, where a security guard was sitting. One of the doors was open, and the guard sat just inside, visible to anyone passing by. The open door was an irresistible conversation starter. One person after another approached the guard, and he deflected them without even blinking an eye:
Is the library open yet?
No, it’s not open.
Next: Ten A.M.
Next: You’ll know when it’s time.
Next: No, not open yet.
Next: Ten A.M., man
—shaking his head and rolling his eyes—ten A.M., like it says on the sign.
Every few minutes, one of the people approaching the guard flashed an identification badge and was waved in, because the library was actually already in gear, humming with staff members who were readying it for the day. The shipping department had been at work since dawn, packing tens of thousands of books into plastic bins. These were books requested at one of the city’s seventy-three libraries, or that had been returned to one in which they didn’t belong and were being repatriated, or they were brand-new books that had been just cataloged at Central Library and were now on their way to one of the branches. Security guards are at the library around the clock; the guards on duty had started their shift at six A.M. Matthew Mattson, who runs the library’s website, had been at his desk in the basement for an hour, watching the number of website visits surge as the morning advanced.
In each of the eight subject departments throughout the building, librarians and clerks were tidying shelves, checking new books, and beginning the business of the day. The reading tables and carrels were empty, each chair tucked under each table, all enfolded in a quiet even deeper than the usual velvety quiet of the library. In the History Department, a young librarian named Llyr Heller sorted through a cart of books, weeding out the ones that were damaged or deeply unloved. When she finished, she pulled out a list of books the department wanted to order, checking to make sure they weren’t already in the collection. If they passed that test, she would look at reviews and librarian tip sheets to make sure they warranted buying.
In the Children’s Department, children’s librarians from around the city were gathered in the puppet theater for their regular meeting. The topic being discussed was how to run an effective story time. The thirty full-size adult humans who were wedged into the tiny seats of the theater listened to the presentation with rapt attention. Use an appropriate-sized teddy bear,
the librarian running the session was saying as I walked in. I had been using one I thought was the size of a baby, but I was wrong—it was the size of a very premature baby.
She pointed to a bulletin board that was covered with felt. Don’t forget, flannel boards are wonderful,
she said. You may want to use them for things like demonstrating penguins getting dressed. You can also hide things inside them, like rabbits and noses.
Upstairs, Robert Morales, the library’s budget director, and Madeleine Rackley, the business manager, were talking about money with John Szabo, who holds the job of Los Angeles city librarian, in charge of all the libraries in Los Angeles. Just below them, the main clock clicked toward ten, and Selena Terrazas, who is one of Central Library’s three principal librarians, stationed herself at the center axis of the lobby so she could keep watch over the morning rush when the doors officially opened.
There was a sense of stage business—that churn of activity you can’t hear or see but you feel at a theater in the instant before the curtain rises—of people finding their places and things being set right, before the burst of action begins. The library entrances have been thrown open thousands of times since 1859, the year that a public library first existed in Los Angeles. Yet every time the security guard hollers out that the library has opened, there is a quickening in the air and the feeling that something significant is about to unfold—the play is about to begin. This particular morning, Selena Terrazas checked her watch, and the head of security, David Aguirre, checked his as well, and then Aguirre radioed the guard at the entrance to give the all-clear. After a moment, the guard clambered off his stool and pushed the door open, letting the buttery light of the California morning spill into the entry.
A puff of outside air wafted in and down the hall. Then, in an instant, people poured in—the hoverers, who bolted from their posts in the garden, and the wall-sitters, and the morning fumblers, and the school groups, and the businesspeople, and the parents with strollers heading to story time, and the students, and the homeless, who rushed straight to the bathrooms and then made a beeline to the computer center, and the scholars, and the time-wasters, and the readers, and the curious, and the bored—all clamoring for The Dictionary of Irish Artists or The Hero with a Thousand Faces or a biography of Lincoln or Pizza Today magazine or The Complete Book of Progressive Knitting or photographs of watermelons in the San Fernando Valley taken in the 1960s or Harry Potter—always, Harry Potter—or any one of the millions of books, pamphlets, maps, musical scores, newspapers, and pictures the library holds in store. They were a rivering flow of humanity, a gush, and they were looking for baby-name guides, and biographies of Charles Parnell, and maps of Indiana, and suggestions from a librarian for a novel that was romantic but not corny; they were picking up tax information and getting tutored in English and checking out movies and tracing their family history. They were sitting in the library, just because it was a pleasant place to sit, and sometimes they were doing things that had nothing to do with the library. On this particular morning, in Social Sciences, a woman at one of the reading tables was sewing beads onto the sleeve of a cotton blouse. In one of the carrels in History, a man in a pin-striped suit who had books on his desk but wasn’t reading held a bag of Doritos under the lip of the table. He pretended to muffle a cough each time he ate a chip.
I grew up in libraries, or at least it feels that way. I was raised in the suburbs of Cleveland, just a few blocks from the brick-faced Bertram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library system. Throughout my childhood, starting when I was very young, I went there several times a week with my mother. On those visits, my mother and I walked in together but as soon as we passed through the door, we split up and each headed to our favorite section. The library might have been the first place I was ever given autonomy. Even when I was maybe four or five years old, I was allowed to head off on my own. Then, after a while, my mother and I reunited at the checkout counter with our finds. Together we waited as the librarian at the counter pulled out the date card and stamped it with the checkout machine—that giant fist thumping the card with a loud chunk-chunk, printing a crooked due date underneath a score of previous crooked due dates that belonged to other people, other times.
Our visits to the library were never long enough for me. The place was so bountiful. I loved wandering around the bookshelves, scanning the spines until something happened to catch my eye. Those visits were dreamy, frictionless interludes that promised I would leave richer than I arrived. It wasn’t like going to a store with my mom, which guaranteed a tug-of-war between what I wanted and what my mother was willing to buy me; in the library I could have anything I wanted. After we checked out, I loved being in the car and having all the books we’d gotten stacked on my lap, pressing me under their solid, warm weight, their Mylar covers sticking a bit to my thighs. It was such a thrill leaving a place with things you hadn’t paid for; such a thrill anticipating the new books we would read. On the ride home, my mom and I talked about the order in which we were going to read our books and how long until they had to be returned, a solemn conversation in which we decided how to pace ourselves through this charmed, evanescent period of grace until the books were due. We both thought all of the librarians at the Bertram Woods Branch Library were beautiful. For a few minutes we would discuss their beauty. My mother then always mentioned that if she could have chosen any profession at all, she would have chosen to be a librarian, and the car would grow silent for a moment as we both considered what an amazing thing that would have been.
When I was older, I usually walked to the library myself, lugging back as many books as I could carry. Occasionally, I did go with my mother, and the trip would be as enchanted as it was when I was small. Even when I was in my last year of high school and could drive myself to the library, my mother and I still went together now and then, and the trip unfolded exactly as it did when I was a child, with all the same beats and pauses and comments and reveries, the same perfect pensive rhythm we followed so many times before. When I miss my mother these days, now that she is gone, I like to picture us in the car together, going for one more magnificent trip to Bertram Woods.
My family was big on the library. We were very much a reading family, but we were a borrow-a-book-from-the-library family more than a bookshelves-full-of-books family. My parents valued books, but they grew up in the Depression, aware of the quicksilver nature of money, and they learned the hard way that you shouldn’t buy what you could borrow. Because of that frugality, or perhaps independent of it, they also believed that you read a book for the experience of reading it. You didn’t read it in order to have an object that had to be housed and looked after forever, a memento of the purpose for which it was obtained. The reading of the book was a journey. There was no need for souvenirs.
By the time I was born, my parents’ financial circumstances were comfortable, and they learned how to splurge a little, but their Depression-era mentality adhered stubbornly to certain economies, which included not buying books that could be gotten very easily from the library. Our uncrowded bookshelves at home had several sets of encyclopedias (an example of something not convenient to borrow from the library, since you reached for it regularly and urgently) and a random assortment of other books which, for one reason or another, my parents had ended up buying. That included a few mild sex manuals (Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique is the one I remember best, because of course I read it whenever my parents were out of the house). I assume my parents bought the sex books because they would have been embarrassed to present them at the checkout desk of the library. There were also some travel guides, some coffee table books, a few of my father’s law books, and a dozen or so novels that were either gifts or for some reason managed to justify being owned outright.
When I headed to college, one of the many ways I differentiated myself from my parents was that I went wild for owning books. I think buying textbooks was what got me going. All I know is that I lost my appreciation for the slow pace of making your way through a library and for having books on borrowed time. I wanted to have my books around me, forming a totem pole of the narratives I’d visited. As soon as I got my own apartment, I lined it with bookcases and loaded them with hardcovers. I used the college library for research, but otherwise, I turned into a ravenous buyer of books. I couldn’t walk into a bookstore without leaving with something, or several somethings. I loved the fresh alkaline tang of new ink and paper, a smell that never emanated from a broken-in library book. I loved the crack of a newly flexed spine, and the way the brand-new pages almost felt damp, as if they were wet with creation. I sometimes wondered if I was catching up after spending my childhood amid sparsely settled bookcases. But the reason didn’t matter to me. I actually became a little evangelical about book ownership. Sometimes I fantasized about starting a bookstore. If my mother ever mentioned to me that she was on the waiting list for some book at the library, I got annoyed and asked why she didn’t just go buy it.
Once I was done with college, and done with researching term papers in the stacks of the Harold T. and Vivian B. Shapiro Undergraduate Library, I sloughed off the memory of those wondrous childhood trips to the Bertram Woods branch, and began, for the first time in my life, to wonder what libraries were for.
It might have remained that way, and I might have spent the rest of my life thinking about libraries only wistfully, the way I thought wistfully about, say, the amusement park I went to as a kid. Libraries might have become just a bookmark of memory more than an actual place, a way to call up an emotion of a moment that occurred long ago, something that was fused with mother
and the past
in my mind. But then libraries came roaring back into my life unexpectedly. In 2011, my husband accepted a job in Los Angeles, so we left New York and headed west. I didn’t know Los Angeles well, but I’d spent time there over the years, visiting cousins who lived in and around the city. When I became a writer, I went to Los Angeles many times to work on magazine pieces and books. On those visits, I had been to and from the beach, and up and down the canyons, and in and out of the valley, and back and forth to the mountains, but I never gave downtown Los Angeles a second thought, assuming it was just a glassy landscape of office buildings that hollowed out by five o’clock every night. I pictured Los Angeles as a radiant doughnut, rimmed by milky ocean and bristling mountains, with a big hole in the middle. I never went to the public library, never thought about the library, although I’m sure I assumed there was a public library, probably a main branch, probably downtown.
My son was in first grade when we moved to California. One of his first assignments in school was to interview someone who worked for the city. I suggested talking to a garbage collector or a police officer, but he said he wanted to interview a librarian. We were so new to town that we had to look up the address of the closest library, which was the Los Angeles Public Library’s Studio City branch. The branch was about a mile away from our house, which happened to be about the same distance that the Bertram Woods branch was from my childhood home.
As my son and I drove to meet the librarian, I was flooded by a sense of absolute familiarity, a gut-level recollection of this journey, of parent and child on their way to the library. I had taken this trip so many times before, but now it was turned on its head, and I was the parent bringing my child on that special trip. We parked, and my son and I walked toward the library, taking it in for the first time. The building was white and modish, with a mint green mushroom cap of a roof. From the outside, it didn’t look anything like the stout brick Bertram Woods branch, but when we stepped in, the thunderbolt of recognition struck me so hard that it made me gasp. Decades had passed and I was three thousand miles away, but I felt like I had been lifted up and whisked back to that time and place, back to the scenario of walking into the library with my mother. Nothing had changed—there was the same soft tsk-tsk-tsk of pencil on paper, and the muffled murmuring from patrons at the tables in the center of the room, and the creak and groan of book carts, and the occasional papery clunk of a book dropped on a desk. The scarred wooden checkout counters, and the librarians’ desks, as big as boats, and the bulletin board with its fluttering, raggedy notices were all the same. The sense of gentle, steady busyness, like water on a rolling boil, was just the same. The books on the shelves, with some subtractions and additions, were certainly the same.
It wasn’t that time stopped in the library. It was as if it were captured here, collected here, and in all libraries—and not only my time, my life, but all human time as well. In the library, time is dammed up—not just stopped but saved. The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.
So the spell libraries once cast on me was renewed. Maybe it had never really been extinguished, although I had been away long enough that it was like visiting a country I’d loved but forgotten as my life went galloping by. I knew what it was like to want a book and to buy it, but I had forgotten what it felt like to amble among the library shelves, finding the book I was looking for but also seeing who its neighbors were, noticing their peculiar concordance, and following an idea as it was handed off from one book to the next, like a game of telephone. I might start at Dewey decimal 301.4129781 (Pioneer Women by Joanna L. Stratton) and a few inches later find myself at 306.7662 (Gaydar by Donald F. Reuter) and then 301.45096 (Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama) and finally 301.55 (The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson). On a library bookshelf, thought progresses in a way that is logical but also dumbfounding, mysterious, irresistible.
Not long after my son interviewed the librarian, I happened to meet a man named Ken Brecher who runs the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, the nonprofit organization that champions the city’s libraries and raises money for extra programming and services. Brecher offered to give me a tour of Central Library, so a few days later, I drove downtown to meet him. From the highway, I could see the quiver of dark skyscrapers in the center of the city that surrounded the library. The summer and fall had been rainless. The landscape around me was bright and bleached, blasted, with an almost ashy pallor. Even the palm trees seemed sapped of color, and the reddish rooftops were whitened, as if dusted with sugar.
I felt new here, and the sheer breadth of Los Angeles still astonished me. It seemed like I could drive and drive and the city would just keep unfurling, almost as if it were a map of Los Angeles being unrolled as I drove over it, rather than a real city that started and stopped somewhere specific. In Los Angeles, your eye keeps reaching for an endpoint and never finds it, because it doesn’t exist. The wide-openness of Los Angeles is a little intoxicating, but it can be unnerving, too—it’s the kind of place that doesn’t hold you close, a place where you can picture yourself cartwheeling off into emptiness, a pocket of zero gravity. I’d spent the previous five years living in the Hudson Valley of New York, so I was more used to bumping into a hill or a river at every turn and settling my gaze on some foreground feature—a tree, a house, a cow. For twenty years before that, I’d lived in Manhattan, where the awareness of when you are in or out of the city is as clear as day.
I expected Central Library to look like the main libraries I knew best. New York Public Library and the Cleveland Public Library are serious buildings, with grand entrances and a stern, almost religious aura. By contrast, the Los Angeles Central Library looks like what a child might assemble out of blocks. The building—buff-colored, with black inset windows and a number of small entrances—is a fantasia of right angles and nooks and plateaus and terraces and balconies that step up to a single central pyramid surfaced with colored tiles and topped with a bronze sculpture of an open flame held in a human hand. It manages to look ancient and modern at the same time. As I approached, the simple blocky form of the building resolved into a throng of bas-relief stone figures on every wall. There were Virgil and Leonardo and Plato; bison herds and cantering horses; sunbursts and nautiluses; archers and shepherds and printers and scholars; scrolls and wreaths and waves. Philosophical declarations in English and Latin were carved across the building’s face like an ancient ticker tape. Compared to the mute towers around it, the library seemed more a proclamation than a building.
I circled, reading as I walked. Socrates, cool-eyed and stony-faced, gazed past me. I followed the bustle of visitors to the center of the main floor, and then I continued past the clatter and buzz of the circulation desk and climbed a wide set of stairs that spilled me out into a great rotunda. The rotunda was empty. I stood for a moment, taking it in. The rotunda is one of those rare places that have a kind of sacred atmosphere, full of a quiet so dense and deep that it almost feels underwater. All the rotunda’s features were larger than life, overpowering, jaw-dropping. The walls were covered with huge murals of Native Americans and priests and soldiers and settlers, painted in dusty mauve and blue and gold. The floor was glossy travertine, laid out in a pattern of checkerboard. The ceiling and archways were tiled with squares of red and blue and ocher. In the center of the rotunda hung a massive chandelier—a heavy brass chain dangling a luminous blue glass Earth ringed by the twelve figures of the zodiac.
I crossed the rotunda and walked toward a large sculpture known as the Statue of Civilization—a marble woman with fine features and perfect posture and a trident in her left hand. I was so stirred by the library’s beauty that when Brecher arrived to give me my tour, I was chattering like someone on a successful first date. Brecher is as thin as a pencil and has bright eyes, pure white hair, and a brisk, barking laugh. He began a running commentary about each fixture, each carving, each plaque on the wall.