The Library Book by Susan Orlean

"The most dangerous man in America:  a nigger with a library card."
  Brother Mouzone  (Michael Potts), /"The Wire" season 2, episode 10, written by Ed Burns

Susan Orlean's book (Simon and Schuster, 2018) is a meditation on libraries and the fire in the Los Angeles Public Library of 1986, when 400,000 books were destroyed.  Orlean had been fascinated by libraries since she was a child in Cleveland, when her mother regularly took her to the local library, and some of us share her fascination.  I grew up without books and without a library in Kinderhook, N.Y. and was always desperate for something to read.  Then we moved to Delmar, N.Y. and when I was in third and fourth grade there the elementary school had a pretty decent library and I read several books a day, taking the books out one day and returning them the next; I don't think I was aware at that time that there was a local public library, since neither of my parents were readers and did all they could to prevent me from reading, on the dubious grounds that it was bad for my eyes.   When I was in fourth grade we moved to Hudson, N.Y., at that time an anti-intellectual blue-collar town that regularly voted against funding a public library, with an elementary school "library" that consisted of a few non-fiction "Landmark" books (some may remember them from the 50's and 60's) and some old copies of National Geographic.

I struggled in Hudson to find reading material.  Ironically, my father had worked for a book distributor  before we moved to Hudson so he could work for an auto-parts distributor.  For my father books were just widgets to be sold and we had almost no books in the house except an encyclopedia; my parents did not believe in "reading for pleasure," since reading could give you ideas of your own and books cost money.  When a volunteer library opened in downtown Hudson I gradually read all the books that were donated until my father caught me with a copy of Catcher in the Rye when I was thirteen and made me return it.  When I asked him if he had read it he said no, but that he had formerly worked in the book business and he knew what was in it (I secretly finished reading it before I returned it),  One Christmas I asked for The Scarlet Letter but my parents "investigated" it and found it too racy and subversive!

In my later elementary school years I managed to read whatever books I could borrow from my friends; I was particularly fond of The Hardy Boys.  When I turned 12 my parents said no more allowance; I was told to get a paper route if I wanted any spending money.  In a way this was liberating, as I mostly used my several earned dollars a week buying paperbacks off the racks at the local grocery store, accidentally discovering such gems as Herndon's Life of Lincoln and George Orwell's 1984, a particular favorite. 

After graduating as my elementary school valedictorian I went as a freshman to Hudson High, where the library was rather surprisingly off-limits unless one was doing research using library materials.  In my freshman English class we were given books to read --The Microbe Hunters, Death Be Not Proud and similar middlebrow material.  Parents were outraged, how dare they make students read entire books!  My parents seemed okay with it, as long as there was no sexual or political content.  

I lasted one year at Hudson High before I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where my world totally changed.  I probably would have had a better academic record at Exeter if they didn't have such a wonderful library:  I had a lot of catching up to do, discovering everyone from Dickens to Nabokov, and spent every moment I could reading.  When I graduated from Exeter I went to Columbia in New York City, with its many bookstores and its excellent public library system.

None of this has much to do with Orlean's book, which is focused on the Los Angeles library system and the fire, which was blamed on one Harry Peak, though evidence was lacking.  In fact, as Orlean writes, "As long ago as 1977 forensic scientists warned that the principles of arson investigation were mostly myth."  I recommend reading Orlean's book and watching Frederick Wiseman's documentary Ex Libris:  The New York Public Library to see the importance and necessity of our public libraries.