Libraries
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
A cruciform shadow falls across the Gardner Public Library rooftop at sunset. Not long after its shape atop the bell tower has been cast, at closing, the librarians turn all the overhead lights off except for a bank in the center of the building that creates a warm, soft light reflected in the windows.
The sidewalk rises as it comes to the library’s west side and turns south at a 90-degree angle. From that place, pedestrians, day or night, can look down on the puzzles, stuffed animals and rounded tables in the children’s section. A small reading room for periodicals can also be looked into with its long, wide table and reading chairs. Celebrity faces stare back from the wall along with joggers mid-stride and African woman framed by the familiar yellow square from National Geographic covers.
The library after hours is one of the few places that is no more calm after hours than it is during the day. Hushed voices that usually belong to patrons, it could imagined, become the whispers of the writers who fill the empty aisles with soaring, lyrical words. I have been a reader my whole life and yet, year after year, I still manage to find books on the shelves – some classics – that I’ve never discovered before.
Last year, it was the works of the beat generation oddly timed with the 50th anniversary release of On the Road. From there, my tastes turned to Jack London, whose book The Road had been an influence on Jack Kerouac’s work. Next, it was a round of writing instruction books, including Stephen King’s On Writing and some by lesser recognized writers who told about the craft (and psychological) benefits of memoir and journal writing.
From there, I rediscovered a writer whose books about mountain climbing was supposed by critics to be a modern day Dharma Bums. My first experience with Daniel Duane was the beautifully written Caught Inside. His El Capitan and Searching for Mo returned me to The Beats and the latter day, beat-influenced bohemians, the Merry Pranksters, and the man who wrote about them and their acid experiments, Tom Wolfe. And so, I felt as though I’d climbed up and down and back up again the branches of.a literary family tree.
I took Caroline to the library tonight to pick up some books I had on hold. While she stacked blocks and fit advanced puzzles together, I wondered at all the knowledge and emotion on the book racks, in the trays of CDs, between the thin, leafy paper covers of the magazines. What books are on the shelves now, I thought, that I’ve walked past that I will read one day and find something that will change my life in some way?
Tonight, it was Wolfe’s The Kandy-kolored Tangering-flake Streamline Baby. In the introduction, he writes about an assignment he was given to cover a car show only to find the story he delivered was not what he wanted to write, and not the real story at all. This book of his collectrd stories was the genesis of hom writing the way he wanted to. In his voice. I can relate.
in my opinion, though they are located across the street from each other, the library is no less holy than the church and vice versa. Both are filled with people wanting to be wiser and live better. And, story telling is a centerpiece in making believers.
