Taking Notes on How Bibliophiles Flirt

Karla Marie-Rose Derus, “Taking Notes on How Bibliophiles Flirt” (Modern Love), New York Times, February 24, 2019, pl. ST6.

During six years of singlehood in my 20s, I became a person I did not know. Before, I had always been a reader. I walked to the library several times a week as a child and stayed up late into the night reading under my blankets with a flashlight. I checked out so many books and returned them so quickly the librarian once snapped, “Don’t take home so many books if you’re not going to read them all.” “But I did read them all,” I said, unloading them into her arms. I was an English major in college and went on t get a master’s in literature. But shortly after the spiral-bound thesis took its place on my shelf next to the degree, I stopped reading. It happened gradually, the way one heals or dies.

… 

On our seventh date, David and I visited the Central Library downtown.,
“I have a game,” he said, pulling two pens and pads of sticky notes out of his bag. “Let’s find books we’ve read and leave reviews in them for he next person.”
We wandered through the aisles for over an hour. In the end, we say on the floor among the poetry, and I read him some of Linda Pastan’s verse. 

… 

The Japanese language has a word for this: tsundoku. The act of acquiring books that go unread.

COMMENT


     Shame on the librarian. The writer describes herself as “a 5-foot-3-inch black woman born to a Caribbean mother.” It troubles me to think that the librarian was judging her appearance, not her borrowing habits. What’s more, the librarian is deeply wrong to think that taking out unread books is somehow wrong. A library is an antidote to tshundoku. Unlike the bookstore which clutters your home shelves, you can take a chance with a library book that may not turn out to be worth reading.  (See: What to Do With all the Stuff That's Cluttering your Home; Can't. Just. Stop).

     As other library stories relate, the books that people read and/or buy become deeply personal markers of who they are. Even after Karla stops reading, she considers the books she has read essential to her self perception. Her online dating profile is listed under the screen name “missbibliophile” and her taste in literature speaks for her personality. David, the boyfriend reads history and nonfiction; Karla prefers writers of color and immigrant narratives (writers on her list like  Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy and Edward P. Jones indicate the importance of diversity to her self-image) Can they overcome their differences to combine their bookshelves?

Like the writer, I experienced a period of non-reading, but I don’t think it was related to romantic disappointment or intellectual fatigue. I believe I lost my ability to concentrate due to too much screen time. I decided it was a big problem that I had stopped reading books and I cured myself by sitting down with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace until I had read it all the way through. A distraction-free long distance Amtrak trip was helpful to the project of becoming re-literate.

The library game the two lovers play is charming. It reminds me of students who leave paper money in their dissertation to reward anyone who bothers to read their work. Other library stories feature ephemera found in books (See: Lee Israel) or marginalia (See: When Puccini Came, Saw and Conquered). In academic libraries one sometimes finds texts marked up with notes or highlighting from previous readers. Sometimes this seems like annoying defacement, but it’s also an insight into what impressed another reader. I shouldn't admit it, but I don't always mind if library books are marked up if it's done in pencil and not fluorescent-yellow ink.

The library in this story is also a meaningful place.  The two lovers go there on a date.  When David proposes he does it by tucking a note into the pages of a book.

All Over the Map

Betsy Mason and Greg Miller, All Over the Map: A Catrographic Odyssey," National Geographic, 2018.

Some of these maps come from museums, prestigious universities, and famous collections, but we've gone out of our way to also include maps from less vaunted sources. They've been buried in obscure government reports, long-forgotten scientific papers, private collections and dusty corders of libraries. Some are products of popular culture, such as one from the blockbuster television series Game of Thrones. Others are part of everyday life-- the kind you might expect to find in the seat-back pocket of an airplane or that you would tuck into your pocket before hitting the ski slopes. 

COMMENT

 The book All Over the Map is not an atlas, but rather a picture book of curious and interesting maps.   It could conceivably be subtitled "why digital maps suck." The wide variety of geographic representation is a reminder of how GIS makes all maps look essentially the same. In the chapter on ski area maps, cartographer Jim Niehues frets that hand-draw ski area maps could become a lost art if he retires.  His technique involves creative distortion of the terrain, orienting the layout around peaks that serve as landmarks for skiers. 

   Yet again library dust is mentioned.  It doesn't indicate worthless unused objects suitable only for the dust bin.  Rather the dust has gathered on hidden treasures waiting to be uncovered, maybe even in some of those obscure government reports lurking in the Stygian library basement (See: Autobiography of Red).

     When the database Hathi Trust digitized government reports they did not bother to digitize map supplements or oversized foldouts.  The maps they did digitize were single-pagers, not in full color.  Cartographic information was sacrificed to expedite the digitization process, probably because whoever made the decision didn't think maps were are all that important since maps are seldom a heavily used part of any library collection.  Despite such sloppiness, some librarians base sloppy decisions about what to weed on digital libraries like Hathi Trust.  If the title is online, they conclude that it has been accurately reproduced and it's just fine to throw out the library's physical copy, regardless of map supplements.  This makes me particularly mad because I live in Utah where public lands politics have been driven for years by a poorly executed Utah Intensive Wilderness Inventory (BLM, 1980).  Without good maps, the text of that particular land use document and the many, many subsequent plans are meaningless.  Even if the maps were digitized, it's difficult to see them online.  For optimum viewing, they need to be spread out on a big table.

 

   

The Other Mozart

Kylee Ehmann, "The Other Mozart," (Entertainment Picks), Feb. 23-27, 2019). Salt Lake City Weekly, Feb. 21, 2019, p. 16.

Contained within an opulent dress that covers the entire stage and balancing a towering hairstyle, Milo recreates Nannerl's isolation world, in which her genius was devalued because of her gender.  "Most female composers from the past have been forgotten, their music lost or gathering dust in libraries," Milo says.  "We will never know what could have been, and this is our loss."

COMMENT

    Again, the dusty library.  Sylvia Milo (playwright, actor and producer of a one-woman show about the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus), cites metaphorical library dust to say that music by women composers is not being performed, but the dust also offers a bit of hope. The article says, "we know she continued to create music, though none of it survives."  Imagine the excitement if someone actually were to discover Nannerl's music in some dusty library.

  Lost manuscripts by W.A. Mozart still turn up occasionally. In 2014, a lost manuscript of Mozart's Sonata in A Major turned up at the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest, Hungary. In 2008 librarians in Nantes, France found a Mozart manuscript while they were cataloging the archives.  There really are some treasures hidden away gathering dust!



 

CDT Plans Show to Celebrate 50th

Scott Iwasaki, "CDT Plans Show to Celebrate 50th" Deseret News, April 4, 1999 [online].

Children's Dance Theatre artistic director Mary Ann Lee has a special place in her heart for a performance called "The Dancing Man." [1]
Lee found the book on which the performance is based the same year that CDT founder Virginia Tanner died."I came across the book when I was living in New Jersey," Lee said. "It was 1979. I remember being in a library and looking up. I saw this book. The title was one I just couldn't refuse. So I reached up and opened it."
The Children's Dance Theatre, in celebration of its 50th anniversary will present an all new production of "The Dancing Man," along with Jayne Luke's "Dance Journeys . . . Life Journeys," Chara Huckins' "Flight" and Jacque Lynn Bell's "Go," Thursday through Saturday, April 8-10, in the Capitol Theatre.

 
COMMENT

 One common way that people find library books is through browsing and serendipity.  The Virginia Tanner dance program often uses storybooks as a way to teach children interpretative motion.  The teacher reads a story and encourages children to dance out the action or the mood of the story.  In this instance the book inspired the annual dance program of the Children's Dance Theatre, a professional company of child dancers.  "The Dancing Man" was chosen to celbrate both the 50th and 70th Anniversaries of the company.  Although Lee was probablin in the library looking for approprate
juvenile books to use for dance teaching, that's still a pretty amazing influence for a book picked up at random from a library shelf. 

[1] Ruth Lercher Bornstein, "The Dancing Man," Clarion Books, 1975.

Mythical Dangers of Democratic Socialism

Tom Huckin, "Mythical Dangers of Democratic Socialism," Salt Lake Tribune, February 26, 2019, p,. A11.

     Sometimes we go to the downtown library to enjoy an art exhibit, hear a public lecture, borrow books and videos, etc. Oddly enough, the only thing we pay for is parking.
     I belong to a civic group called Move to Amend that aims to get Big Money out of our corrupt political system and thereby have real democracy in this country.  Guess where we hold our monthly meetings. Yep, in that same (socialist) library!

COMMENT

   Huckin is not quite accurate when he writes that he doesn't pay for the library.  I use the same public library system he does and there is a line item in my property taxes,  It costs me less than $100/year.  Still, Huckin makes his point that all the services he gets from the library are a terrific bargain.

     One of those services is a meeting room.  There is nice symmetry in the fact that the tax-supported library in turn supports civic engagement and a democratic system.   Huckin's description of library use is exactly the kind of social infrastructure that sociologist Eric Klinenberg writes about in Palaces for the People (2018), which are essential to the civic life and resilience of communities.  Nonetheless, politicians often look upon libraries as luxuries.  Klinenberg asks,

Why have so many public officials and civic leaders failed to recognize the value of libraries and their role in our social infrastructure?  Perhaps it's because the founding principle behind the library -- that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage, which they can use to any end they see fit -- is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our time. (If, today, the library didn't already exist, it's hard to imagine our society's leaders inventing it).  [p.37]

     Indeed, on the same op-ed page as Huckin's editorial, Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT-2) announces that he has organized an Anti-Socialist Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Stewart's editorial is pure nonsense, making an utterly absurd claim that offering a few government services to citizens will inevitably end in mass graves, mass emigration and starvation (Pay no attention to those socialist Nordic countries).
 
    But Stewart's nonsense shows that Klinenberg is probably right.  If libraries did not exist, dogmatic anti-tax zealots like Stewart would never allow them to exit.  No doubt they would gripe about the unfairness of  being forced to buy books, and support art and meeting spaces that harm "individual liberty" for people who choose not to read, look at art, educate themselves or vote. It's hard to say, though, what kind of freedom is actually represented by social, cultural and political isolation. As Huckin points out, the republic that Stewart claims to admire can't hold together without supporting the public infrastructure that Stewart claims to despise.

   

There's Nazi Loot on the Shelves, Too.

Milton Esterow. There's Nazi Loot on the Shelves, Too: Art Gets More Attention, but Millions of Stolen Books Have Yet to be Returned. New York Times,  Jan. 15, 2019, C1, 3.

    "People have looked away for so long," said Anders Rydell, author of "The Book Theives: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance," "but I don't think they can any more."
...

     In the last 10 years, for example, libraries in Germany and Austria have returned about 30,0000 books to 600 owners, heirs and institutions, according to researchers.

..... 

     Ms. Grimsted's work in tracking the lost volumes has advanced considerably since 1990, when she discovered 10 lists of items looted from libraries in France by the Einsatzastab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a task force headed by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg.  The task force plundered more than 6,000 libraries and archives all over Europe but left behind detailed recoreds that have proved invaluable in tracing what was stolen.
...
     The Nazi targets were mainly the families, libraries and institutions of Jews but also included the Masons, Catholics, Communists, Socialists, Slavs and critics of the Nazi regime. Though libraries were destroyed and some books were burned by the Nazis early on, they later came to transfer many of the worlds to libraries and to the Institute for  Study of the Jewish Question, which was established by the task force in Frankfurt in 1941.
     "They hoped to utilize the books after the war was won to study their enemies and their culture so as to protect future Nazis from the Jews who were their enemies," Ms. Grimsted said. 

COMMENT

    Everyone associates Nazis with art-theft and book burning, so it's a bit surprising to learn that they were also building libraries of stolen books, albeit with nefarious purpose.  The intent to weaponize cultural information is a truly dark side of diverse collections.  In other library anecdotes, collection diversity is is a purely good thing, essential for library patrons seeking self-knowledge and a sense of identity.

    It's not entirely clear from the article whether the primary value of returning the stolen books lies in their rarity, their information content, or in symbolic restorative justice.   According to researcher Patricia Grimsted,  Nazis looted the books specifically because of the way the information represented the specific communities they came from.  One of the books returned to heirs is described as "an important 16th century volume," but another is a "children's activity book."  Whatever their monetary value, it's clear that both books had deep value to the people who received them.

   So it seems that the sense of identity is still represented in the looted collections, even when they represent identities lost to war and genocide.  There is a conundrum that the libraries should have copies of these works, but at the same time, the way these particular copies came into the library collections is monstrous and unacceptable.  The article does not say if there is any effort for libraries to purchase replacement copies of the returned books.  However, it seems like after the books are returned, building collections to tell the history of those Jews, Masons, Catholics, Communists, Slavs and political activists would be another form of restorative justice.

   

Can't. Just. Stop.

 

Sharon Begley, Can't. Just. Stop.: An Investigation of Compulsions, Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Although I mercilessly cull old clothing, papers and even books (donating them to the local library), I keep these things, and a few others, because they connect me to people and times I will never see again. They are little tiles in the mosaic of personal identity. Our stuff expands that identity, deepens the meaning of our lives, provides security, and attaches us to our own past as well as to a world beyond ourselves. [p. 203]

COMMENT

   This library anecdote comes from a chapter on Compulsive Hoarding.  The word "bibliomania" specifically refers to book hoarding.  Hoarding is driven not so much by greed for stuff as by an ability to imagine something potentially useful in each hoarded object.  Begley describes one Victorian bibliomaniac, Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), who was driven by anxiety at seeing the destruction of books dismantled for their gold inlays.  In his old age, Phillipps wanted to sell his collection to the British national library, but the librarians were not interested. Ironically, the immense hoarded collection did, in fact, save books that would otherwise have been lost or destroyed.  Some of these books eventually ended up in libraries and archives.

    The emotional value of books is something some librarians refuse to take seriously.  Begley describes how she hangs on to certain sentimental objects from the past, but is able to let go books go since they are going to support a good cause (the library).  In Carbon Ideologies Vol. II, William Vollmann writes "Of all things I owned I valued most my books.  I hoped that someone would use them after me." [p. 629]

   In another blog post (What to Do With the Stuff That's Cluttering Your Home) I talk about a library administrator who thought the library booksale was "inefficient."  This man openly mocked the emotional and sentimental attachment that people have to books, and fairly often the literature of librarianship similarly ridicules love of books, particularly when people object to weeding projects.  These librarians are surprised and offended when their patrons oppose throwing out books of little value in order to make space for things that are likely to be used more often.  They accuse patrons who oppose weeding of being, essentially, hoarders.  Yet the fact that something has seen little use in the past says nothing at all about its value in the future.  One recurring library anecdote tells of discovering hidden treasure in dusty stacks.  When the dusty stacks are thrown away, the hidden treasure goes with them.

     The problem as I see it is that typical library weeding policies define only what is bad and valueless, but not what is good and worth keeping. Denigrating whole shelves of books as worthless actually is offensive to anyone who values literacy, scholarship and education.  On the other hand, a policy that described how to find and save hidden treasures would go a long way towards reassuring people that librarians are making honest and well-considered decisions about how to clear out the clutter.