Bookless Readers, Readerless Books

I love libraries. I have spent years of my life in them, both public and university, more than in churches, theaters and taverns combined. Libraries are democracy’s finest flowering, the enduring legacy of Franklin and Jefferson, a living reproach to ignorance and censorship, an antidote to boredom, an incentive to dwell in imagination and live the life of the mind.

Almost two years ago, my wife and I and our sons visited the Houston Public Library and got our library cards the day after we moved from New York to Texas. That eased the transition. I like to know where I can get the books I need and who is taking care of them. Now that sense of solace is challenged by one of modernity’s usual suspects – progress. The library has launched a $14.9 million renovation of its central downtown building. Last week, the library closed two of its four floors normally open to the public. Books from major portions of the collection – arts, science, social sciences, business – can no longer be browsed. Rather, we must request specific titles from already overworked librarians. The wait can be considerable and the happy inspiration of serendipity is erased. This is especially unfortunate for young people just learning the joy of randomly discovering books on the shelf. When I was 13, that’s how I stumbled upon John Updike’s Pigeon Feathers, in a suburban Cleveland library. After more than 40 years, it remains one of his best books.

Cutting off direct access to part of the collection compounds a problem that already existed at the main Houston library. Many books, especially older titles (older than a decade or so, that is), are placed in “Stacks”; that is, they are shelved on floors without public access. The thinking seems to be, if we have limited space let’s devote it to new books, not good, important, enduring or useful books. If I want to read Samuel Beckett’s fiction, or Anthony Powell’s, or Ford Madox Ford’s, or Laurence Sterne’s, or Ivan Turgenev's, or Christina Stead's, or Henry Green's, I must ask a librarian to fetch it for me. These authors and thousands of others are effectively banished from the hands of many readers, especially those unaware of their existence or inexperienced in the mysteries of the library and its cataloging system.

The entire central library will close on April 3, “and is expected to reopen by the end of 2007,” according to the carefully hedged language of a library press release. “For full library service during the renovation, library customers are encouraged to use their neighborhood libraries.” There are 36 such branch libraries in the city, all with small collections weighted toward the new and popular. Again, I don’t want to mislead: I will still be able to get the books I wish to read, but that will take more time and I will receive only the specific titles I request, nothing discovered by random good fortune. Interlibrary loan will remain, and it is a blessing. The Houston library has located books for me from collections as far away as Indiana and Arizona, as well as cities and universities all over Texas.

“Improvements and changes will be made to public services, creating a better library experience,” the press release assures us. There’s no mention in it of more books being added to the collection, which would seem to be a library’s principal obligation. Rather, not surprisingly, most of the money will be spent providing patrons with “access to state of the art technology.” Translation: More computers in a library where most computer screens, based on my frequent observation, are occupied by solitaire and other games, not scholarship. In addition, money will be spent to move a sculpture now displayed on the plaza in front of the library – Claes Oldenburg’s iron bric-a-brac, “Geometric Mouse X” – down the block “where it will be more prominent.” How I wish an army of art critics with cutting torches would make it less prominent.

Consider Thoreau’s words in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:

“When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not truly cumulative treasure, where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is, I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! That so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole.”

Only figuratively is the Houston Public Library a dust-hole, though that’s the sense Thoreau intends. Books without readers are merely potential books, and readers without books are unhappy people. It’s going to be a long 21 months.