(By Ann Patchett, Parade Magazine, 12 April 2014)
As we celebrate National Library Week, Ann
Patchett reflects on the modest spaces where she discovered a passion for
reading. Her essay is excerpted from The Public Library by Robert Dawson—a photo survey of these
vital institutions across the country.
Had I grown up down the street from the
New York Public Library, I might have thought that libraries were defined by
the size of their lions. If some of my earliest memories had been of Harvard’s
Widener Library, I could have believed that sweeping murals by John Singer
Sargent were baseline. But I attended a small Catholic girls’ school in
Nashville, where our tiny library consisted of two rows of bookshelves, one on
either side of the short hall between the classrooms and the nuns’ dining room.
At the end of the bookshelves, Joanne Baily sat at a small table. Mrs. Baily
was a mother who volunteered to help children find the book they might not know
they were looking for.
Just about the time I read Betty Smith’s A
Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I advanced to the upper school across the parking
lot. The library there was a big step up. The books were kept in their own
small room. I remember wanting to check out Robert Nathan’s Portrait of Jennie
because it looked romantic, but at the circulation desk I was denied. Sister
Bonaventure, taking a long look at the cover (a painting of a girl looking
vaguely pensive), deemed the book inappropriate. I went back for another novel,
and then another, and every time was instructed to reshelve my selection. I
finally decided that Sister Bonaventure did not approve of fiction. Testing my
theory, I brought several books of poetry to the checkout and sailed through.
That was how I came to start reading T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats and Sylvia Plath
in seventh grade.
So while I went on in life to be deeply
impressed by the Philadelphia Free Library and the Los Angeles County Public
Library and our own stunning Nashville Public Library, my idea of what a
library is remains simple: a collection of books, however many or few, that are
loaned out and gathered back. We may
never have full equality in our legal system, or our schools, but in our
libraries there is parity: All are welcome, all books are free, and, if you can
wait a little while, all books are available.
These days, with the advent of the interlibrary loan system, that
includes just about any book you might want. The one-room structure in rural
Kansas is as rich in books as the aforementioned Widener.
Of course, my book-centric view of
libraries could easily be seen as dated. Libraries have considerably more than
books to manage these days. So why, in a time when libraries also serve as
computer centers, senior centers, teen centers, classrooms, and homeless
shelters, is there so much speculation that they’ve become irrelevant? In 1897 Mark Twain wrote a note to a friend
that read, “James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or
three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out
of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration.” Like James Ross Clemens, the book industry
has endured a serious illness. The advent of ebooks caused a great deal of
panic. But books, ever tenacious, have made a strong recovery. It is my belief
that the publishing industry’s illness brought about the notion that libraries
were on their last leg. Libraries, like Twain himself, had never been sick in
the first place.
So, if you are fortunate enough to buy
your own books, and you have your own computer, and you’re not in search of a
story hour for your kids, then don’t forget about the members of your community
who perhaps lack your resources—the ones who love to read, who long to learn,
who need a place to sit and think. Make sure you remember to support their
quest for a better life. That’s what a library promises us, after all: A better
life. And that’s what libraries have delivered.
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