Gonzalo Barr

Ray Bradbury was born in 1920 and graduated from high school in 1938, bringing to an end his formal education.  From then on, he read books and magazines in public libraries and newsstands.  A library, this time at UCLA, was also the place where he wrote his most famous novel, Fahrenheit 451.  He sat for nine-hour sessions before a commercial typewriter that cost him a dime to use for thirty minutes.  “You thrust your dime in, the clock ticked madly, and you typed wildly, to finish before the half hour ran out.” It cost him USD 9.80 to type the 25,000-word manuscript that he entitled, “The Fireman.”  The novella was first published in Galaxy magazine in 1950.  Soon after, Ballantine Books asked him to add another 25,000 words for publication as a book.  Bradbury did that and renamed it, Fahrenheit 451.

Like other autodidacts, Bradbury is suspicious of schooling.  Moreover, he does not believe that writing fiction can be taught.

INTERVIEWER
You’re self-educated, aren’t you?

BRADBURY
Yes, I am. I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library.  […] I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.

INTERVIEWER
You have said that you don’t believe in going to college to learn to write. Why is that?

BRADBURY
You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.

Photo:  Ray Bradbury (1975), photo by Alan Light, from the article about Ray Bradbury, Wikipedia; Sources: Stephanie Harnett, “Ray Bradbury, on Fellini and the bag of dimes it took to write ‘Farenheit 451,’” Los Angeles Times (Apr. 26, 2009)(accessed May 19, 2010), Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (50th Anniversary Edition), “Afterword,” at 168, Sam Weller, “Ray Bradbury: The Art of Fiction No. 203,” The Paris Review, Spring 2010 (accessed May 19 2010)

Theaters, libraries, churches, concerts, driving on the Interstate or a main road or residential street, backing out of a parking space, pulling into a parking space, in line at the supermarket, paying the cashier, at a bank teller window, in a bathroom stall, before a urinal, in a physician’s consult, sitting in a dentist’s chair (yes, let me repeat that one — sitting in a dentist’s chair)…all these situations have one thing in common.

I’ll give you time to think of the answer.  Meanwhile, here’s some thinking music –

Did you figure it out?They are all situations in which you should not use your cell phone because doing so is a menace to the safety of others or because it is rude and inconsiderate to do so.

You may have already noticed that there are people in this world who can’t resist the cell phone.  They can’t turn it off for fear of missing that life-changing call.  And once it rings, they must answer it, no matter what they’re doing –

Recently I posted a clip about a library ninja who silences a cell phone user by breaking his neck.  One month before that, I posted about a government bureaucrat in the UK who thinks that allowing people to use cell phones in public libraries is one way to make the libraries more people-friendly.  The ninja librarian is fictitious; the government bureaucrat, alas, is not.  In his bureaucratic mind, the ultimate goal of a public library is to increase the number of people who use it, “use” being defined broadly by activities other than reading and looking up books.  A quiet, well-lighted place that fosters contemplation isn’t enough for people like that, which is why he would like to introduce coffee shops, video games, and permit the use of cell phones.

The fact is that public libraries, at least in this part of the world, have all but ceased being a place for quiet reading and studying and morphed into “community centers” and day-care centers.  About the only place you can find a “quiet library” is in a commercial, like this one –

In the real world, they have all but disappeared.There is nothing wrong with cell phones per se  They’re appliances, like dishwashers, cars, stereos.  It is people who use them inappropriately who are the problem.  More specifically, it is the lack of common courtesy, if not common sense, in some people that makes it necessary for some institutions to produce videos like this one –

The underlying message of the video producers is, “Just because you’re smart enough to be admitted to this university, doesn’t mean you have any common sense.”For those people, we need clear and simple (very simple) rules that are applied equally and with no exceptions.  The library (from the Latin word for “book,” incidentally) is a place to read.  Most people cannot read when someone nearby is carrying on a conversation, whether on a cell phone or not.  Which is why libraries are quiet zones.  Noise renders a library unusable for the very purpose it was created in the first place.  When will people get this little fact straight?

A person who yacks on his cell phone in a theater, library, church, while driving or at any time in the long list of other situations I mentioned, is an obliviot.  He deserves whatever happens to him –

So enough already!

Librosfera dreams about having a guy like this in her library.

A post about a proposal to allow cell phones in public libraries and other really smart ideas that only government bureaucrats could entertain is here.

Borders may be having serious financial problems, but the idea the Border brothers first executed in their flagship store many years ago — of building a café in every bookstore — has spread beyond the big chains to the indies.  Now it threatens to metastasize to public libraries as well.

Previously, I posted about public libraries in the US and the trend toward making the newer ones community centers rather than proper libraries where people go to read books.  That phenomenon may soon not be limited to the US.  In the UK, the Secretary of State for Culture, Andy Burnham, believes libraries should be social places. The Independent reports –

People would be able to chat, drink coffee and watch videos in English libraries under a new government proposal, The Independent has learnt. Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture, will today launch a consultation on changing the face of libraries which he believes are out of touch.

Under the proposals, libraries could install coffee franchises, book shops and film centres. Noise bans will also be reviewed. Mr Burnham will tell the Public Library Authorities conference in Liverpool that libraries must “look beyond the bookcase and not sleepwalk into the era of the e-book”.

Did you read the part where it says, “Noise bans will be reviewed?” Isn’t noise something everyone wants? Aren’t there health benefits to sitting in a noisy room? Silence can be dangerous.  It invites thinking and we can’t have that. No sir. But wait, that’s not all –

In Camden, north London, the council will lift a ban on mobile phones in its libraries this month and users will be allowed to bring in snacks and drinks. The council is also considering providing computer games at its libraries.

In 1953, American science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, published Fahrenheit 451, about a society in the future where books are banned because they make people unhappy. Remember the brilliant 1966 film adaptation by François Truffaut? The opening credits are narrated using voice over. Not a word appears written on the screen because no one reads anymore. In the background are roofs and TV antennas shown in silhouette.

The easy view of the novel is that it is a cry against government censorship. But the book is not about that at all. It is about a society where people willingly give up literature for TV, where the government bans books in response to and not against the popular will. It is an oppressive regime, to be sure, but one the people themselves created.

Perhaps the future will not be as dour as Bradbury believed. After all, what’s so bad about a public library where you can buy a pastry, a double espresso, find a chair, and spend a few minutes chatting on your cell phone, oblivious to anything or anyone around you?

What’s so special about libraries that cell phones should not be allowed?  People already chat while driving, in the lavatory, having lunch “with” you, at the supermarket check-out line, in the movie theater, in the middle of class, during a bookstore reading, and soon they will be talking on airplanes at 37,000 feet –

“Hey, where are you? What are you doing? Nothin’ much. You? Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

On and on and on.

(Update Oct. 13, 2008):  This is one of the passages from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 that I was thinking about.  In this scene early in the novel, Beatty is in Montag’s house.  Montag is in bed, shaken after having witnessed a woman immolate herself with her books rather than have the firemen burn them.  Beatty is trying to talk Montag into returning to work by arguing for the system and their work as firemen whose job it is to burn books.  After all, books only make people unhappy, so Montag’s work as a firemen is a public service, according to Beatty –

“…If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), at 61

Source: Arifa Akbar, “‘Sombre’ libraries need chatter and coffee shops, minister says,” The Independent (Oct. 9, 2008), Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), at 61

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In a glowing article published by The Economist earlier this month, the magazine (or “paper,” as they like to call themselves) reported that the most happening place in Burns, Wyoming (pop. 285 in 2000) is the public library on Main Street.

According to the article, public libraries are doing very well in the US, in spite of the Internet. This is surprising because you can get pretty much anything you want online these days. It is also surprising because public libraries have long been morphing into places that have less to do with books and more to do with free daycare for young children.

First, what does “doing well” mean? According to The Economist, it means the number of books borrowed in a given period of time. The more books borrowed, the “better” the library is doing.  By this measure, Wyoming is one of the most “literate” states in the union.  For example, between 2005 and 2006, residents of Washington, DC borrowed an average of two books, Californians an average of five books, while Wyoming residents took home nine books.

Visit the public libraries of any major US metropolitan area and I would not fault you if you concluded that they are little more than outlets for pulp bestsellers, DVDs, and video games. I also would not fault you if you mistook the library for a community center.  Bingo, anyone?

The writer, Nicholson Baker, warned us years ago about the practice in some public libraries of disposing books and other paper media to make room for trendy electronics.  He blew the whistle on the San Francisco Public Library after they threw away thousands of books — just tossed them in the trash. (I recall a similar incident when I was in college: A resident of Morningside Heights in Manhattan, the neighborhood surrounding Columbia University, found numerous prints valued at thousands of dollars in a dumpster behind Butler Library, the university’s principal library.)  Baker has also reported on the practice at some public libraries to dispose of books that are not checked out for two years.  Any book that is on the shelves for circulation is flagged automatically once its been idle for 24 months.  In Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, Baker accused librarians of lying about the decay of books and being obsessed with technology at the expense of public and historical preservation.

It is emblematic, I think, that as libraries disposed of their books, the standard library sign was stripped of all words.

Next to go will be what looks like an open book being held in the hand of the figure.  Why advertise what you don’t have, no?

I used to think of the public library as a place where anyone could educate himself.  I realize that my view is as antiquated as sending a telegram or shaving with a straight blade.  We have email now and triple-blade disposable razors designed and manufactured with the kind precision that used to be the monopoly of NASA engineers.  Still, how “well” libraries are doing has to mean more than how many books are borrowed in any given period or even the number of books in the library. The Economist article reports that the Burns, Wyoming library has 11,500 books in a town with fewer than 300 people. Not bad, especially when the books they carry seem to be precisely the ones that the citizens of Burns want them to carry.  In a town that small, a library can be made-to-measure and should be, especially when it is funded by taxes.  In a large metropolitan area, though, libraries have to be more than community centers.  And at least some part of the budget needs to be reserved to build and keep a collection of great books that anyone can read in a quiet, clean, and well-lighted place.

Images: satellite view of Burns, Wyoming, Google, photo of library sign, Gonzalo Barr; Sources:  “Why Cowboys Read,” The Economist (Sept. 13-19, 2008), article on Burns, Wyoming, Wikipedia, article on Nicholson Baker, Wikipedia

Assume you read one book each day for the next 83 years. You would finish sometime in 2091. You would have also read your way through 30,000 books.

That’s the number of books in Alberto Manguel’s library, which he houses in a rebuilt barn next to a 15th-century presbytery in France. He accumulated his books over six decades, beginning in his childhood in Buenos Aires, where he was born in 1948, and in Tel Aviv, where his father was Argentine ambassador to Israel. –

One of my earliest memories — I must have been 2 or 3 at the time — is of a shelf full of books on the wall above my cot, from which my nurse would choose a bedtime story. This was my first library; when I learned to read by myself a year or so later, the shelf, transferred to safe ground level, became my private domain. I remember arranging and rearranging my books according to secret rules that I invented for myself: all the Golden Books series had to be grouped together, the fat collections of fairy tales were not allowed to touch the minuscule Beatrix Potters, stuffed animals were not permitted to sit on the same shelf as the books. I told myself that if these rules were upset, terrible things would happen. Superstition and the art of libraries are tightly entwined.

After living in many places, packing up his books each time he moved, after finding the right place to display them all, he describes his present and last library in the reconstructed barn –

The library as it now stands, between long walls whose stones carry in some places the signature of their 15th-century masons, houses the remnants of all those previous libraries, including, from my earliest one, the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers in two volumes, printed in somber Gothic script, and a scribbled-over copy of “The Tailor of Gloucester.” There are few books that a serious bibliophile would find worthy: an illuminated Bible from a 13-century German scriptorium (a gift from the novelist Yehuda Elberg), half a dozen contemporary artist’s books, a few first editions and signed copies. But I have neither the funds nor the knowledge to become a professional collector, and in my library, shiny young Penguins sit happily alongside severe-looking leather-bound patriarchs.

“I knew that once the books found their place,” Manguel writes, “I would find mine.”

The rest of Maguel’s essay is here.

Sources: Alberto Manguel, “A 30,000-Volume Window on the World,” New York Times (May 15, 2008), tabularasa blog, article on Alberto Manguel, Wikipedia