Public Library and Other Stories

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Here’s a stanza from a poem by Jackie Kay called ‘Dear Library’, and this part I’m quoting is based on what her father, John Kay, said when she asked him what he thought about the public library system:

I treasure your lively silence; your very pleasant librarians.

They represent what a public service is truly, libertarian.

Impossible, did I say that already, to put a price on that. Again,

Stop me if I am repeating myself, your staff will tell

Me of a Saramago Street in a nearby town.

Browse, borrow, request, renew — lovely words to me.

A library card in your hand is your democracy.

Anna Ridley sent me this:

The local library of the Cumbrian market town where I lived provided plenty to satisfy my curiosity when I was growing up, with well-stocked children’s and young adult sections. As I became a teenager, though, I needed more. Having experimented with Nietzsche, I got it into my mind I wanted to read the Marquis de Sade. I think I had read an interview with a musician in the NME who namechecked him or something. Finding nothing on the shelf, the kindly librarian, who had known me since I was born, checked the database. The only book that came up was Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised, which wasn’t stocked in any of the local libraries, or even the city library — in fact there was only one copy in the whole county, and it was nearly ninety miles away. We filled out the request card and I waited. When the book arrived a few weeks later, it was a large hardback. I was alarmed as soon as I saw it — I can’t remember exactly what was on the jacket, but I do remember it worried me enough that I bundled it straight into my school bag, and once I got home I removed the dust jacket and hid it behind my wardrobe. And having skimmed through the book and got the gist of it, even now it looked unassuming without its jacket, I hid it in a pile of books under my bed. I’m not sure what horrified me the most — the thought of my mum finding it, or the idea that the librarian had known all along what she was letting me in for! I’d like to say that age thirteen I’d read it, but actually after a few furtive encounters I kept it hidden under my bed until I came up with a cowardly plan to return it to the anonymous book drop in the bigger city library ten miles away. It amuses me to think of the miles that well-thumbed book had travelled, satisfying the curiosity of readers around the county, enabled by the library system. Not long afterwards, I got a Saturday job in a brilliant second-hand bookshop, from which I could borrow whatever I liked, and was able to pursue my reading curiosity a bit less publicly.

This is what Clare Jennings told me:

For me libraries represent a serendipity of learning. It’s as if some internal compass draws you to areas which you never imagined visiting. At eighteen I started a degree in chemistry but didn’t feel entirely at home in the subject and found myself repeatedly gravitating towards the small philosophy section in the library. Before the first year was out I’d left to study philosophy instead. I really enjoyed studying philosophy and while there found myself drawn to the art section of the library and later completed a second degree in illustration. Libraries can definitely lead you astray in the best possible way.

Emma Wilson sent me this:

In Jacques Rivette’s 1974 film Céline and Julie Go Boating, Dominique Labourier plays a librarian. She has glasses as well as sexy shoes. This is a French library. You can smoke (discreetly). The librarians read the Tarot cards behind the desk with its stacked, ordered card index system. Juliet Berto, a magician, sits hiding behind a large size Bécassine picture book. The film plays in a Surrealist arcane. Its signs and titles point out to the streets of Montmartre.

In my local library in England when I was a child one of the librarians was French. I loved her. She made me feel she was intent just on me. Choosing books each week was like laying out the dreams I could have. I remember that beautiful moment of transition to borrowing from the adult section, the wider fan of cards, the longer shelves, a stretch of titles. And in that local library then, here in England, in the 1970s, there were books in French, lots of them, a whole case. I remember seeing the white and cream spines, the foreign words, lavish sentences, Colette, Duras.

I learnt to read those French books. In the library. Here in England.

Here’s what Emily Wainwright and Lori Beck said:

Public libraries allow us to explore the self or the desired self in many forms

&

The only way I can express how important public libraries are is to tell you about myself.

And Natalie Williams sent me the following:

Once a week, on a Tuesday, a pale blue van would pull up outside the Post Office in the Dorset village I grew up in. The driver/librarian sitting behind her desk; the smell of slightly old and battered books in their plastic cases, the glue in their spines, the stamps in their inner sleeves. Four or so books every week, dutifully read and returned to the pale blue van on a Tuesday. It served as a precursor to when I was a little older and spent inordinate amounts of time at the Dorchester Library, which allowed a spectacular twelve withdrawals and had a brilliant biography and music section. I should add that we had plenty of books at home, but there was something about this weekly ritual that fuelled my love of books. I still have plenty of books at home, and I still sign up to my local library, regardless of where I am in the world.