Libraries and librarians

The original Invisible Library disappeared from the Web in the mid-2000s (though you can still find snapshots of it in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine), and since then other pseudobibliophiles have opened their own “branches,” although these too have a tendency to end up abandoned. The novelists Ed Park and Levi Stahl created a catalog of imaginary titles that inspired an interactive exhibition at a London art gallery, but they have only occasionally updated it since 2008. Loss of interest is, perhaps, inevitable, since when you maintain such a list, tiresome people are constantly proclaiming their disappointed astonishment that their particular obscure favorite isn’t listed.

The pseudonymous Dr. Beachcomber would like to expand the Invisible Library to include fake books — that is, titles that don’t even exist in a fictional universe. They appear only on the spines of sham bookshelves used to disguise secret doors in exceptionally interesting houses. Charles Dickens had just such a door installed in his own study in London, with fake titles of his own devising, including “Socrates on Wedlock.”

Most such titles are jokes (“Cat’s Lives” in nine volumes, etc.), but then so are many of the celebrated holdings in the Invisible Library proper; if there’s one thing authors relish, it’s a chance to make fun of other authors. Hence, such immortal imaginary works as “Only a Factory Girl,” by Rosie M. Banks, a popular sentimental love story that often crops up in the fiction of P.G. Wodehouse; “The Industrious Muse: Narrativity and Contradiction in the Industrial Novel,” by Robin Penrose, in David Lodge’s academic satire, “Nice Work;” and “My Big Ol’ Feets Gon’ Stomp Dat Evil Down” by Isshee Ayam from Trey Ellis’ send-up of 1980 multiculturalism, “Platitudes.”

Who’d want to slog through those — let alone tackle another of Dickens’ japes, “History of a Short Chancery Suit” in 21 volumes? The vast majority of the Invisible Library is, let’s face it, better off not existing. The world does not need “Feeling GREAT,” by Ashley Tralpis, M.D., Ph.D. (from Jonathan Franzen’s “Corrections”). And if a reader learns anything from the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, it’s to stay well away from the “Necronomicon” of Abdul Alhazred, perhaps the most famous — and certainly the most infamous — imaginary book of all time.

Which raises an intriguing question: If allowed to choose only one, which volume in the Invisible Library would you most want to read?

Assuming that “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” counts as an imaginary book (seeing as it’s also a real book, by Douglas Adams), then it would surely have the longest list of patrons waiting to check it out at the Invisible Library’s front desk. Fans of the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño might opt for a masterpiece by Benno von Archimboldi, whose works captivate the characters in “2666.” Others would surely select something from the extensive imaginary works invented by Jorge Luis Borges — “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Ts’ui Pên, perhaps?

For myself, the choice is easy. I’d take “The Higher Common Sense” by the Abbé Fausse-Maigre, the indispensable philosophical handbook of Flora Poste, heroine of Stella Gibbons’ great comic novel, “Cold Comfort Farm” (1932). Flora, an admirer of Jane Austen, goes to live with the Starkadders, relations in the Sussex countryside, and finds herself plunged into a doom-laden agricultural milieu familiar to readers of the rural gothics popular at the time, overwrought “earthy” novels written in imitation of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence.

Armed with the insights of the Abbé (I like to think of him as a more avuncular version of Montaigne), Flora tidies up the seemingly intractable messes at Cold Comfort Farm, from dispatching the hellfire-and-brimstone paterfamilias on a missionary road trip to shipping her oversexed cousin Seth off to Hollywood and imparting romantic and contraceptive advice to the local girls. At every turn, “The Higher Common Sense” provides her with a sound footing to tackle any challenge, including the most formidable of all — Aunt Ada Doom, who refuses to leave her room on account of the shock she incurred as a girl upon witnessing “something nasty in the woodshed.”

In times of trial and confusion, one can’t help but long for a copy of this invaluable imaginary volume. Readers who’d make a different choice if offered a single checkout from the Invisible Library are invited to leave their thoughts in the comments thread.

Further reading

Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog’s extensive postings on imaginary books and invisible libraries

The Invisible Library blog by Ed Park and Levi Stahl

Poets & Writers magazine on the Invisible Library exhibition at Tenderpixel Gallery in London in 2009

The Malibu Lake Branch of the Invisible Library, with links to other branches

Some would also say that it’s a superfluous part. Public libraries across the nation and the globe now face drastic funding cuts from politicians and administrators who often claim that they’re obsolete. For months, Britain has been rumbling with protests against plans to close as many as 400 local branches. Earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he was cutting all state funding to California’s libraries, leaving cities to pick up the slack. Defenders of such cutbacks typically ask why, in the age of Google and e-reader devices, anybody needs libraries.

Let’s set aside the obvious rejoinder that many citizens can’t afford e-readers and, furthermore, can only access Google via a library computer. The anniversary of the NYPL’s main building is an occasion to talk about why the library needs to be a place as well as an ethereal mass of data residing somewhere in “the cloud.” Not everything we need or want to know about the world can be transmitted via a screen, and not every experience can be digitized.

Also, not everything a library collects is a scannable book or document. The NYPL’s anniversary exhibit includes such treasures of print culture as a Gutenberg Bible, a copy of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, and a first quarto edition of “King Lear.” It also features the personal effects of writers, such as Jack Kerouac’s rolling papers, harmonica and Valium box (with notes scribbled on it):

Charlotte Brontë’s writing desk:

Charles Dickens’ letter opener (with the paw of his beloved cat Bob preserved as the handle):

There’s even a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair:

I’ve always found the material presence of such objects quietly thrilling. They remind me that literary figures, who sometimes seem so Olympian, also muddle through an ordinary human existence like all the rest of us. Other gems in the NYPL exhibit simply don’t translate well to the screen. You really have to see the enormous pages of an actual edition of James Audubon’s “Birds of America” in person to fully grasp its magnificence. The same goes for the library’s illustrated scroll of Lady Murasaki’s “The Tale of Genji,” sometimes described as the first novel, but certainly the single most beautiful “book” I have ever laid eyes on.

Those items are priceless, but what about a small folding pamphlet titled “What to Do If You’re Arrested,” distributed in the bad old days of the 1960s by the gay-rights organization the Mattachine Society and just the size to fit discreetly into a back pocket? Or the underground anti-Nazi propaganda tracts from 1939, complete with the tomato seed and tea packets they were originally concealed inside? The exhibit includes copies of anti-Semitic German children’s books published around the same time and a collection of lapel buttons from the civil rights era.

Unlike the Dickens and Brontë memorabilia, which could just as easily be enshrined elsewhere, these are once-mundane objects you’d never find in a museum, but they’re an important part of our written culture and well worth saving. The library collects millions of such items — things, and to store and properly display things, you need a place in the world (preferably climate controlled), not just bytes in the cloud. Every human community creates such materials, and they all need libraries to preserve them.

In a smaller side room, there’s also an exhibit of books researched and written in the main branch itself — one of the most famous is Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” The NYPL runs several programs providing research assistance, grants and work space for qualifying writers, but as any bookish New Yorker (and many visitors) can testify, the Adam R. Rose Main Reading Room makes itself available to everyone. There’s something about that vast, serene, light-filled space, with its monumental oak tables and brass lamps, that steadies and focuses the most jittery mind. When I’m finding it hard to work anywhere, I can always work there.

Today, those oak tables have power outlets and more than half the patrons are tapping on laptops. Yes, they have laptops and yet they’ve come to the library. Librarians (who are of course the most invaluable feature of any library) tend to bristle at the stereotype of their profession as a glorified shush patrol, and typically respond by pointing out the many, many community services libraries provide, from storytelling for children to multimedia resource centers for job seekers to gathering places for seniors. But let’s not totally discount the shushing, because a good library can also give its patrons something that’s getting harder and harder to find: quiet.

The Rose Reading Room is an exceptional place, but even the humblest branch library can provide the same precious resource to its patrons. There’s nothing “elite” about needing some tranquility, either: If anything, the poorer and younger you are, the harder it is to find a quiet spot to read, write and think, where family isn’t crowding around and countless electronic devices aren’t blaring at you from every corner. Access to a little peace and quiet is as essential to a humane society as access to parks and art. That’s not something the Internet is ever going to be able to give us. It can only be found in a real, not a virtual, place, which is what libraries have always been and what we all still need them to be.

Further reading:

The New York Public Library’s web site

Web site for the centennial celebration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building