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Some libraries harbor a ghastly phantom -- a woeful wraith of methane, mercaptan, hydrogen sulfide and aldehydes -- a shapeless specter of stink in the stacks.

You wander among the old, steel shelves and turn a corner -- looking for the M mysteries, perhaps. And there it is, proclaiming briefly that I HAD RED MEAT or Weeeee aaaaateeeee beeeeeaaaans!

Gaaah.

Now, it's in the nature of library stacks that if you aren't lined up exactly with them, you can't see what's down the aisles. It's as if you're entirely alone with the wisdom of the ages (if the ages be Rex Stout and Lilian Braun) as you poke around. From time to time you might hear someone move a book or rub a wet finger along the side of a balloon (why do people bring balloons into libraries? And where do they hide them?) but you never see anyone. Your neighbors have just nipped around the corner of the shelving, and they're out of sight. Maybe that's the temptation. Maybe the library is the errand everyone does right after lunch. Maybe it's a spirit of intestinal mischief that sets off little skyrockets of grossness.

Actually, I love old libraries. The one I grew up with has a 19th-century tin ceiling, dark wooden shelves and a lovely, paneled oak librarian's desk, all in a small space dominated by a picture of my hometown's namesake in his ancient navy uniform. I outgrew the kids section early and lingered for years in the tiny teen section, in the back corner where huge frosted-glass windows borrowed a little of the room's dim light for a work space behind them (and what a privilege, and what a disappointment it was to go through the dark passageway into that room as a young adult, only to find it mostly empty).

I thought the stacks in my college's 60-year-old library were fascinating -- they were all steel, with a warren of low, narrow passageways, dimly lighted, among the books. Clomping in and out among the racks, I became convinced that the floors were made of glass when I noticed that there seemed to be a light coming from below. The floors, in fact, seemed to be afterthoughts tacked onto the shelves, rising two or three stories into a gloomy old stone-and-brick barn. I spent a lot of time in there, looking for stuff and feebly studying at the tiny carrels.

The old storage system -- I have found it in public libraries, too -- is notable for something else. No ventilation. That's no doubt how I encountered the phantom, in a moment of disgust after taking a careless breath.

So, what are you going to say? All mammals do it -- Ronald Reagan once suggested we could blame global warming on cows. Perhaps it's not the principle so much as the unexpected, undesired intimacy it forces on you. The very movement of your passage dissipates the tasteless deed into the general effluvium of mildew, dust, old ink and paper that hangs about such places: There's nothing left to complain about.

One shudders to think of the condition of the older books, languishing untended on upper shelves and bathed for generations in, well, whatever is floating around.

But y'know, perhaps the unspeakable is thought of, if never mentioned. In my final year of college, 30 years ago, the school opened a gleaming new library; the next year I got to use the brand-new library at my graduate school, which was notable for its gray-and-purple color scheme and the plastic drawers in the card catalog. Downtown Cleveland boasts a dramatic new wing that strongly resembles a birthday cake stacked upon a cardboard box. My present hometown is about to renovate ITs main library (but that, heaven help us, is another tale.).

A conspicuous feature of all of them?

Massive ventilation.