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Front Cover & Inside Back Cover |
In 1986 the Central Library in downtown LA burned for seven hours with more than a million books damaged or destroyed.
The suspected arsonist was a likeable fellow and would-be actor, as well as an inveterate liar who never told the same alibi twice. The evidence against him was circumstantial and he was never convicted.
But true-crime is just one aspect of this marvellous book. Author Susan Orlean has found a rich source of material, including the evolution of libraries from horseback delivery to "nonphysical books," and the many other tasks that libraries take on today, particularly social ones.
"Often at the library," she writes, "society's problems are magnified." Particularly homelessness, drug use, and mental illness. "The library's commitment of being open to all is an overwhelming challenge," and not only in large urban centres.
The library, she observes, "is a good place to soften solitude."
Goings On at the Library
The
strange concept of air rights, which the LAPL sold for $28 million in
order to finance the rebuilding of the Central Library.
Movie
studios in LA used to send people into the library to steal books for
research purposes. One person would go inside, gather what was
needed, and toss them out a window to an accomplice waiting below.
The library's network is often hacked, mostly by people based in China or Russia, but why? What is there to be gained? A staff member says it's because the library is a relatively easy target for hackers still learning their trade. It's a training exercise.
"People
searching for missing loved ones sometimes scribbled messages in
library books with the hope that the person they were looking for
would see the message."
Drug
dealers coming into the library for help with their income tax forms
A woman who made $40K a year selling books pinched from libraries,
A patron with a service wolf, and another who said on being told that eating was now allowed, "I'm not eating, I'm snacking."
Back to the Fire
The fire was so fierce that it resulted in something called a stoichiometric condition, a rare combination of fuel and oxygen almost impossible to achieve outside a laboratory.
"Usually a fire is red and orange and black. The fire in the library was colorless. You could look right through it, as if it were a sheet of glass. Where the flame had any color, it was pale blue. It was so hot it appeared icy."
The temperature rose to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, approaching a situation called a flashover, in which everything becomes so hot it achieves spontaneous combustion.
One of the most unnerving things that Orlean mentions is that some firefighters are arsonists.
Random Thoughts
Most readers will have fond memories of libraries. I remember as a child looking for books about Freddy the Pig, and the excitement of my own children when many years I took them to the same library looking for titles in the Redwall series by Brian Jaques.
My mother-in-law was a librarian whose sole failing, as her daughters wrote in her obituary, was "the inability to cram more books into her library." One of her chief pleasures was sending books to her grandchildren for Xmas and birthdays.
I've been fortunate to work in a number of libraries -- providing technical support, giving computer tutorials, setting up Wi-Fi hotspots, and on one occasion writing a small program to automatically shut down computers at closing time because librarians were having trouble prying patrons away from them.
Books are important because they allow us to transcend our own fragile existence.
This is why I read. This is why I write.
