Macon Branch, Brooklyn Public Library, Bed-Stuy
The local public library in my neighborhood is a quaint little building called the
Macon Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. The building is among the many thousands of
Carnegie Libraries built by the famed steel industrialist in the early 20th century. No matter from which direction you approach the building, it's elevations command respect. There was a time in America where people believed places like courthouses, schools, post offices and libraries were places that deserved distinction from other buildings. They gave such buildings Doric columns, broad staircases and other flourishes, harking back to the Greek and Roman ways of building. Our little neighborhood library shares a bit of that. When you see the building, one thinks "herein lies something important."
The building retains a great deal of what Carnegie provided for in his philanthropy. After a recent renovation, the oak paneling and massive fireplace have all been preserved very well. Carefully designed alcoves and great clerestory windows allowing for natural light face south and west, capturing the fullness of the daylight. There is a small mezzanine inside and basement space down below. On the walls, there are pictures of past times in this library, with black-and-white photos showing young African-American faces from the 1940s and 1950s. There is a beautiful Black history room dedicated to one of the library's long-time local neighborhood matrons. Like any public library these days, there are a great deal of computers available for public use. Twenty of them. Recently, even more have arrived in the form of laptops that have been provided with funds from President Obama's Recovery Act. What you will find very little of, ironically, is actual books.
Now before you Kindle-lovers or early-adopters begin calling me a Luddite or a sentimentalist, let me state for the record that I too love my Kindle. Hell, I'm writing here, at the great orange destroyer of news magazines. I'm not advocating here for a resurgence in newspaper reading or paperback buying. But, I will say that something is being lost in our rush toward the digital age. Something intangible, perhaps never to be found again. Perhaps transforming into something new and unknown. Perhaps we will look back on the places where we collected books and think they were as quaint and useless as the monasteries that kept vaults of scrolls before the advent of the printing press and movable type. But even then, much as the art of calligraphy and the divine beauty of illuminated writing were lost in the march of democratic printed book, I feel we are losing things as we say goodbye to the printed word.
I've loved books all my life. Especially encyclopedias. My father bought me my first one, a used World Book set from 1970 that I was given in 1982. I believe he may have bought them at a yard sale for they smelled of mildew and dust. Hours and hours and hours would I spend looking at pictures and reading articles. I learned about all the presidents (up to Nixon), and all about animals, and foreign countries and the various sciences. I never knew what to look up. The books were just sort of there for the inquiring. I'd pick up the letter J and just read. But because my encyclopedias were so old, if I wanted new information, I knew I had to go where any poor boy from Brooklyn could go and get some up-to-date knowledge: the public library. There, they had a brand-spanking new Britannica! It was always my dream to own a set. Big, leather-bound, beautiful, and chock full of knowledge in depth. I'd grab one and then find a quiet corner of the library and read. Searching for quiet corners usually brought me down aisles where I'd notice something on the shelf. I may not have read my Britannica at all, having found something that caught my fancy and gotten lost in it. What I am getting at here is that one of the problems I have with my Kindle is that I don't know what I want to read. I want to browse, but not according to some algorithm of what my preferences ought to be. I can't search, because I don't know what I'm searching for. I cannot put my finger on what I am describing here, but it has something to with the loss of good luck. Or the randomness of accidents. Somehow, browsing books on Kindle makes me feel like I'm missing something that would be remedied by wandering through a library. That's why I go to the Macon Branch.
In the mid 1990s, I used to visit a bookstore in Atlanta whenever I got some block leave from Camp Lejeune. The place was called Oxford Books in Buckhead on what was then Pharr Road. I'm sure some of you Atlanta people remember it. A fascinating, wonderful place to buy books, it nevertheless closed sometime in the 1990s, having lost against the big box bookseller and Amazon competition coupled with some bad management. It was another place where I could wander around discovering things without feeling like I was being heavily marketed to ... which is how Barnes & Noble feels. Well, there was one occasion where I happened to be reading a book about management and a great commotion ensued. There was some noise and then an announcement that someone important was coming. Naturally, I was interested. As I moved into the small crowd, I happened to end up standing face to face with none other than Rep. Newt Gingrich, the recently elected Speaker of the House. He had come to sign his latest book To Renew America. He was shaking hands and saw me in my BDU's and thanked me and whatnot. Shook my hand. Good handshake, but I remember being taken aback by how bad his complexion was. TV works wonders. He saw the book in my hand and told me that he had read it and that I would really enjoy it. That book was Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming. That, my friends, is the full extent of my contact with Newt Gingrich. In any case, coming into contact with other people is one of the wonderful things about public spaces. Having to, on some level, interact with other humans. I could be wrong, and I probably am, but I do feel like there is something not quite as satisfying when I download a book and see only my own flat screen. I don't think I'll ever recount the day I downloaded On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, a book I distinctly remember discovering in a public library at age 13 when a schoolmate of mine tossed it at me and said, "Read it." Even though I downloaded it recently, I can't remember a thing about it. Something is being lost here, although I can't quite put my finger on what it is. I suspect it has something to do with gathering memories for the purpose of telling stories. Storytelling.
Going to my little library was quite an experience. I found a book. I hope I love it. But it did disturb me to see so many people looking so deeply into their screens and ignoring the books, the quiet alcoves, and each other. In fact, I noticed that many of the screens on the computers have these privacy guards so that the person next to you can't see what book you're reading. Wait, I shouldn't be sarcastic. That happens to me with my Kindle on the subway too. That too reminds me of something else that is being lost because no matter what I'm reading on my Kindle, it is terribly difficult to impress others on the subway like you can with a bookcover. I can't put my finger on what that is, but it has something to do with pride. It is disconcerting to enter a consumer marketplace like Barnes & Noble and find people browsing books, contrasted with entering a stately public building and find people staring into consumer appliances.
Luck. Storytelling. Pride. All in one little building in my neighborhood, slowly slipping away.