The Library Book Read online

  By Davitz, Lois Jean

  S 372.1 D265

  Il Pianeta Degli Adolescenti: I Giovani D’oggi Spiegati Agli Adulti (1998)

  By Burbatti, Guido L.

  I 370.16 B946

  Dear Distant Dad [videorecording] (1992)

  VID 301.57 D2855

  The film Pleasantville is about two siblings who are trapped in a 1950s television show about a suburban town that seems perfect but is actually sexist and racist and oppressively conformist. The movie, released in 1998, was written, directed, and coproduced by Gary Ross, who was the president of the Board of Library Commissioners in Los Angeles from 1993 to 1996. When Pleasantville was released, Ross made the premiere of the film a benefit to help pay for a new, larger teen department. A corner on the second floor, previously used for the Music Department, was designed with a big circular communal desk and splashy graphics, beanbag chairs, and lots of nooks and crannies. You would not mistake it for any other part of the library. Teen’Scape was inaugurated in March 2000 with a party that featured an appearance by actor Anthony Stewart Head, who played the librarian on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  When I visited Teen’Scape recently, the librarian on duty was a slim, composed young woman named Mary McCoy who was wearing cat’s-eye glasses and a slightly choppy haircut. Before she became a librarian, McCoy played in punk bands. Punk rock’s loss was the library’s gain. McCoy gravitated to the teen department because she has an affinity for young people, and they are drawn to her. She is cool enough to be a confidante, but she isn’t a pushover. “I don’t let them get away with anything,” she said. “For instance, I saw kids here this morning, and I knew it was a school day, so I just gently asked why they weren’t in school.” It turned out school was in the middle of a lockdown drill, so they were killing time at the library. If they’d been cutting class, McCoy would have given them a not-so-gentle nudge back to school.

  Being a teen librarian is a slight misnomer. The librarians in the department view themselves as a hybrid of unofficial advice-givers, part-time disciplinarians, and homework coaches. They act in loco parentis for many kids who get scant parenting at home. “They’re my kids,” one of Teen’Scape’s librarians told me. The tug to parent them outside the walls of the library is mighty. “It’s a fine line,” McCoy said. “You mostly have to avoid it. But sometimes you act on your conscience. We had a girl here who was undocumented and really needed help. All the department librarians chipped in and bought her a bus pass and little things to help her.”

  Just then, a girl with black eyeliner winging skyward approached the desk holding a bag of Cheetos. “Are you allowed to eat in here if you’re not using the books?” she asked, looking anxious. McCoy said that eating wasn’t permitted. The girl sighed and then walked over to shelves of manga books, jiggling her Cheetos bag. Some kids will check out twenty or thirty manga books at a time. The manga bookshelves took up most of one wall and ended at a bulletin board covered by an illustrated poster that read: “Looking for Your First Job? What to Wear: Baseline Casual, Boardroom Attire. How to Tie a Regular Tie Knot.”

  The department used to fill with teenagers who came to use its computers. Now many of them have computers at home or can use their smartphones to go online. They still come to Teen’Scape, but these days they come to make use of the free printers, or just to hang out somewhere away from their parents. The department has thirty thousand books, scores of board games, the newest version of Guitar Hero, and other teenagers. As a result of that last offering, there is a fair amount of horsing around. The two things that McCoy finds herself saying the most often are “Hey, watch your language” and “Hey, not so close on the beanbags.” Lately, closeness on the beanbags had occurred more frequently than McCoy liked, and she sensed that the people being touched weren’t always happy about it, so she arranged to present a workshop for kids on how to identify healthy relationships. It was scheduled for the afternoon I was visiting and would be conducted by a social service agency called Peace Over Violence.

  Another Teen’Scape librarian named Teresa Webster had just arrived for her shift. She checked in with McCoy, who reminded her about the workshop. Webster nodded and then said, “You know, we have to get someone to come and give a talk to these kids about politics. One of them just asked me what a Republican is.” Webster and McCoy both shook their heads in amazement and then burst out laughing.

  The three Peace Over Violence volunteers walked in carrying an easel and placards and a welter of handouts. McCoy went around reminding kids that the workshop would start soon. It was being held in a section of the room where the television happened to be. A wiry boy wearing small hoop earrings had just fished a video controller out of a bin and looked crushed when McCoy told him he would have to wait to use the television until the workshop finished. He stood frozen, as if he couldn’t quite absorb the news. “You mean . . . ,” he said after a moment. “I can’t . . .” McCoy nodded with great sympathy, and he finally put the controller away and wandered off. Several girls settled on the beanbags nearby. One cuddled with her boyfriend and kept squealing and smacking him playfully on the arm. In the farthest corner, almost out of the room, a lone figure sat in a broody slump, with a hood pulled up and winched so tightly that it obscured his or her face; it was impossible to tell if the person was a girl or a boy. The volunteers walked around greeting the kids, including the hooded one at the far table, and passed out a workbook titled Teen Power and Control Wheel. Mary McCoy hovered nearby.

  One volunteer came to the front of the group, introduced herself, and began by asking if anyone in the room could think of an example of an unhealthy relationship. The girl cuddling with her boyfriend stopped and called out, “Rihanna and Chris Brown!”

  “Doesn’t have to be stars,” said the girl sitting on the beanbag next to her, sounding disgusted.

  “I love Rihanna!” someone else said.

  “Okay, okay, that’s a good one,” the volunteer said. “Anyone else?”

  A small girl toward the back of the room said, “It’s . . . someone gets mad and hits you?” and “Uh-huh” rumbled around the room. After talking for a few minutes and reviewing the handout, the group read a depressing poem called “David Brings Me Flowers,” which laid out the excuses that girls make for abusive boys. The mood in the room downshifted; the kids sat straighter and stopped whispering and cuddling and wisecracking.

  I tiptoed out as the workshop continued and stopped once more at the desk before I left. The librarian there told me that his name was Russell Garrigan and he had worked in Teen’Scape for the last seventeen years. I asked him if he enjoyed the job, and he said, “Well, my hero is Albert Schweitzer. He said, ‘All true living takes place face to face.’ I think about that a lot when I’m here.”

  As I got ready to leave the library for the day, I decided to make one more stop, in the Children’s Department, a dreamy room with dark wood, muted murals, and bookshelves that are about the height of a privet hedge. I walked in behind a teacher who was leading a fifth-grade class and repeating “Please use your library voice,” in the monotonous tone of a mantra. Story time was under way to the left of the big wooden information desk; a librarian was leading a group of about two dozen children and a dozen adults in the “Alphabet Song.” There was an eddy of ceaseless circular motion. A girl wearing a “Keep Calm and Rock On” onesie was hugging a tiny boy in a Batman shirt. A child in a tutu was trying to stand on her head. A boy with a Mohawk haircut toddled over and stared at her. When the “Alphabet Song” got to Z, the librarian segued into “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” The children brought their own interpretation to the song—“toes, floor, ears, nose,” for instance, or “hands, hands, hands, hands.” The head of the Children’s Department, Madeline Bryant, had told me that preschool story time used to attract three or four kids at most, but over the last few years, young families have been moving back to downtown Los Angeles, and now a story time audience of thirty is typical. As an experiment, she recently
offered an infant story time, and it was so popular that they experienced serious stroller-jam.

  Diane Olivo-Posner, whose job title is associate director of the Exploration and Creativity Department, was behind the information desk when I walked in. Her eyes were damp, and she was fanning herself with what appeared to be a letter.

  “The department,” she said in a choked voice, “the department got a letter from Mo Willems! Mo Willems! Can you believe it? Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! is one of my favorite books. Oh, I think I’m going to cry.”

  A little girl who looked about four years old came up to the desk and handed Olivo-Posner a sheet covered with random scribbles. “This is for Miss Linda,” she said, shaking the paper. Olivo-Posner took it and told her the drawing was very nice. The little girl dragged her foot across the carpet for a moment and then said, “Will you give it to Miss Linda? Do you know Miss Linda? Where is Miss Linda? Can I borrow some crayons now? Do you know dinosaurs? Tell me the alphabet? Are there scary stories here at the library? Not with ghosts, just scary?”

  20.

  Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (1974)

  By Bugliosi, Vincent

  364.9794 M289Bu

  Criteria for a Recommended Standard, Occupational Exposure to Hot Environments: Revised Criteria (1986)

  613.6 C9345

  Riots, U.S.A., 1765–1965 (1966)

  By Heaps, Willard A.

  320.158 H434

  Word and Image: History of the Hungarian Cinema (1968)

  By Nemeskürty, István

  791.939 N433

  In 1966, the coffeemakers that librarians used in their workrooms were banned from Central Library. The wattage used by coffeemakers—more than a blender, less than a toaster—was simply too much for the library’s weak wiring. It was one of many measures taken in the 1960s in deference to the building’s fragile electrical system. In the book stacks, seventy-five-watt bulbs were replaced with forty-watt bulbs, the type usually used in ovens and refrigerators. The smaller bulbs cast a crepuscular half-light, making it almost impossible for clerks to find books on the shelves. Flashlights and miners’ hats were in high demand.

  By the mid-1960s, Central Library was just middle-aged, but it had the aches and pains of an elderly building. City Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, whose district included Central Library, liked to refer to it as “that piece of junk.” California magazine described it as “an architectural flapper” that was a “functional flop.” The fairy-tale building of 1926 had become shabby and adulterated. Some of the sumptuous mahogany panels had been painted over; the fanciful bronze reading lamps with their honeyed light had been replaced by plain fixtures with fluorescent tubes. According to The Light of Learning: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles Public Library, published by the Library Foundation in 1993, file cabinets and desks were everywhere, often pushed up against some of Lee Lawrie’s finest sculptures and carvings. No one seemed to be the steward of the building. Decisions about it were made willy-nilly. A business manager ordered Julian Ellsworth Garnsey’s Ivanhoe murals whitewashed because he found them dreary. (Someone managed to intercede in time to save them.) There were far more books than shelf space, and the overflow tumbled into the stairwells and corners. A beautiful fresco titled Bison Hunt, which was a 1930s WPA project, was painted over because it had been damaged by rain. Some of the murals were so dirty that they looked like dark abstract paintings; the human figures in them looked like rocks. (The layer of grime was so thick that it would ultimately protect them in the fire, like a Teflon shield.) Only two of the six entrances to the building were functional. Ornate bronze doors on the Hope Street entrance were replaced by industrial doors with panic release hardware. The original buff stucco on the building’s exterior had been patched in places to cover water stains and graffiti.

  Besides the cosmetic wear, the building’s infrastructure was crotchety and failing. Not only were the stacks dark, they were leaky, and scores of books got soaked whenever it rained. In cold weather, the boiler was so overworked that the building engineer had to pour water on it three times a day just to keep it from blowing up. In the heat, things were worse. The library had walls as thick as a bank safe and very few windows, and some of them were wired shut to deter book thieves. There was no air-conditioning. Ventilation and cross breezes were mostly imaginary. When the temperature rose, a battalion of rackety old floor fans was brought out to push the hot air around; they took up almost all of the available electrical outlets. The library was in the midst of scanning its magazines and newspapers onto microfilm. When the floor fans were being used, there weren’t any outlets left for the scanners, so the whole project had to be paused.

  No matter how hard the fans spun, the heat in the building defeated them. The administration decided on a policy of closing the library when the temperature rose over 95 degrees—that is, when the inside of the building reached 95 degrees. At 94 and below, it was business as usual. More often than not, the radiators were raging even in the thick of a heat wave. They seemed to have a mind of their own that was unrelated to any thermostat. Patrons sweated. The librarians were miserable. They kept records of the temperature in their departments in order to document the misery and make a formal complaint. For instance, these appeared in the History Department’s record of one beastly June:

  6/3. Temperature 78°. in History Department. Building grossly overheated.

  6/5. Temperature 81°. Building still grossly overheated. Patrons complaining.

  6/6. Temperature 82.5°. Extremely humid and uncomfortable but heat on!!!!

  6/10. Temperature 82°. Constant enervating heat

  6/11. Temperature 90°. Smog like pea soup. Heat BLASTING!

  6/18. Temperature 91°. RIDICULOUS CONDITIONS

  6/19. Temperature 89°. HORRID

  6/20. Temperature 88°. UNBEARABLE

  6/21. Temperature 104°. It is totally ridiculous that people are forced to work under these conditions . . . terrible heat makes this a HELL! . . . This is outrageous.

  6/22. Thermometer stolen.

  Unfortunately, the library was aging exactly when the mood in the city was for anything new, new, new. New neighborhoods, new buildings, and new roads bubbled up, while the old ones sagged under the pall of neglect and abandonment. In the postwar years, downtown became ratty and depopulated. The center of the city was no longer fashionable. Fancy retail bolted out of downtown to new shopping centers in Beverly Hills and Orange County and Brentwood, leaving downtown a hodgepodge of small, funky shops and storefronts that were spookily quiet after five P.M. For decades, buildings in Los Angeles weren’t permitted to be taller than thirteen stories because of concerns about earthquakes. While other American cities sprouted their pinnacled skylines and distinctive towers, downtown Los Angeles remained squat and grounded. The ban against tall buildings was finally lifted in 1957. Nothing much happened at first; downtown remained stunted compared to most other cities of its size. As developer Robert Maguire put it, Los Angeles seemed destined to be a city “just ten stories high, all over hell and gone.”

  The 1960s were anxious times in Southern California. The white population was hurriedly decamping to the San Fernando and East valleys, stranding African Americans in the broken-down neighborhoods closer to the city core. If you were black, you had little choice but to stay in these de facto ghettos. Real estate in Los Angeles was earmarked based on color, in a brazen effort to keep white neighborhoods intact. In 1963, the landmark Rumford Fair Housing Act was passed. It was considered one of the most important advances in the interest of racial equality. But a group of unlikely allies—the John Birch Society and the Los Angeles Times among them—rallied behind a ballot measure in 1964 to reverse the Rumford Act, removing the protection against discrimination in buying a home. The measure passed by a margin of two to one—a rebuff of the civil rights movement and of California’s self-image as progressive. It cleaved the city into unequal parts—the comfort of white Los Angeles and th
e pessimism and deprivation of black Los Angeles. Even the library became an arena where racial hostilities played out. Librarians began finding slips of paper tucked inside random books around the library. The slips were designed to look like cruise tickets on something called “Coon-ard Lines,” offering, in vulgar terms, travel to Africa on a “boat shaped like a Cadillac with fins” featuring a watermelon patch, heroin, and “a framed picture of Eleanor Roosevelt.” The tagline on the bottom read, “Ku Klux Klan, P.O. Box 2345, Overland, Missouri.”

  The police force in Los Angeles was mostly white, and in poor African American neighborhoods, officers were aggressive and sometimes brutal. One evening in 1965, a white police officer was patrolling Watts, a tough neighborhood southeast of downtown. He stopped a black driver on the suspicion of drunk driving. The stop turned into a confrontation and then into a convulsion of violence and fury. The upheaval lasted six days and ended only after the National Guard was called in. Thirty-four people died; more than a thousand were injured; forty-six square miles of the city were left in ruins. After Watts, there were spasms of violence of a different sort. The Manson Family murders, the shooting death of musician Sam Cooke, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy all seemed to signal that something was damaged and doomed in the nature of the city.

  The library quietly fell apart in the blue stillness of downtown. In the wounded period after Watts, the city thinned out in the center and thickened on the edges. One of the many optimistic convictions punctured by the riots was the belief that books were good and true—that on the shelves of libraries, you could find all the answers to all the questions. Life now seemed juddering and inexplicable, beyond the reach of what we could ever know or understand. Gray paint covering a mahogany library wall is not the existential equivalent of the Manson murders or the miseries in a neighborhood like Watts, but they seemed to inhabit the same sour space of things falling apart.