TITLE: I Was a Library Kid, Too
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 19, 2020 4:10 PM
DESC:
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BODY:
Early in
this Paris Review interview,
Ray Bradbury says, "A conglomerate heap of trash, that's what I
am." I smiled, because that's what I feel like sometimes, both
culturally and academically. Later he confessed something that
sealed my sense of kinship with him:
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I
went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love
with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library
fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt.
I was a library kid, too. I owned a few books, but I looked
forward to every chance we had to go to the library. My grade
school had books in every classroom, and my teachers shared their
personal books with those of us who so clearly loved to read.
Eventually my mom took me and my siblings to the Marion County
public to get a library card, and the world of books available
seemed limitless. When I got to high school, I spent free time
before and after classes wandering the stacks, discovering science
fiction, Vonnegut and Kafka and Voltaire, science and history. The
school librarian got used to finding me in the aisles at times.
She became as much a friend as any high school teacher could.
So many of my friends have shelves and shelves of books; they talk
about their addiction to Amazon and independent bookstores. But
almost all of the books I have at home fit in a single bookshelf
(at right). One of them is Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles,
which I discovered in high school.
I do have a small chess library on another shelf across the
room and a few sports books, most from childhood, piled nearby.
I tried to get rid of the sports books once, in a fit of Marie
Kondo-esque de-cluttering, but I just couldn't. Even I have an
attachment to the books I own. Having so few, perhaps my
attraction is even stronger than it might otherwise be, subject
to some cosmic inverse square law of bibliophilia.
At my office, I do have two walls full of books, mostly textbooks
accumulated over my years as a professor. When I retire, though,
I'll keep only one bookcase full of those -- a few undergrad CS
texts, yes, but mostly books I purchased because they meant
something to me. Gödel, Escher, Bach.
Metamagical Themas. Models of My Life. A few
books about AI. These are books that helped me find me.
After high school, I was fortunate to spend a decade in college
as an undergraduate and grad student. I would not trade those
years for anything; I learned a lot, made friends with whom I
remain close, and grew up. Bradbury, though, continued his
life as an autodidact, going to the public library three nights
a week for a decade, until he got married.
So I graduated from the library, when I was twenty-seven. I
discovered that the library is the real school.
Even though I spent a decade as a student in college and now am
a university prof, the library remains my second home. I rarely
buy books to this day; I don't remember my last purchase. The
university library is next to my office building, and I make
frequent trips over in the afternoons. They give me a break
from work and a chance to pick up my next read. I usually spend
a lot more time there than necessary, wandering the stacks and
exploring. I guess I'm still a library kid.
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