the loveliest librarian

“When do we get our costumes?”

Valerie smiled. “Everyone loves the costumes. Each of you has an extensive period wardrobe in your room, and you are strongly encouraged to remain ‘in character’ for your stay. Most visitors choose to do so, as it heightens the experience here.”

There were nods and murmurs of assent from the group.

No problem, Paris thought. Having spent nearly thirty years molding herself into what she thought other people expected from her, the opportunity to be another person felt excitingly freeing.

As she collected her room key from Valerie, she said, “I can’t wait to explore the town.”

“There’s plenty of time before dinner. Are you the librarian?”

Paris noded. “How did you know?”

“A gal gets good at sizing peole up quickly in this business.” [p. 2-3]

Title: Untamed
Creator: Lawless, Kathleen
Publisher: Pocket Books
Date: 2005
Type: Text

Title: Not One of Us
Creator: Defilippis, Nunzio
Creator: Weir, Christina
Relation: New Mutants
Publisher: Marvel Comics Group
Date: 2003-11
Identifier: v. 2, n. 5
Type: Still image
Type: Text

“Besides,” Deirdre added, leaning closer and tapping her braid against Harley’s arm, “the American Library Association says that compliance with the Code of Ethics is voluntary. There aren’t sanctions or any fines if a librarian discloses a patron’s record.”

“It’s the most sacred bond between librarian and patron,” Helma interjected.

“But if you can save a life…,” Harley said.

“Whose life?” Helma asked, but it was Deirdre who snapped back the answer.

“Another victim’s life, who else’s? And you’ve already demonstrated that you belive lives are expendable by erasing the name the police wanted.” She rubbed her braid against her cheek. “You’d rather follow some impossible ideal than save an innocent person.”

“The library’s obligation is to the individual,” Helma told her.

“Oh yeah? And what if the next victim is a child?”

“It might have been,” Helma said, and turned and walked away from them, feeling their eyes following after her.

She heard Eve ask Deirdre, “What kind of librarian are you?”

“A reasonable one,” Deirdre answered. [p. 175]

Title: Miss Zukas Shelves the Evidence
Creator: Dereske, Jo
Publisher: Avon Books
Date: 2001
Type: Text

Solitude and want of use seemed to have rendered it unfit for any purposes of comfort, and to have given it a grizzly, haunted air.

Movables of every kind lay strewn about, without the least attempt at order, and were intermixed with boxes, hampers, and all sorts of lumber. On all the floors were piles of books, to the amount perhaps of some thousands of volumes: these still in bales: those wrapped in paper, as they had been purchased: others scattered singly or in heaps: not one upon the shelves which lined the walls. To these, Mr. Fips called Tom’s attention.

“Before anything else can be done, we must have them put in order, catalogued, and ranged upon the book-shelves, Mr. Pinch. That will do to begin with, I think, Sir.”

Tom rubbed his hands in the pleasant anticipation of a task so congenial to his taste, and said: “An occupation full of interest for me, I assure you.” [p. 211]

Title: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
Creator: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870
Publisher: Bernhard Tauchnitz
Date: 1844
Type: Text

One of the quirks I’d developed over the past four years was an aversion to touching people, especially strangers, so rather than accept his hand, I bent to pick up an imaginary paper clip on the floor. When I stood, his hand was no longer extended.

“The girl at the desk said I needed to talk to Ophelia Jensen. Are you Ophelia?” he asked. When I nodded, his eyes widened in surprise.

“What’s wrong?”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. You don’t look like a librarian.”

“Really? And what exactly is a librarian supposed to look like?”

“You know, older, hair in a bun, reading glasses on a a chain, pencil stuck behind the ear.” He smiled, eying my clothes. “I’ve never met a librarian wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that says ‘Tact is for people not witty enough to use sarcasm.’ Or one with a name like Ophelia.”

I looked down at my clothes. He was right. Not my normal librarian look. Mentally, I pulled my tattered dignity around me and stood straighter. “I work alone in my office on Fridays.” That wasn’t any of his business. Why was I explaining? “But it seems the Dewey decimal system is beyond my assistant’s scope of understanding, so someone has to put these books away.” [p. 5]

Title: Witch Way to Murder: An Ophelia and Abby Mystery
Creator: Damsgaard, Shirley
Publisher: Avon Books
Date: 2005
Type: Text

There are two rooms on the floor where his bedroom is, both higgledy-piggledy with dolls, puppets, boxes stage sets, costumes and drawings. Part of my job was to bring order to this, to make an inventory of the hundreds of creations he’s lost track of over the years, to take and upload photographs, add descriptions, create categories, and generally bring my cataloguing skills to a whole new realm.

But first I needed to sort out his office because his paperwork and admin systems were a mess. It was easier said than done. I was constantly having to question him. “Do you really need invoices from 2001?” “Which of these magazines do you want?” “What about a filing system for catalogues?” “Why don’t we try and separate out museum stuff, business stuff and your own art?”

“You’re such a librarian,” he teased.

“Hey, librarians aren’t what they used to be,” I replied. “We surf the information super highway, you know.” I did a surfer move, riding a wave. “Some of us don’t even bother with books these days. We’re hip, we’re cutting edge, we’re cool.” [p. 44-45]

Title: Split
Creator: Lloyd, Kristina
Publisher: Black Lace
Date: 2007
Type: Text

Remorse: you were a pale woman with thin arms, absorbing the colors of moss, lichen, and limestone into your skin. The heavy library doors were open, and within there were green reading lamps and polished heavy tables, and books massed up to the gallery and above. A few of these books were exalted, some were usefully informative, the majority of them would only congest the mind. My Swedenborgian old lady says that angels do not read books. Why should they? Nor, I imagine, can librarians be great readers. They have too many books, most of them burdensome. The crowded shelves give off an inviting, consoling, seductive odor that is also tinctured faintly with something pernicious, with poison and doom. Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. And you, an underpriestess of this temple stepping out to look at the sky, and Mr. Lubeck, your chief, a gentle refugee always stumbling over his big senile dog and apologizing to the animal, “Ach, excuse me!” (heavy on the sibilant). [p. 10-11]

Title: Him With His Foot in His Mouth
Creator: Bellow, Saul
Relation: Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Issued: 1998
Date Copyrighted: 1984
Type: Text

Title: Patsy Walker
Creator: Hartley, Al
Creator: Lee, Stan
Publisher: Bard Publishing
Date: 1960
Type: Still image
Type: Text

Elaina Whisthoven loved books and presumed they would love her back and she wanted to serve humanity, so she became a librarian. She wore large glasses and had large curls that were always clean and always brushed and never styled. She lived like a nun on her meager starting salary in a room she rented from a retired professor and his elderly wife, empty because their own children had grown up and gone west.

When I fired her, her mouth opened but she couldn’t speak. I thought she wavered where she stood. She was slender and probably had an attractive body under her dowdy clothes, but to imagine undressing her, even mentally, would have made me feel like I was the Marquis de Sade disrobing Justine as the prelude to sordid and perverse desecrations.

When I fired her I felt like I’d broken some delicate flower, snapped its stalk, and crushed its petals. [p. 4]

Title: The Librarian
Creator: Beinhart, Larry
Publisher: Nation Books
Date: 2004
Type: Text

Adventurous librarianship of this kind he enjoyed. Book selection was another pleasure, and not merely because it fed a voracious appetite for reading. He went rampant on continental literature, and to this day the library retains the reputation for it that he made. I tried very hard, however, to keep him out of the lending department, because he interfered as a matter of course with the system I had devised - not to assert his authority, but, as I saw it, to exercise a residual perversity which said ever so plainly that he was not so impractical as I had successfully proved (he was the most impractical man I ever knew). But it was like keeping the tide back, and time and again I was brought in to resolve confusion caused solely by his own disregard for basic rules of order.

He had a habit of moving quietly among the readers, speaking to one or another, and recommending a book to a bewildered wanderer. He kept his eyes open all the time, noting what books were borrowed or left untouched, and who chose them. Back in the office, he often waited like a broody hen, clucking with complaints: the book that someone wanted and was not in the catalogue (my responsibility), or it was that bumpkin of an assistant he saw picking his nose again. And that stunning creature with golden hair and the neck of a swan — “Suffering God, man, you can’t have missed her? Pure Botticelli. Go down and find out who she is.” [p. 55-56]

Title: The Young Librarian
Creator: Foley, Dermot
Relation: Michael/Frank: Studies on Frank O’Connor
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date: 1969
Type: Text

I’ve always had the greatest respect for Mrs. Canard, but it doubled over the last week. The woman must have worked nonstop for the last thirty years. Being a librarian is way tougher than I ever imagined.

In addition to answering questions over the phone and in person, most of which people could have used Google for, there was an extraordinarily long list of tasks that must be performed each day. From cataloguing and reviewing titles to researching and managing receipts of purchased items. Then there are adult and children’s programs, and maintaining the collections. This is a private library and she had several collections from the literary and art worlds.

Overwhelming, to say the least. [p. 161]

Title: Like a Charm
Creator: Havens, Candace, 1963-
Publisher: Berkley Books
Date: 2008
Type: Text

Julia spent the rest of the afternoon at the reference desk. She liked helping people find what they were looking for, and she liked the fact that a library was designed to make finding information easier. No putting a purple book on the shelf by the window just because it looked pretty there. No sticking another tome on the bottom because it had bad energy.

No, in a library, there was a logical plan. Call her weird, but Julia loved the Dewey Decimal System. At one time, she’d considered becoming a cataloger before deciding she preferred working with the public.

Because the Serenity Falls Public Library wasn’t large enough to have a separate readers’ advisory librarian to deal with fiction requests, Julia handled those as well. Which is how she came to be speaking to Mabel about a mystery she was looking for, one she’d seen in a book display the library had a few weeks ago.

“It has a red cover.” Mabel fingered her pink curls as if doing so might prompt her memory. “I do remember that much. And the title had something to do with a place.” [p. 135-136]

Title: Good Girls Do
Creator: Linz, Cathie
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Date: 2006
Type: Text

“I was there when the kids came in for Story Hour and saw that poster for the first time. They were scared. Their eyes got big, and one little girl started to cry. And I liked it that they were scared. I thought, ‘That’ll pound the do-right into em, all right. That’ll teach em what’ll happen if they cross her, if they don’t do what she says.’ And part of me thought, you’re getting to think like her, Dave. Pretty soon you’ll get to be like her, and then you’ll be lost. You’ll be lost forever.

“But I went on, just the same. I felt like I had a one-way ticket and I wasn’t goin to get off until I rode all the way to the end of the line. Ardelia hired some college kids, but she always put em in the circulation room and the reference room and on the main desk. She kept complete charge of the kids… they were the easiest to scare, you see. And I think they were the best scares, the ones that fed her the best. Because that’s what she lived on, you know – she fed on their fright. And I made more posters. I can’t remember them all, but I remember the Library Policeman. He was in a lot of them. In one – it was called LIBRARY POLICEMEN GO ON VACATION, TOO – he was standin on the edge of a stream and fishin. Only what he’d baited his hook with was that little boy the kids called Simple Simon. In another one, he had Simple Simon strapped to the nose of a rocket and was pullin the switch that would send him into outer space. That one said LEARN MORE ABOUT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE LIBRARY – BUT BE SURE TO DO RIGHT AND GET YOUR BOOKS BACK ON TIME.

“We turned the Children’s Room into a house of horrors for the kids who came there,” Dave said. He spoke slowly, and his voice was full of tears. “She and I. We did that to the children. But do you know what? They always came back. They always came back for more. And they never, never told. She saw to that.” [p. 501-502]

Title: The Library Policeman
Creator: King, Stephen, 1947-
Relation: Four Past Midnight
Publisher: Signet
Date: 1990
Type: Text

 

“We’ll have to have one card file with the names and addresses of the borrowers,” Ginny said. “On those cards we’ll write the titles of the books they borrowed and the date they borrowed them. Then we’ll have another card file with the titles of the books. On those cards we’ll write the names of the members who borrowed them, and the date the books are due to be returned. On the first blank page of every book we’ll glue a slip of paper. On it we’ll write or stamp, if we have a rubber date stamp, which we should have, the date the book is due. Also, we’ll have to have a control calendar card file. On the date which corresponds to the date the book is due to be returned we’ll write the title and the name of the borrower. And the first thing we’ll do every day when we open shop is check that calendar file to make sure the book is picked up if it hasn’t been returned previously.”

Lucy moaned and pulled strands of her blond hair across her face. “It’s all too, too complicated. I’m glad you’re the business manager, Ginny. Calendar card file, rubber date stamp, books borrowed, books due, names, addresses, titles — it’s all too much for me!” [p. 18-19]

Title: Ginny Gordon and the Lending Library
Creator: Campbell, Julie, 1908-1999
Publisher: Whitman Publishing Company
Date: 1954
Type: Text

Miss Pynchon was already at her desk when Monique showed up that Monday morning. Monique looked nervously at the clock on the desk: eight-thirty. She was half an hour early. She breathed a sigh of relief; for a moment, she thought her watch might be wrong, and she might have been late. In the Library, the consequences of being late were extreme.

“Good morning, Miss Pynchon,” said Monique meekly taking her seat at the desk opposite her supervisor’s. There was a stack of antique books for processing; it was Monique’s job to affix the bar codes on the inside front cover and record the process in her logbook. This stack of books, like all books in Monique’s section of the Library, was a collection of antique books that Miss Pynchon had acquired at auction on behalf of an anonymous donor.

Miss Pynchon didn’t look up from her work as she said, “Good morning, Monique. That’s a new dress, isn’t it?”

Monique nodded. “Yes. I bought it on Sunday at Flirt!”

Miss Pynchon didn’t look up as she said, “A little tight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Miss Pynchon.”

“Tsk, tsk.” [p. 3]

Title: Borrowing Privileges
Creator: Morley, N. T.
Relation: The Library
Publisher: Venus Book Club
Date: 2002
Type: Text

The School of Librarianship was in Suzzallo Library, a cathedral-like building that seemed elaborate after Cal’s neoclassical Doe Library. In the main room of the library school we were assigned desks in predictably alphabetical order with our names neatly typed on white paper and pasted to green desk blotters.

There were forty-eight women and two men in the class, fewer than half direct from undergraduate work. Most had worked in libraries, saved money, and aimed for professional credentials and higher pay. The women referred to the school as the Cloister, and “the Missionary Spirit” was a phrase we often heard from instructors. I soon discovered to my chagrin that I had suffered needlessly through Advanced French Grammar. This university counted quarter, not semester, units.

The first quarter we all took the same classes. Fortunately, memories of the Ontario Public Library reassured me that being a librarian was more interesting than learning to be one. Cataloging exasperated me because I do not have an orderly, logical mind and could not see why it was important to snoop behind pseudonyms to find an author’s true name. Why should Mark Twain always be cataloged under Samuel Langhorne Clemens with a cross-reference card from Mark Twain? Reference work was enjoyable. Each week we were given ten questions and the resources of the university library to find the answers in a sort of intellectual treasure hunt. Once, when I was wearing the red dress, a man who worked at the reference desk actually whispered, “You look like bait in that dress.” He did not, however, turn into a prince. [p. 163-164]

Title: My Own Two Feet: A Memoir
Creator: Cleary, Beverly
Publisher: Morrow Junior Books
Date: 1995
Type: Text

She was completely unaware that her particular level of dishevelment, normally caused from thinking about sculpture while assigning call numbers, worked to imbue her bookish physical authority with such a level of chaos that men assumed she was a slut. Her easiness was further particularized, however, with a cool distance that arose from her own intense ambitions. Making art meant she had to keep a lot of herself for herself. The result was that as Audrey was chewing on a pencil, thumbing through an old edition on Kinetic Art, men watched thinking, “I’m a bad boy, she’d fuck me, and she wouldn’t call the next day because she’d be doing something smart and righteous.” Her set up was, to be blunt, irresistible. Many men in her life had been fascinated with the librarian stereotype.

Assumptions had run rampant that, sexually, Audrey’s co-workers should all have some kind of Jackie Bouvier perspective, infamously described by Gore Vidal as a notion that sex was untidy and therefore unappealing to the ultra-fastidious. Many times, Audrey’s inherent sexuality surprised and delighted her partners. She functioned like a properly ordered card catalogue. The neat logic to her approach and system made for a more direct and efficient interaction between patron and product. Audrey’s sexual encounters almost always ended in mutual orgasm. [p. 26-27]

Title: Sexy Librarian: A Novel
Creator: Weist, Julia
Publisher: Ellen Lupton
Date: 2008
Type: Text

Eve started.

“Blandings Castle?… But this is the most extraordinary thing. I’m going to Blandings myself in a few days.”

“No!”

“They’ve engaged me to catalogue the castle library.”

“But, Eve, were you only joking when you asked Clarkie to find you something to do? She took you quite seriously.”

“No, I wasn’t joking. There’s a drawback to my going to Blandings. I suppose you know the place pretty well?”

“I’ve often stayed there. It’s beautiful.”

“Then you know Lord Emsworth’s second son, Freddie Threepwood?”

“Of course.”

“Well, he’s the drawback. He wants to marry me, and I certainly don’t want to marry him. And what I’ve been wondering is whether a nice easy job like that, which would tie me over beautifully till September, is attractive enough to make up for the nuisance of having to be always squelching poor Freddie. I ought to have thought of it right at the beginning, of course, when he wrote and told me to apply for the position, but I was so delighted at the idea of regular work that it didn’t occur to me. Then I began to wonder. He’s such a persevering young man. He proposes early and often.” [p. 58]

Title: Leave It to Psmith
Creator: Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville), 1881-1975
Publisher: Overlook Press
Date Copyrighted: 1923
Type: Text

Batgirl From the old “Batman” TV show is an excellent case in point of this phenomenon. A cold and distant librarian by day, Barbara Gordon eschews the Dewy Decimal System by night and becomes the confident and defiant crime-fighting Batgirl. Batgirl is hot, Barbara Gordon is not, and neither seems sexually attainable. Batgirl is brassy and defiant, and Barbara is so intelligent that no man would ever find her attractive. Note also that Batgirl is another example of the “Miss Jones Syndrome,” by way of Clark Kent. Take the glasses off of the librarian and put her in a clingy outfit and she is instantly desirable!

It’s also worth noting that the Batman TV series was high camp and rather silly, and Batgirl’s role was usually to get captured and the rescued by the final episode. She was only allowed to kick or push villains in a fight - she was not allowed to punch them. The writers thought it would make her look “unfeminine.”

Title: Media Cliches: Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses
Creator: Dr. Zaius
Relation: zaiusnation.blogspot.com
Date: 2007
Type: Text

Tonight we are going down, under the ground… to Office 99, a small, neat cubicle, airless and white, at the end of a corridor in the third subbasement of the Empire City Public Library. Here, at a desk that lies deeper in the earth than even the subway tracks, sits young Miss Judy Dark, Under-Assistant Cataloguer of Decommissioned Volumes. The nameplate on her desk so identifies her. She is a thin, pale thing, in a plain gray suit, and life is clearly passing her by. Twice a week a man with skin the color of boiled newspaper comes by her office to cart away the books that she has officially pronounced dead. Every ten minutes or so her walls are shaken by the thunder of the uptown local racing overhead.

On this particular autumn night, only the prospect of another solitary evening lies before her. She will fry her chop and read herself to sleep, no doubt with a tale of wizardry and romance. Then, in dreams that strike even her as trite, Miss Dark will go adventuring in chain mail and silk. Tomorrow morning she will wake up alone, and do it all again.

Poor Judy Dark! Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big black eyeglasses! [The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel by Michael Chabon, p. 267]

Title: Old Flame
Creator: McCarthy, Kevin
Creator: Brereton, Dan
Creator: Konot, Sean
Relation: Michael Chabon Presents the Amazing Adventurs of the Escapist. Vol. 1
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Date: 2004
Type: Still image

He looked around the room and clicked his tongue in patent disapproval. “Oh my! You have let things slip, haven’t you?”

My cheeks flushed, even though I didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of the basement. Once a librarian, always a librarian, I guess. The cascading books did make me feel vaguely uneasy. Like I’d been caught red-handed ducking out of work early, leaving part of my job undone.

Wait.

A statue of a cat had just transformed into a living, breathing man before my very eyes, and I was worried about shelving books according to the Dewey Decimal system? I shook my head. “Just a second,” I said. “Before you start to criticize me, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, I take it you’re a familiar?”

“And I take it you’re a witch.”

“No, I’m a librarian.” [p. 51-52]

Title: Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft
Creator: Klasky, Mindy L.
Publisher: Red Dress Ink
Date: 2006
Type: Text

Thanks to his mother, who had taken Emma under her wing after Teddy’s death and mentioned her occasionally in her letters, Sam knew she still lived in Serenity and still worked at the town’s library, where she’d recently been promoted to head librarian. She was still single, as well, but lived quietly in the small house she’d bought a couple of years ago.

A steady, responsible young woman making a decent, respectable life for herself despite the tragedy she had suffered. A woman who should, by all accounts, want nothing to do with the likes of him.

So why had she written to him out of the blue?

Title: The Major and the Librarian
Creator: Benjamin, Nikki
Publisher: Silhouette
Date: 1999
Type: Text

As he halted before her, though, Rory, well… halted. Because he vaguely realized that she was standing on a rung at such a height as to put her thigh directly at his eye level. And, less vaguely, he realized that there was a side slit in her straight, black skirt. It was conservative enough to be acceptable for a librarian’s wardrobe, but open just now — thanks to her position on the ladder — in such a way as to make a professor of history take notice. And somehow, this particular professor of history found the sight of Miss Thornbury’s leg to be strangely… arousing?

Oh, surely not. [p. 44]

Title: The Temptation of Rory Monahan
Creator: Bevarly, Elizabeth
Publisher: Silhouette
Date: 2001
Type: Text

The person at the return desk sits on a high stool and presides over four or five large trays of cards. These cards are set on end and arranged by date. Each one of them belongs in a little pocket in the back of a book which is out of the library on loan. When a book is returned you have to open that book, not the date on which it was loaned (this date having been stamped on a slip of paper in the back of the book) find the card among the thousands in the trays, and put it back in its little pocket, having first removed another card (the “reader’s card”) from that pocket and stamped on that (with a miserable little stamp attached to a lead pencil, which sometimes stamps clearly and usually does not) the date on which the book is returned. I have read over that sentence four times and I do not believe that anyone could exactly understand it. But I understand it and so will anyone who has ever performed the ghoulish operation. The others don’t matter. Then you give the “reader’s card” back to the person who has returned the book — unless he has had the book out longer than the rules allow. In that case you tell him, or her, how much he owes the library — at two cents a day, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he pays over that money promptly and without a fuss. Often he has computed it himself and has the four or six or eight cents, or whatever it is, all ready. In the other case he, or she, makes some kind of a fuss.

On a “rush-day” when there are over two thousand books returned, there is the possibility of about twenty fusses during the day, or say fifteen between three and five in the afternoon and seven and half-past eight in the evening, which are particularly busy periods. The books, as fast as they are returned, must be hastily glanced at, to see if they have suffered any obvious injury, and then placed on a truck which is wheeled off by a messenger as soon as it gets full, to be replaced by an empty one. I have known a decent looking man to return a book which was simply dripping with mud and muddy water and to declare up and down that there was nothing at all the matter with it, that he had not dropped it into a mud puddle, and that we were a lot of cranky old maids anyhow, and if we didn’t keep quiet and give him another book and say no more about it he would write to Andrew Carnegie “and have the whole lot of us fired.” The number of persons , by the way, who are on intimate terms with Mr. Carnegie is appalling. One old woman, who insists on abstracting the directory from the registration desk just when it is most needed, gets a letter from him nearly every day, and she informed me last week that “Andhrew had got his eye on yez.” [p. 47-48]

Title: That Girl at the Library
Creator: Pearson, Edmund Lester, 1880-1937
Relation: The Library and the Librarian: A Selection of Articles From the Boston Evening Transcript and Other Sources
Publisher: Elm Tree Press
Date: 1910
Type: Text

Librarian (like Stewardess, Certified Public Accountant, Used Car Salesman) is one of those occupations that people assume attract a certain deformed personality. Librarians are supposed to be bitter spinsters; grudging, lonely. And above all stingy: we love our fine money, our silence. I did not love fine money: I forgave much more than I collected. I did not shush people unless they yelled. And though I was technically a spinster, I was bitter only insofar as people made me. It isn’t that bitter people become librarians; it’s that being a librarian may turn the most giving person bitter. We are paid all day to be generous, and no one recognizes our generosity.

As a librarian, I longed to be acknowledged, even to be taken for granted. I sat at the desk, brimming with book reviews, information, warnings, all my good schooling, advice. I wanted people to constantly callously approach. But there were days nobody talked to me at all, they just walked to the shelves and grabbed a book and checked out, said, at most, “Thank you,” and sometimes only “You’re welcome” when I thanked them first. I had gone to school to learn how to help them, but they believed I was simply a clerk who stamped the books.

All it takes is a patron asking. And then asking again. A piece of paper covered with notes, the pencil smudged: a left-hander (for instance, James) will smudge more. The patron you become fond of will say, “I can’t believe you have this book.” Or even better (believe it or not) “You don’t own this book — is there a way I can get it?”

“Yes.” [p. 7]

Title: The Giant’s House: A Romance
Creator: McCracken, Elizabeth
Publisher: Dial Press
Date: 1996
Type: Text