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dwcleno 's review for:
The Library Book
by Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean has long been a favorite author of mine through her pieces in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone from The Shaggs article to the one on the girl surfers. I also remember the piece about the basketball player (just checked her site: it's called "Shoot The Moon").
"The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup" was the first full-length book of hers that I read, shared and talked about obsessively, as it allowed me to go back to some of my favorite pieces again and again. I finally lent it out to a person less concerned about returning books than I thought, and as a result of my bad read, it is now gone from my library. But I still think about it.
Why all of this may help readers to pick up something called "The Library Book" is that Orlean is once again sharing a much wider world than the title infers. She has an investigative reporter's eye and ear for detail, but a gentle hand for the people involved, and is determined to dot the litany of fascinating facts about her subject with poignant and unobtrusive characterizations of and her exchanges with the people involved.
Yes, this book is about libraries, but its also about people who use these public spaces and how the modern version of a library was created and how it remains deeply problematic and yet also deeply aspirational. The Los Angeles Central Library is the setting for this book, but it could also have been set in hundred different libraries. I think of the drama of my New Orleans libraries after the 2005 levee breaks and how the librarians I knew (and I realized then that I knew many for some odd reason, odd because it was mostly not through their jobs) had struggled with other issues unfamiliar to many of us rebuilding: the loss of almost all of their workplaces and their contents, but also the missing interactions with patrons and their role as a daily participant in the human parade where they were a bringer of comfort and stability. I think Orlean has captured my friends experience even though she writes about a fire in one building in a very different city. I am also sure that the hospital and school workers of New Orleans circa 2005 can also see themselves in her descriptions of the turmoil the LA librarians dealt with personally and professionally after the fire.
In short, you simply cannot read a piece of Orlean's writing without seeing the person she is interviewing or the person(s) that the piece is about in full color (and rips and tears) and then not think about lots of other people that remind you of that person. People think they are hidden from the world, but a writer like Orlean shows they are seen, and that there was at least an attempt to understand their time, their story, their contribution. The Library Book ends with Orlean realizing what makes libraries special to her, but the passage also is what makes her writing special to us:
"All of the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise; Here I am, please tell me your story; her is my story, please listen."
"The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup" was the first full-length book of hers that I read, shared and talked about obsessively, as it allowed me to go back to some of my favorite pieces again and again. I finally lent it out to a person less concerned about returning books than I thought, and as a result of my bad read, it is now gone from my library. But I still think about it.
Why all of this may help readers to pick up something called "The Library Book" is that Orlean is once again sharing a much wider world than the title infers. She has an investigative reporter's eye and ear for detail, but a gentle hand for the people involved, and is determined to dot the litany of fascinating facts about her subject with poignant and unobtrusive characterizations of and her exchanges with the people involved.
Yes, this book is about libraries, but its also about people who use these public spaces and how the modern version of a library was created and how it remains deeply problematic and yet also deeply aspirational. The Los Angeles Central Library is the setting for this book, but it could also have been set in hundred different libraries. I think of the drama of my New Orleans libraries after the 2005 levee breaks and how the librarians I knew (and I realized then that I knew many for some odd reason, odd because it was mostly not through their jobs) had struggled with other issues unfamiliar to many of us rebuilding: the loss of almost all of their workplaces and their contents, but also the missing interactions with patrons and their role as a daily participant in the human parade where they were a bringer of comfort and stability. I think Orlean has captured my friends experience even though she writes about a fire in one building in a very different city. I am also sure that the hospital and school workers of New Orleans circa 2005 can also see themselves in her descriptions of the turmoil the LA librarians dealt with personally and professionally after the fire.
In short, you simply cannot read a piece of Orlean's writing without seeing the person she is interviewing or the person(s) that the piece is about in full color (and rips and tears) and then not think about lots of other people that remind you of that person. People think they are hidden from the world, but a writer like Orlean shows they are seen, and that there was at least an attempt to understand their time, their story, their contribution. The Library Book ends with Orlean realizing what makes libraries special to her, but the passage also is what makes her writing special to us:
"All of the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise; Here I am, please tell me your story; her is my story, please listen."