There’s nothing the matter with printed matter
Libraries are still alive and well in our world
Are books and libraries the old-new in thing?
Book sales may not be setting the world on fire. And while library use, at least in my hometown, is healthy, it’s not like every second person is walking around carrying a book. I mean a real, printed matter book. Most people are too busy looking down at their cellphones to crack open a paperback.
Still, I can’t help but think a renaissance in printed matter may be upon us. At least it feels a little like that based on what’s selling in the bookstores and even the themes of some recent movies.
A few years ago, after reading Haruki Murakami’s The Strange Library and Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, I declared in a short review:
“The story still matters.
“Books still matter, and perhaps always will.
“Libraries still matter.
“Bookstores matter.”
Now, we have Prime showing the movie version of Zevin’s book. And books about libraries keep coming out.
Take Matt Haig’s 2020 novel The Midnight Library. Way back in 2021, it sold more than two million copies. The author’s publisher posted a short video to celebrate the occasion and my guess is they will pop more Champagne once the book hits the screen.
Maybe I’m naive but it seems there still remains a lot of power in the printed word. And Haig’s book does pack some punch.
The Midnight Library reminded me of a cross between the movies It’s a Wonderful Life and Sliding Doors. The book’s setting of Bedford, England echoes the name Bedford Falls of the Frank Capra classic and its shifting plots hearken to the story in which the Gwyneth Paltrow character’s love life and career go in different directions, literally, at a London train station.
In Haig’s story, Nora Seed’s life seems at an end until she meets an old teacher Mrs. Elm (yes, lots of tree symbolism in this book) who tells her:
“Between life and death there is a library…And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices…Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”
Nora starts living all those unlived lives in what she calls a library maze (another recurring theme in The Midnight Library) and the reader enjoys the ride and the lessons learned along the way. Like this epiphany by Nora, as a member of the band The Labyrinths:
“Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”
But the great joy in reading The Midnight Library is in sharing the wide, wonderful world of books with its author and all his readers. Its references to many poets and authors and philosophers, from Sylvia Plath and Henry David Thoreau to Albert Camus and Arthur Schopenhauer, are enough to satisfy most bibliophiles.
Nora eventually comes to realize, “We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”
And while there are libraries, there will always be myriad ways in the maze we call life to discover all those possibilities.
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and online publications for more than 30 years. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
