The Story of My Life, Told Through Libraries
I have spent my life in and around libraries: private, public, in between. What they all share is a sense of possibility.
Whenever I hear the word “library,” I think of “The Library of Babel.” Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, published in 1941, posits a library in which every book that has ever been written and every book that has never been written sit side by side in an infinite array of possibility. Do I need to say how much I love this formulation, the vertigo it provokes?
It recalls to me my first library, my father’s library, which rose when I was a child along the west wall of our living room on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Even before I could read, I remember scaling those bookcases as if they were a rock face, pulling out paperbacks and gazing at their covers, as if, were I to look hard enough, I could stare my way inside their images. Holden Caulfield in his red cap stalking the streets of Manhattan. Genghis Khan at the head of a long line of troops in a historical novel by Howard Lamb. No matter that I didn’t know who any of these figures were.
My father had an open shelf policy, which meant I could look at anything I wanted — both then and later, after I learned to read. I found so much of myself in his collection: the dark humor…
