The title of this post comes from Harold Bloom, a professor of Humanities at Yale, and one of the better known literary critics. (Literary critics, from what I can tell, are by their nature not particularly well known.) Anyhow, last night I was reading an interview he gave. Bloom often comments on the lack of literary culture in the U.S., and he's undoubtedly right. In addition to depressing me (as his interviews and books usually do) it got me mulling over the state of reading, especially as it relates to libraries.
In my introductory library science class we have been discussing the future of libraries, and the need for librarians to adopt newer technologies in order to reach the younger generations - the generations which will (hopefully) be the main users of libraries when I and my fellow students have entered the work force. The theory, according to library innovators, is that we should be embracing newer and newer technologies in order to better communicate with the next generation of library users. For instance, we should apparently be circulating video games, using IM programs and cell phones to answer reference questions - you get the picture.
This has engendered debate among my fellow students, many of whom seem to despair that the Culture of the Book is slowly eroding. This erosion depresses me as well, but has also forced me ask another question - is the death of this Culture of the Book any more distressing than the death of good books? I work at the circulation desk of a public library, so I have a fairly good idea as to what people are reading. Here's a hint: it's not Shakespeare. It's not Dante. It's not Homer. It's not even Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane. It is, of course, Danielle Steel, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, Stephen King. Of course there are exceptions. Today one patron had interloaned Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady," and another was returning a volume of Theodore Roethke's poems. Most people, however, could not give a damn about poetry.
This leads to the phenomenon of libraries purging their literature sections to make more room for - I shall not even try to be politically correct - trash fiction. Now, we have been taught (by our professors) that we must serve the users of libraries. My former boss, at a departmental meetings, once explained it like this: "We are not an academic library. We don't hold on to things simply because they are good." In other words, we carry what people want to read, not what they should read. This attitude, along with the seeming decline of the book, has led me to wonder... how long before you can no longer walk into a library and find novels by Dostoevsky, Balzac, and any other number of great (but largely unread) authors?
The title of the book that Harold Bloom was being interviewed about was entitled "Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?" I suspect that "the library" will soon no longer be an accurate answer to this question.
Monday, September 10, 2007
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3 comments:
Interesting blog you've got started here. I linked you.
Don't get down about Bloom, he'll depress anyone. But libraries are a problem, especially when I go into my own hoping to find some American Experience or American Masters documentaries and all I see are Julia Roberts' films from 10 years ago. I think of a library as being equivalent to a health food store. It should be good for you, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will taste bad.
That's funny, I got into a discussion similar to this about the modern newspaper. The big debate among journalists is whether we should provide readers with fun stories (like Britney Spears sucking on the MTV awards) or stories they should read, but we all know they probably will pass over (for example, foreign policy pieces).
The argument I always give, which is very similar to what Jessica wrote above, is that you need to give a balanced diet. You can't eat junk food all day, but you will be bored as hell eating healthy veggies nonstop, too. Let's hope libraries don't lose that balance.
Hello,
Good post. I worked at a bookstore for a while that was part of a big chain, and it was similar in that it catered more to what was 'of the moment'. It was a smaller store, but basically you couldn't walk in and count on being able to get a well known book by Dickens or other similar classics. Staples in high school English classes like Catcher In The Rye & To Kill A Mockingbird were there, and most Jane Austen books. With most other well known 'classics' you'd be lucky if they had 1 copy in stock--if it hadn't been stolen, that is.
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