The Temple of Knowledge
February 21, 2018 6:02 AM Subscribe
Ronald Clark’s father was custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library, creeping down to the stacks in the middle of the night when curiosity gripped him. A story for anyone who’s ever dreamt of having unrestricted access to books.
Also:
Atlas Obscura with some wonderfully gloomy photos of the apartment above the Fort Washington branch.
NYPL's own page on the conversion of an apartment into a teen and adult education center.
CBC article on Sharon Washington, who grew up in the apartment of the St. Agnes branch, and wrote a one-woman play about it.
Gothamist, inside the Hunts Point branch apartment in the Bronx.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:09 AM on February 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
Atlas Obscura with some wonderfully gloomy photos of the apartment above the Fort Washington branch.
NYPL's own page on the conversion of an apartment into a teen and adult education center.
CBC article on Sharon Washington, who grew up in the apartment of the St. Agnes branch, and wrote a one-woman play about it.
Gothamist, inside the Hunts Point branch apartment in the Bronx.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:09 AM on February 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
Is that a little book dust in my eye?
When I was in high school, my first job was as a page at the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. It's an extraordinary building, part of a single enormous complex that also houses a music hall, natural history museum, and art museum. I could go on and on (and did in fact just delete about a paragraph) about what a magical experience it was to be let loose in that building (most of the stacks were closed to the public, so it really was like being alone a lot of the time). I can't even imagine what it'd be like to live in such a place full time.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:27 AM on February 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
When I was in high school, my first job was as a page at the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. It's an extraordinary building, part of a single enormous complex that also houses a music hall, natural history museum, and art museum. I could go on and on (and did in fact just delete about a paragraph) about what a magical experience it was to be let loose in that building (most of the stacks were closed to the public, so it really was like being alone a lot of the time). I can't even imagine what it'd be like to live in such a place full time.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:27 AM on February 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
When I was younger I would sometimes read for days. I don't just mean reading every day. I mean I would get up, start reading, have lunch, read, nap, read. Dinner, read until it became dark, then read well into the night, sometimes until morning. I'd have dreams about reading when I slept, my brain making up titles by authors I loved (often who had already died), and I would be incapable of not checking the shelf for these books to see if they really existed. I wanted to grow up to be a writer and to work in a bookstore. We didn't have a lot of money, so I would take the bus across town to hang out in our library, and I loved everything about it. The conference rooms with the huge huge tables. The smell, the old radiators that made noise and were too hot to touch, and the fact that I could pretty much find a book on every subject. And I loved the librarians. They were the keepers of the magic.
I became a book collector (some would say hoarder) in high school, and for the next decades I'd have dozens times dozens of boxes of books to move whenever I change residence. People would say to me, "I don't buy books. I believe in libraries." I always responded, "I believe in libraries as well. I think everyone should own one." When I got my first real job it was in a bookstore. When I first tried living on my own it was as a full-time employee of a Borders (store policy allowed you to use the store as a library if there were multiple copies of a book). I haunted old used bookstores. I would travel for libraries.
When I finished high school I decided college wasn't for me because I was the smartest person I knew. Ok, maybe not, but you can't voraciously read and stay dumb, and I didn't know anyone that read like I did. If I read a book and two characters were having a philosophical argument about another book, I'd have a compulsion to go read the primary text just so I could determine which character was correct. I read Hegel's "Science of Logic" this way. I was usually incredibly bored in school, because I already knew everything. I would spend my classroom time reading books I wasn't supposed to read inside books that I was. If I was given a textbook I would read it from cover to cover without stopping (as long as it was a subject I enjoyed, and there were few subjects I disliked).
People donated books to the cause. My Tae Kwon Do instructor gave me his golden age SF and fantasy book collection. There was great stuff in there, as well as total crap like "The Tarnsman of Gor." There were books it would take me decades to understand (but I still read them). National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" is a bit to much to wrap your head around when you are 11 or so and haven't yet been exposed to the actual LoTR books (yet). I would reread books, some annually (I don't do this as much anymore). I amassed a huge collection and even when I outgrew a title I had a hard time letting it go. I think I was in my 30s before I parted with my Choose Your Own Adventure books or my Narnia books.
Eventually I decided not being in college sucked, and I mostly went to because that's what people my age did, and since I was a slacker, I decided I would be an English major (with an emphasis in literature). Mostly because I figured since I already loved books...
In college, if a professor assigned a book, there was a 50/50 chance I'd already read it. And once I started to get a real income my book collecting got out of hand. I would do the math, and a nice wood bookshelf would cost me around $40 in an antique shop, but that was like five new books, so I seldom bought anything to display my books on, so I would keep them in the boxes that reams of paper ship in. I had a whole room in my house that was literally just boxes of books from floor to ceiling. I had way more books than I could ever read, so I started to make up rules on what I could read any buy. I would always have 3-5 books going at any one time. I would just separate the genres so as not to get confused. When I read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series I would also read a non-fiction book on nautical history (I think he recommended one in a foreword), and I'd have philosophy, poetry, and probably a science fiction book going all at once. Reading one book usually was a commitment to reading a lot more. If I read a series book, that meant I'd end up reading the series. If I read a book like one of the above O'Brian books, I'd end up moving onto books that series inspired (like the Liveship series by Robin Hobb).
One of my favorite Ray Bradbury quotes when someone asked him if he'd read all the books in his library was, "What good would a library of read books be?"
I can't remember the actual saying, and google is failing me, but there's some blessing that says something like, "In heaven may you find yourself living between two bookstores and across the street from the library". I invented a whole theology of books. I dreamed that when I died I'd not only have access to every book ever written, but all the books that author would have written had they not died. I later encountered this concept in the Gaiman "Sandman" comics, and loved it. I was a weird kid, and when I started reading a book, that I was enjoying, I would start to be afraid I might die before finishing it (my idea of hell). I read good books, great books, and horrible books. My definition of a good book is one you want to read again; a great book is one you read over and over again ("Blood Meridian" is a great book, "American Gods" is a good book). It took me decades to realize that life is too short for bad books, so I almost always finished a book once I started it. I'd read anything from gay erotica or architecture.
I remember losing a book that was out-of-print, and it took me a decade to find a copy. To this day I have difficulty leaving a copy of Michael Moorcock's "Gloriana" on the shelf. I am like that Mel Gibson character in "Conspiracy Theory" who has a compulsion to buy "Catcher in the Rye." I used to be a completist. I would collect every book by an author, even if this meant hunting down obscure titles in sketchy neighborhoods.
I failed first grade because I couldn't read. I had to repeat the grade, and I remember my mother changing my bedtime to a half hour later, so long as I agreed to spend that time trying to read. It didn't take long before I was like the kid in the linked video, where I would stay up all night with a flashlight or headlamp. My mother was a evening shift waitress then, a college student by day, and a single mother, so she didn't have as much money or time for teaching reading, so I more or less had to figure it out by myself, and once I did, you couldn't get me to stop. She was going to school to become a med tech, so I read laboratory medicine or the physicians desk reference or anything I could get my hands on. In high school I remember getting kicked out of sex education because I laughed at something, and the teacher got mad, and asked, "So you think this is funny?" And I responded, "You don't?" She says, "So you know everything?" and I said I knew "enough to get by." The principal agreed to give me whatever grade I got on the final as my grade for the class, and rather than sitting through the class I would have to spend that time in the library! (I got a 98% on the final, and still remember the two questions I missed). I misbehaved a lot in high school and the punishment was always being sent to the library. Morons.
I just loved words.
I moved to Minneapolis as a young adult because Steven Brust was my favorite author (ages 14-17) and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I met the man when I worked in a bookstore, and interviewed him for AOL. I sponsored a book signing of one of his books, and took him out to dinner. He was the first time I ever understood the idea that one should not meet their idols. I thought he was pretty damn cool, but realized fairly quickly the feeling wasn't mutual. Oh well. Writers are my rockstars. I have met and interviewed dozens. I have had coffee with or picked up many more writers from the airport. I've met David Eddings, Capt. Kangaroo, the Coen brothers, Alexs Pate, Jane Smiley, pretty much every mystery writer you can think of, Lawrence Watt Evans, and a more than I can even think of right now.
I decided professional writing wasn't for me (for the most part), and I loved working in a bookstore (but the pay sucked), but I still have a love of reading. It took me a long time to realize that not everyone shared my passion for books. I remember when I joined the military I could find one fellow book lover. You would ask what the last book they read was, and they would always ask back, "You mean for fun?" followed by telling you the last thing they read was in high school. Many of my friends were book nerds. Even among booksellers I seldom found anyone that read as much as I did.
Growing up I only had access to a small town library (since closed) a few blocks away, the city library across town (much bigger, but still nothing amazing), and what books I could buy at the Walden's or through the Scholastic book orders. The first big library I ever saw was in Madison Wisconsin. I've since been to some of the biggest in the world.
I still love books, but don't tend to read the same quantity or in the same manner. I tend to only have the bandwidth for one book at a time, and I now take a week or more to finish a book. I try to challenge myself with my reading, so I tend to read books that I feel make me a smarter person, or that apply to skills I want to develop. I still enjoy the occasional cotton candy book, but no longer feel a compulsion to stay on-top of genres or to be a completist. I also am pickier about what I read, and I am no longer as insufferable about reading as I once was. I used to view those without a background in literature as somehow lacking an education, and I felt pity for those who didn't enjoy reading.
I've parted with much of my collection. Mostly because at some point I realized I wasn't going to have my own kids to pass them onto, so like my Tae Kwon Do instructor I've given most away. My home still resembles a library, but I have a strict no loan policy. Either I like you enough to gift the book, or it doesn't leave the house. Too many times I've never gotten back irreplaceable books. Generally, if you are a guest in my home you can raid my book collection, and expressing interest in a title is akin to asking permission to have it.
My retirement dream is to buy a bookstore and live above it. I want to own the building and the land and I want enough money in the bank to where I don't have to worry about making enough money to eat. Then as the neurons in my brain begin to delaminate, I plan to once again spend my days and nights doing nothing except reading. I wish I had ten lifetimes to read everything I'd like to. If I were immortal I would spend ten thousand years reading. I feel like I already have access to everything ever written through inter-library loan or Amazon. I can pretty much own anything I would like to read with the click of a button, but growing up I had to hunt down titles I take for granted having access to instantly now. I miss that. I also miss having the time and mental capacity to read for long hours and finishing a book in a single sitting (and then starting the next one because I am not tired).
tl;dr: I can't imagine having grown up in the NYPL.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:25 AM on February 21, 2018 [16 favorites]
I became a book collector (some would say hoarder) in high school, and for the next decades I'd have dozens times dozens of boxes of books to move whenever I change residence. People would say to me, "I don't buy books. I believe in libraries." I always responded, "I believe in libraries as well. I think everyone should own one." When I got my first real job it was in a bookstore. When I first tried living on my own it was as a full-time employee of a Borders (store policy allowed you to use the store as a library if there were multiple copies of a book). I haunted old used bookstores. I would travel for libraries.
When I finished high school I decided college wasn't for me because I was the smartest person I knew. Ok, maybe not, but you can't voraciously read and stay dumb, and I didn't know anyone that read like I did. If I read a book and two characters were having a philosophical argument about another book, I'd have a compulsion to go read the primary text just so I could determine which character was correct. I read Hegel's "Science of Logic" this way. I was usually incredibly bored in school, because I already knew everything. I would spend my classroom time reading books I wasn't supposed to read inside books that I was. If I was given a textbook I would read it from cover to cover without stopping (as long as it was a subject I enjoyed, and there were few subjects I disliked).
People donated books to the cause. My Tae Kwon Do instructor gave me his golden age SF and fantasy book collection. There was great stuff in there, as well as total crap like "The Tarnsman of Gor." There were books it would take me decades to understand (but I still read them). National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" is a bit to much to wrap your head around when you are 11 or so and haven't yet been exposed to the actual LoTR books (yet). I would reread books, some annually (I don't do this as much anymore). I amassed a huge collection and even when I outgrew a title I had a hard time letting it go. I think I was in my 30s before I parted with my Choose Your Own Adventure books or my Narnia books.
Eventually I decided not being in college sucked, and I mostly went to because that's what people my age did, and since I was a slacker, I decided I would be an English major (with an emphasis in literature). Mostly because I figured since I already loved books...
In college, if a professor assigned a book, there was a 50/50 chance I'd already read it. And once I started to get a real income my book collecting got out of hand. I would do the math, and a nice wood bookshelf would cost me around $40 in an antique shop, but that was like five new books, so I seldom bought anything to display my books on, so I would keep them in the boxes that reams of paper ship in. I had a whole room in my house that was literally just boxes of books from floor to ceiling. I had way more books than I could ever read, so I started to make up rules on what I could read any buy. I would always have 3-5 books going at any one time. I would just separate the genres so as not to get confused. When I read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series I would also read a non-fiction book on nautical history (I think he recommended one in a foreword), and I'd have philosophy, poetry, and probably a science fiction book going all at once. Reading one book usually was a commitment to reading a lot more. If I read a series book, that meant I'd end up reading the series. If I read a book like one of the above O'Brian books, I'd end up moving onto books that series inspired (like the Liveship series by Robin Hobb).
One of my favorite Ray Bradbury quotes when someone asked him if he'd read all the books in his library was, "What good would a library of read books be?"
I can't remember the actual saying, and google is failing me, but there's some blessing that says something like, "In heaven may you find yourself living between two bookstores and across the street from the library". I invented a whole theology of books. I dreamed that when I died I'd not only have access to every book ever written, but all the books that author would have written had they not died. I later encountered this concept in the Gaiman "Sandman" comics, and loved it. I was a weird kid, and when I started reading a book, that I was enjoying, I would start to be afraid I might die before finishing it (my idea of hell). I read good books, great books, and horrible books. My definition of a good book is one you want to read again; a great book is one you read over and over again ("Blood Meridian" is a great book, "American Gods" is a good book). It took me decades to realize that life is too short for bad books, so I almost always finished a book once I started it. I'd read anything from gay erotica or architecture.
I remember losing a book that was out-of-print, and it took me a decade to find a copy. To this day I have difficulty leaving a copy of Michael Moorcock's "Gloriana" on the shelf. I am like that Mel Gibson character in "Conspiracy Theory" who has a compulsion to buy "Catcher in the Rye." I used to be a completist. I would collect every book by an author, even if this meant hunting down obscure titles in sketchy neighborhoods.
I failed first grade because I couldn't read. I had to repeat the grade, and I remember my mother changing my bedtime to a half hour later, so long as I agreed to spend that time trying to read. It didn't take long before I was like the kid in the linked video, where I would stay up all night with a flashlight or headlamp. My mother was a evening shift waitress then, a college student by day, and a single mother, so she didn't have as much money or time for teaching reading, so I more or less had to figure it out by myself, and once I did, you couldn't get me to stop. She was going to school to become a med tech, so I read laboratory medicine or the physicians desk reference or anything I could get my hands on. In high school I remember getting kicked out of sex education because I laughed at something, and the teacher got mad, and asked, "So you think this is funny?" And I responded, "You don't?" She says, "So you know everything?" and I said I knew "enough to get by." The principal agreed to give me whatever grade I got on the final as my grade for the class, and rather than sitting through the class I would have to spend that time in the library! (I got a 98% on the final, and still remember the two questions I missed). I misbehaved a lot in high school and the punishment was always being sent to the library. Morons.
I just loved words.
I moved to Minneapolis as a young adult because Steven Brust was my favorite author (ages 14-17) and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I met the man when I worked in a bookstore, and interviewed him for AOL. I sponsored a book signing of one of his books, and took him out to dinner. He was the first time I ever understood the idea that one should not meet their idols. I thought he was pretty damn cool, but realized fairly quickly the feeling wasn't mutual. Oh well. Writers are my rockstars. I have met and interviewed dozens. I have had coffee with or picked up many more writers from the airport. I've met David Eddings, Capt. Kangaroo, the Coen brothers, Alexs Pate, Jane Smiley, pretty much every mystery writer you can think of, Lawrence Watt Evans, and a more than I can even think of right now.
I decided professional writing wasn't for me (for the most part), and I loved working in a bookstore (but the pay sucked), but I still have a love of reading. It took me a long time to realize that not everyone shared my passion for books. I remember when I joined the military I could find one fellow book lover. You would ask what the last book they read was, and they would always ask back, "You mean for fun?" followed by telling you the last thing they read was in high school. Many of my friends were book nerds. Even among booksellers I seldom found anyone that read as much as I did.
Growing up I only had access to a small town library (since closed) a few blocks away, the city library across town (much bigger, but still nothing amazing), and what books I could buy at the Walden's or through the Scholastic book orders. The first big library I ever saw was in Madison Wisconsin. I've since been to some of the biggest in the world.
I still love books, but don't tend to read the same quantity or in the same manner. I tend to only have the bandwidth for one book at a time, and I now take a week or more to finish a book. I try to challenge myself with my reading, so I tend to read books that I feel make me a smarter person, or that apply to skills I want to develop. I still enjoy the occasional cotton candy book, but no longer feel a compulsion to stay on-top of genres or to be a completist. I also am pickier about what I read, and I am no longer as insufferable about reading as I once was. I used to view those without a background in literature as somehow lacking an education, and I felt pity for those who didn't enjoy reading.
I've parted with much of my collection. Mostly because at some point I realized I wasn't going to have my own kids to pass them onto, so like my Tae Kwon Do instructor I've given most away. My home still resembles a library, but I have a strict no loan policy. Either I like you enough to gift the book, or it doesn't leave the house. Too many times I've never gotten back irreplaceable books. Generally, if you are a guest in my home you can raid my book collection, and expressing interest in a title is akin to asking permission to have it.
My retirement dream is to buy a bookstore and live above it. I want to own the building and the land and I want enough money in the bank to where I don't have to worry about making enough money to eat. Then as the neurons in my brain begin to delaminate, I plan to once again spend my days and nights doing nothing except reading. I wish I had ten lifetimes to read everything I'd like to. If I were immortal I would spend ten thousand years reading. I feel like I already have access to everything ever written through inter-library loan or Amazon. I can pretty much own anything I would like to read with the click of a button, but growing up I had to hunt down titles I take for granted having access to instantly now. I miss that. I also miss having the time and mental capacity to read for long hours and finishing a book in a single sitting (and then starting the next one because I am not tired).
tl;dr: I can't imagine having grown up in the NYPL.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:25 AM on February 21, 2018 [16 favorites]
Great stuff. StoryCorps is a treasure.
posted by young_simba at 8:31 AM on February 21, 2018
posted by young_simba at 8:31 AM on February 21, 2018
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posted by SansPoint at 6:23 AM on February 21, 2018 [13 favorites]