Jamie’s Top-10 Most Memorable Library Moments
Finally, a group of readers (Librarians!) that won’t snicker, chuckle, or otherwise laugh out loud at what I’m about to tell you. Ready? Here goes:
1) I met my wife at that hotbed of swinging singles activity known as…the public library. Hey, no laughing! Bat Girl was a librarian––and she was hot! (Cupid hangs out at the library by the way, look in the 300s). We met at a writers’ group hosted in the basement, right next to a room with recovering alcoholics and a program where people read to their pets. I think there’s a padded room down there somewhere but I can’t confirm it.
2) I was kicked out of my junior high school library, along with five of my geeky friends, for playing Dungeons & Dragons. A concerned parent accused us of worshipping Satan and had us booted. Because that’s where Satan likes to be worshipped, you know––the library, way in the back right next to the Encyclopedia Satanica.
3) In my past life I worked in advertising and was approached by my local public library to do a pro-bono campaign for a mill levy. Like all libraries, they were short on capital to make much-needed improvements. The levy passed with a whopping 77% of the vote. A literary landslide that left the library’s director shouting, “Damn, I should have asked for more money!”
4) As a kid in the 70s, I was into the rock band KISS. (I even dressed up as Peter Criss for Halloween). So years later, when I saw Kiss And Tell, the autobiography of lead-singer, Gene Simmons, I had to check it out. This is one of those rock-star, tell-all yarns about wild back-stage bacchanalia and life on the road. The best part was the bookplate. The book had been purchased with money donated to the library’s foundation, and read: “In loving memory of our reverent mother, Agnes.” Rock on, Agnes.
5) In high school I boosted a book from the library. I hesitate to use the word “stolen,” because I eventually paid the fine. The book, Harlan Ellison’s Deathbird Stories, was on the verge of being banned at the time. My collective friends and I saw it as our duty to save Harlan’s book. Still, I felt bad. Until years later when I read one of the author’s famous quotes: “If you have a burning passion for books and can’t afford them, steal them. Pay society back later”. I guess I need to send Harlan a check.
6) When I went to NYC last year to meet the lovely folks at Random House, I went directly from the airport to the New York Public Library. I felt like a pilgrim visiting the Holy Land, only that land was actually the Rose Reading Room.
7) It’s ironic how small schools will ban books like The Catcher in the Rye, but leave that fount of all things four-lettered—the dictionary. I recall being in grade school pouring over a ginormous tome with pages dog-eared from countless generations of gangly boys trying to discern the facts of life. Even today I can remember that a certain word was preceded by the word fuchsin––a purplish-red aniline dye. Some day that bit of trivia will be my savior on Jeopardy.
8 ) Two years ago I returned to the library of my childhood to find it closed. Despite millions of dollars in expansion and renovation, a nasty political fight resulted in the doors being shut, permanently. There were signs all over the front entrance that read, “Maybe if they’d stop spending so much on war, we could have a library.” I shoved a five-dollar bill beneath the door and sadly walked away.
9) I edited most of my novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, at the public library. It was summer and my kids were constantly confusing my home office with a McDonald’s Playland, so I packed up my manuscript and laptop and got it done at the library. Shhhhhhhhhh.
10) My first book event, as a real bonafide author, was at the public library. Unfortunately my reading coincided with a record-shattering blizzard and a remodel of the library entrance, which made attendance rather light. Only readings at leper colonies get fewer patrons. The janitor thought I was pretty good, though. Once I woke him up.
What are your memorable moments?
Jamie Ford’s first novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet went on sale in January 2009. Visit his author website to read an excerpt, download a reading group guide, view images of the true events that inspired Hotel, and follow his blog.
BEHIND THE SCENES:
Watch as Jamie Ford narrates a tour of the Seattle neighborhood where Japanese lives were disrupted at the start of World War II, the subject of his moving new novel.
I think my most memorable Library moment was having dinner with Clyde Edgerton (and a few other essay winners) at the Executive Director of my Library’s house. We had a nice meal and talked stories and writing and music. It was that or doing photo-shoots of my friends in the high-school Library (the girls who all looked way to good to be interested in me as anything more than a friend). The 17 year-old me would give the nod to the pretty girls, the 30+ year-old me has to go with the hanging with the author.
I’m always appalled when people I formerly thought of as reasonably intelligent say “oh, I just got a Library card this week” and they’re in their 30s. It’s like finding out somebody is driving without a license, or insurance, or a seat belt. For me, the Library is the Holy Land (hence the word gets capitalized).