The Library Book

The Library Book by Susan Orleans

This is ostensibly the story of the 1986 fire that ripped through Los Angeles' Central Library, but is really about much more. The book's 30 chapters alternate between three different perspectives. In one, Orleans tells the history of libraries in Los Angeles, helping to explain how the Central Library came to be built in the 1920s and its near-demolition in the 1970s and 1980s after years of neglect. Another focuses on the fire itself and the search for the person who set it, which investigators finally believed to be Harry Peak. Finally, Orleans sprinkles in short vignettes about the librarians who work at the library.

The history of Central Library was more fascinating that I thought it would be. One forgets how recently Los Angeles sprung out of the desert. A library -- not a standalone building -- was first opened in the place in the late 1800s. I was surprised by how progressive its head librarians were from the get-go. They seemed on a mission to reach out to the community from the very first, hellbent on upending any elitist pretensions people might have about who should have access to information. There were several characters as well, chief among them Charles Lummis, who appeared in Los Angeles in the 1880s to take a job at the LA Times. When he was hired, he was working in Ohio. Rather than take a train to LA, he decided to walk, capitalizing on the choice by writing a weekly column on his adventures that made him famous even before he arrived in his new town. His notoriety, and his sex, earned him the job as LA's librarian when the board decided to let go of the highly competent individual in the position because she was a she. That she, Mary Jones, did not go away quietly, instead fighting what became known as the Library Wars for her position. She lost. Lummis was fired, lasted a few good years and then was himself let go.

The story of the fire was also more interesting than I might have suspected, particularly in light of new approaches to arson investigations. Apparently, it used to be, and still is in some places, best practice to call something arson if no obvious other cause could be found. That is, if it could not be definitively proven that a fire was started by wiring or a faulty appliance or some such thing, it was declared arson. Unfortunately, investigators were often relying upon faulty assumptions when looking for the origin of a fire and so often overlooked the real cause of a fire. For instance, it used to be assumed that a fire burned the hottest at its origin. But that is apparently proven not to be the case. So now there is a national movement to free people wrongly convicted of arson. One man was in prison for the murder of his daughter for a fire he never set. This has impacted thousands of people. I had no idea!

There is a reason, though, that the book is not titled The Los Angeles Library Book, for all of these perspectives are really a chance for Orleans to explore the role that libraries have and will continue to play in our lives. Often thought of as mere lenders of books, libraries, particularly those in big cities, are in fact much more than that. Orleans focuses heavily on the role that libraries play for disadvantaged populations, particularly the homeless, for whom Central Library and thousands like it are a haven, a source of entertainment, and, in some cases, a way to connect to vital social services. In the end, I think it is this connection that Orleans argues that libraries, and the books within them, provide. They connect people to each other, to writers, to information and ideas, and, in the case of Central Library, to art. As Orleans closes, "Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage -- the writer's belief that someone would find his or her book important to read. I was struck by how precious and foolish and brave that belief is, and how necessary, and how full of hope it is to collect these books and manuscripts and preserve them. It declares that all these stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past and to what is to come."