Read and resist

Liz and I returned from the US almost a week ago and it’s taken me this long to even think about writing something about it.

How do you digest your first visit to New York City? During this administration?

I think a lot of people quietly questioned why we would even entertain the thought of going there, but the alignment of several significant anniversaries and the recent move of family to Boston persuaded us to do it.

I’ve been asked: what was your favourite part of the trip?

This is impossible to answer.

The freedom of being completely anonymous amongst the enormity of the city?

Riding the subway?

Watching the sharp extremes of gentle kindness and stark indifference playing out on a short trip between Midtown and Union Square?

Watching small birds hop about Bryant Park, at ease with the constant movement and noise of humans and machines?

Finding a Gertrude Stein statue, sitting in judgement of all of us, at the back of that same park?

Then realising the New York Public Library was right behind her?

If I had to favour an experience it would probably be this: the books of New York.

Many of us feel the unease of what’s happening around us in many parts of the world, feel helpless, incredulous, outraged. And we’re watching from a distance most of the time. The books and their custodians showed me that resistance and outrage is possible and it’s happening. From the NYPL to the Boston Public and Harvard libraries. From a tiny bookshop in Jamaica Plain in Boston to what is quite possibly best bookshop I have ever visited.

After visiting Gertrude, Liz and I walked around to the front of the NYPL, I’d already told Liz that there would be two lions there (Patience and Fortitude). As the grand entrance unfurled itself in front of us, I felt something in my throat and chest.

Holy. F**k.

This is IT.

I spent five years researching and writing about library catalogue interfaces for my PhD (niche, yes). Libraries have been one of the constants in my life: from riding my little red bike to the Alstonville Library as a child, to visiting my mother, grandmother and aunts at their workplaces (libraries), to taking four year old Dash to the Newtown Library for something to do because it was free and calm and he seemed to enjoy it.

Libraries are home. I saw the New York Public Library sitting atop the global library pile – along with a few others – and never thought I’d get to visit it.

We went in and it was like a busy gallery. Huge numbers of people walking around, looking at the architecture, trying to peer into reading rooms - off-limits to visitors, unless doing work.

(When I did a tour the following week, the guide explained that people had complained about the hoardes moving through, taking photos, talking and gawking, while they tried to do their work. They had to put a stop to it).

While seeing this library was emotional and significant, it was the sharp reminder of the role of libraries in resistance, and justice, that lifted me.

It was Banned Books Week. The library was making a big deal out of it, as was every bookshop I visited. The stores had tables of books labelled “Banned” or “Under threat” and these tables were heavily browsed. I heard exasperated people asking, “Why is THIS banned?” many times.

It’s not just the vocal role libraries play in maintaining a fair society, it’s their very existence that keeps me hopeful.

Libraries are free to join. You can go into them and sit there for as long as you like, browse for hours, and you are never pressured to buy. In fact, you can’t buy: they will LEND you the book and some libraries will even allow you take the book HOME.

At the NYPL you can sit in one of their reading rooms without becoming a member. You just walk in, tell them you’re there to do some work and the person at the desk will smile and say, of course.

You can sit down and open your books, or your computer, and be subsumed by a deep, delicious quiet, smack bang in the middle of one of the largest cities on earth. You can sit there as long as you want, and no one will ask you if you need a hand. No one will make demands on you or eye you because it’s been a couple of hours now and you need to buy something or get out.

There is no profit, except that gained by our brains and our hearts.

The NYPL is, despite its name, not funded by public money. It is funded through a combination of public and private money, thanks to the deep tradition of philanthropy in the United States. It remains steadfastly public, however, in its approach to access and its role in the city.

While tech bros think nothing of stealing the work of millions of writers, libraries pay for it. And then they give that work to us for free, which no doubt pisses the tech bros off no end. In their world they STEAL, then make us PAY for it; not pay for it and then give it away for FREE. Some countries even have Public Lending Rightswhich compensates authors for potential lost income from multiple uses of their work through a single purchase.

I’m not the first one to have wondered whether, if they were not already here, would the concept of a library even be possible to develop today.

Of course, I bought books in New York. I was restrained, however, because I knew I had to fit them in my bag to come home. As it was I had to pay an excess baggage fee as I’d loaded my suitcase beyond the 50 pounds allowed. If I was like a certain bookworm I know, I would have had the nerve to keep buying and ship them home. Hang the expense!

In the Visitors Information Centre at the NYPL there is a cabinet displaying books that were written in the library. As I stood looking at it, waiting for our tour guide who seemed to have forgotten he or she was meant to be on duty, I allowed myself to think: imagine if one of my books was in this cabinet one day?

The thought of sitting in a library, any library, reading and writing in the quiet, keeps me sane.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Georg x

I write this stuff because I have to, it’s a compulsion. However, if you like it and you want to show your appreciation, I admit that I get pretty chuffed when someone ‘buys me a coffee’ (makes a small, one-off contribution to the ‘Georg is a writer fund’). I need to buy more books.