FITZGERALD writes:

I went to our public library with my youngest son recently and was horrified by the book selection. I haven’t darkened a library in years thanks to Amazon.com’s used book service and I’m glad because the bias was more apparent than ever. First, the rulers of the library fiefdom were a group of frumpy, angry crones. Then, scanning through a number of sections in the “non-fiction” area I found a 9-1 preponderance of outright Marxist or feminist texts, books like Sexual Violence and the American Male.  The ideas being drummed into the masses in public education, libraries, colleges, etc. are destroying the fabric of society. It’s truly sad. Being a busy professional I’ve opted out of the public education racket, protecting my kids to the best of my ability without locking them up and helping other parents to do the same. My brief jaunt to the library just reinforced how bad things really are. I will not be going back, and the closest my children will be to the library will be the used bookstore down the street.

                                                                         — Comments —

Drina writes:

The Main Library downtown in our city isn’t much better. The children’s section is in its own part of the building, away from the rest of the library, and there you will often find a young man who is obviously homosexual, mascara to boot, working behind the desk, lending out books and helping children with their homework. Appalling.

Laura writes:

That is appalling. Parents should complain.

Kilroy writes:

I can attest that Fitzgerald’s public library experience is common here in Australia too. I haven’t been to a public library since the very early days of secondary school – that would be nearly two decades. Actually, I lie. I have recently been to the library – they had a photocopier that was a little cheaper than the one at the newsagency, also, the public convenience was convenient. As for the actual functional objective of the library, I didn’t even bother to look. Public libraries here are storehouses of pulp and garbage, much in the same vein as Fitzgerald describes. But I would go further – I have even started avoiding going into bookstores. My literary expeditions are almost exclusively limited to second hand and antiquarian bookstores. On a related point, I will confess one thing: when I was a school student, I found a pristine copy of a book (Catch 22 by Joseph Heller) hidden away at the school library. I stole it. I stole it because I knew for certain that it would be vandalised like the others. I didn’t consider my act to be a crime, more a liberation of sorts. I still have it. It sits nicely in my private library which is now quite extensive – I’ve read it about five times and enjoy every trip into that rich literary universe. Even though I did commit larceny, I don’t regret taking it. But it is a morally conflicting issue – after all, even so many years post event, I still think about how I came to have it in my possession.

Laura writes:

I have a reverence for libraries that no amount of trashing of the collections will shake. But you were an adolescent who didn’t know better.

I live in an area with richly-funded libraries and yes, the collections tend heavily toward liberal propaganda, but you can still get classics and some excellent new books. There are exceptions to the rule of favoring liberal books and I can even get a book by Phyllis Schlafly at my local branch. Nevertheless, there are many, many books I cannot obtain. I heavily use the interlibrary loan program which draws books from all over the state. It is a small miracle. The librarians even call my home to let me know when a book has come in.

The vandalizing of books is something that is noticeably on the increase. More and more volumes have pencil and pen marking on their pages. This is depressing. I cannot imagine defacing a library book though I have unintentionally or carelessly damaged a few. What goes through the mind of someone who marks his favorite passages in a borrowed book with a pen or highlighter? He is a narcissist undeserving of the printed page, a barbarian who should confine his reading material to street signs and the backs of cereal boxes.

Homeschool Marm writes:

For at least the last few decades, libraries (following the example of book stores) have stocked their shelves with popular books, which tend to be contemporary books rather than classics. This is what the masses have come to desire because parents and teachers and those in authority have neglected their duty to set a high standard of taste; they have failed to develop good taste themselves and pass it on to the children. 

In an article in Praesidium, Thomas F. Bertonneau writes about the vastly higher standards of literary taste during the early years of the twentieth century. He gives examples of what was read in ‘the classroom reader’ by those whose formal education ended in the eighth grade. He also gives turn-of-the-twentieth-century examples of prose styles of the highly educated and those having only an eighth-grade education. He writes: 

…the culture of “mass literacy” endured “in its narrow period from 1830 to 1930”; during this century, “the almost universal habit of reading for recreation or excitement conferred the greatest complexity on the greatest number… The world of the VCR is closer to pre-literate society of traveling mummers than it is to that of the young F. Scott Fitzgerald’s readership in 1920” 

“Where once the Odyssey was read in the schools, in a jeweled and mandarin translation, Holden Caulfield takes his stand” . Caulfield, Ozick writes, “is winning and truthful, but he is not demanding”. By “the schools”, she does not mean college. …she tells what demanding reading did when it still held a place in the public school curriculum. The century-old classroom readers that Ozick has before her as she writes are full of rich selections, whose vocabulary and syntax are of a high order: 

What did these demanding sentences do in and for society? First, they demanded to be studied. Second, they demanded sharpness and cadence in writing. They promoted, in short, literacy—and not merely literacy, but a vigorous and manifold recognition of literature as a force. They promoted an educated class. Not a hereditarily educated class, but one that had been introduced to the initiating and shaping texts early in life, almost like the hereditarily educated class itself. 

Thus, Mr. Fitzgerald has made a significant observation; one which signifies the loss of literacy in our society. Like him, I have long left libraries and sought sources of scholarly and classic works in local used bookstores and among Amazon’s used sections. Fortunately, the Internet is a free source of wonderful works, such as those within literatefreedom.org. Thank you, Mrs. Wood, for providing this website for the continuing education and guidence of your readers.

Laura writes:

The developments in library culture are depressing. Libraries have become noisy meeting places and Internet cafés instead of sanctuaries. One of my local libraries plays music nonstop in the children’s section, something that would have been unthinkable when I was a child. The earliest libraries I visited had an air of holy reverence, and silence was strictly enforced by desiccated old ladies at the front desks.

But I cannot be as pessimistic as Fitzgerald. Libraries do still react to the demands of their constituents. The local libraries in my area take recomendations for book purchases. I know the trend is discouraging, but patrons should recommend specific books and demand to know why many conservative classics are missing from the shelves.

The biggest problem in library management is the belief that libraries should be all things to all people. They should not. They should provide only the best because there is nowhere else for many people to find it. A truly democratic library is not all things to all people. It enhances liberty and civic responsibility through contact with the greatest works. There’s a basic misunderstanding about the library’s democratic mission. Unfortunately, a radically egalitarian society has no way of defining what the best is. The best is only what is popular. Again, the bottom line is that this democratization of libraries ultimately does not serve the people.

Please follow and like us: