A Peaceful Read, George Goodwin Kilburne; 1869
Today’s cutting-edge libraries function as part of a mopping-up campaign to extinguish whatever small fragments of imagination children might have left after having been bombarded by thousands of colorful flashing pictures on screens throughout their infancy.
ALAN writes:
“Imagination Lives Here” is a pet slogan of the St. Louis Public Library. It can be seen on library trucks. It is part of the aggressive novelty-and-marketing frame of mind by which American libraries are now run. I think it is good for a laugh.
A hundred years ago, “library” meant a storehouse of books, including the best that had been thought and written. That was enough to attract grown-ups and children alike. But to the modern anti-mind, enough is never enough. It is a measure of the American passion for excess that people who run libraries today look upon that idea as old-fashioned—by which they mean: inexpressibly horrible. Instead, they favor aggressive sales ploys like free concerts, movies, games, coloring books, crayons, comic books, ‘zine making, and prizes for reading books. This fact alone proves that we are living in an alternate universe. And isn’t it so much better?, they say. And isn’t it so much Folderol?, I say.
At this point, someone will object: But don’t libraries today discharge their traditional function of making books and periodicals available? Of course they do, and they do it very well. But that is part of the revolutionary stratagem of one step back, two steps forward. That is how the Fabians have it rigged. It is as if they said to Americans: You may continue to use libraries qua libraries, but at the same time we will use them to help advance the Permanent Revolution. And have no doubt that American libraries are now run by feminists and Fabian change agents.
That is bad enough and should tell us all we need to know about the philosophical-political slant of people who run libraries.
Equally bad is the pandering to the eye, which is very different from an appeal to the moral-philosophical-esthetic-intellectual capacity of mind and thought that was part of the traditional identity of libraries. Pandering to the eye is now excused because entire generations of Americans have grown up staring at screens and are therefore stuck on what can be seen instead of what can be thought. Books in libraries are now displayed face-out, as in book stores that pander to the lowest common denominator. Most of them are hip, cute, ironic, shocking, and cutting-edge cool.
I can remember a time in the retail world when stores began giving themselves cutesy names and tacking on the words And More. Since the people who run libraries are no longer standard-bearers but fad followers, how could they not transform their libraries into Books—And More?
I have no objection to amusement parlors, fun houses, and entertainment centers. But I want them to be called by those names, not by the word Library. In other words, I want a library to be what it has always been. The modernist anti-mind cannot understand such naked simplicity. The modernist anti-mind hates limits and boundaries. Its guiding ethos is: And More. Enough is never enough. For a thing to be what it is is never enough. For books to be what they are is never enough. There must always be: And More. Read More »