Kriston joins in the bien pensant fulmination against an apparent trend of libraries pulling classics off the shelves to make room for popular shlock, with a little tweak for his libertarian friends thrown in at the start:
The state, employing its monopoly on violence, coercively collects hard-earned citizen tax dollars and funnels them into moratoriums for the relatively unpopular but absolutely extraordinary achievements of mankind. Achievements like The Sound and the Fury–libraries hold The Sound and the Fury. A book-borrowing building that does not hold The Sound and the Fury–a list that might include the George Mason Regional Library, if it adheres to the quota system that allow it to boost Scott Turow’s stackshare by weeding William Faulkner– is not a library. When no one borrows The Sounds and the Fury from the library for 24 months, the library still retains the novel because it’s William Fucking Faulkner[….]
How much sense does this model actually make now? Presumably it made more sense when it was the only way classic literature might make its way to some burgeoning young autodidact stuck in a backwater where the only bookstore for 20 miles only carried Danielle Steele novels. But you can now get a fine used copy of The Sound and the Fury off Amazon for about four bucks (that’s with shipping included), or just download the whole text for free. Tsk, some of you will say, listen to Julian Antoinette and his blinkered libertarian “let them eat Amazon” spiel, as though anyone could afford a computer. Well, seriously, just about anyone can: On Craigslist there are plenty of old, lower-end, but still perfectly serviceable computers going for about $100, which seems like an investment that ought to be within the means of all but the most utterly destitute, who presumably have more pressing problems than whether they’ve got easy access to Swann’s Way. (And we can always have a separate discussion about the desirability of preserving subsidized free Internet terminals for those folk to use.) In any event, the proof of the pudding here seems to be that, in fact, years are going by without anyone checking out some of these classic tomes, which cuts against the notion that large numbers of people are going to be deprived of a cherished service.
What we can all agree on, I think, is that while we can argue the merits of public libraries as a means of subsidizing education, there’s no terribly compelling argument for subsidizing people’s amusement. You want to read the latest Grisham potboiler, suck it up and buy a paperback. And as a means of providing access to the classics, a centralized storage station in every small town seems increasingly about as efficient as selling music in huge stores stocked with bins of plastic and vinyl media. You want to make sure everyone’s able to read great literature and find accurate reference information? Skip the dead trees, find ways to make it easier for people to get online, and reform our absurd copyright system so that we don’t have to wait a century for great works to enter the public domain.
Update: Jon Swift’s take is worth reading if only for his imagined rendition of Marcel Proust as a blogger, which caused me to burst out laughing, and several other café patrons to glance at me nervously, wondering whether I was a crazy person.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Brian Moore // Jan 4, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I don’t know much ’bout these here libaries, but all I know is if they gots Faulkner, I don’t much like ’em.
I’ve hated everything Faulkner I’ve read. The only difference between it and Britney Spears’ autobiography is the second will actually get taken out.
Even if someone came in and took out some terrible trash novel, just the fact that they’re reading something at all instead of running screaming from the room upon glimpsing the horror that is Absalom, Absalom — means that trash novel is “educating” more than Faulkner.
Education should be engrossing, entertaining, stimulating and interesting. There are thousands of “educational” books that are. Faulkner is none of those things (at least to me, and the residents of Fairfax). Maybe the problem isn’t we simple-minded idiots who obviously don’t can’t get Faulkner, and rather instead the fact that Faulkner writes crap no one (except lots of people who already have quite a decent literary education) seems to like.
Faulkner isn’t entry level literature. No one should start on a education in literature with Faulkner. Once that hypothetical you has read quite a bit of other stuff, you can move on to it — but the fact that you have enough leisure time to pursue advanced literary education indicates you have, as you point out, enough money to pay 4$ for the book. And you probably will want to, in order to truly appreciate the great and beautiful work of art it no doubt is.
Sorry, ranting…. I just hate Faulkner. 🙁
2 Neil the Ethical Werewolf // Jan 5, 2007 at 11:32 am
Depending on how the book market works, there may be reasons for subsidizing people’s amusement. It’s more efficient to have 20 people all read the same copy (as can happen in a library) than for each of the 20 people to buy their own copies.
3 Julian Sanchez // Jan 5, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Neil:
Well, it’s more efficient still to have 10,000 people read the same copy in digital form…
4 laurex // Jan 13, 2007 at 10:50 am
First a semantic point- yes, it may be quite cheap to acquire a computer (though one needs to have access to Craigslist of course) but the hardware may not be the problem- internet access can be expensive over time and requires a sufficient degree of credit to obtain.
Aside from that, though, this solution:
ignores a fundamental issue, the role of public space. A library is not just somewhere that contains books, it is a place for people to go, to learn about books; persuse the shelves in a non-commercial setting; interact with people with degrees who are trained to help them (well, Barnes & Noble has that, but it’s not quite the same); bring children; attend social programs, lectures, etc.
Now, not everything is working in the public libary system, really, a lot are pretty bad. But it’s not because there isn’t a fundamental need for these kind of spaces. And sure you can just go order a book you want on Amazon, but I have read many books from the library just because they looked kind of interesting and it’s free, after all.
And for the record, I think Faulkner is cool.