"The Library Book"

The core theme of Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book” (2018) is the devastating damage to the Los Angles Central Library building and its book collection by suspected arson on April 29, 1986. The damage was exacerbated by the necessity for oceans of water to extinguish it, in this case over a seven-hour period of time. If you do not remember the event, as I did not, it may be because, horrible as it was, it was largely overshadowed by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine just three days earlier. . If ever there was something good to come of disaster, it is the writing of this book by Orlean. The warmth of it in telling Central Library’s story, while also telling the story of Libraries as centers for community good, makes it a must read. That is what Melanie, until recently Youth Services Coordinator at Murrysville Community Library, said to me one day. “You must read it,” she said. So I have, and she was right.

The book covers a lot, well beyond the story of the fire itself, and Central Library. It is a door-opener into how public libraries work internally, how they serve all tiers of public life, even the homeless, with resources for opportunity and refuge from the rain. It covers who gets drawn into the role of librarian as profession. And how those who do serve with true professionalism and care; and yet they chafe for lack of fair pay, as well as full safety and cleanliness, sad to say, when dealing with the homeless.

The book is about the legal travails in trying to prove indisputably the case for arson, for the L.A. Central Library fire specifically and any other suspicious fire in general. There is one prime suspect, Harry Peal, whose character is so well developed as to make the reading worthwhile for that alone. He is mostly an errand boy by profession. He is a psychologically needy person, claiming to be a sometime actor in a city acutely aware of celebrity. He wants to be known as among the celebrities, on a conversational basis with them. But he is an inconstant liar about that and all else, as judged by his stories that are unsubstantiated and meander about from day to day. Meandering alibis, too, and yet the case for arsonist is tough to make. We never know.

Chapter nine is particularly interesting for its historical accounting. “People have been burning libraries for nearly as long as they’ve been building libraries.” “The first recorded instance of book burning was in 213 BC, when Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang decided to incinerate any history books that contradicted his version of the past.” He also buried more that 400 scholars alive. Burn, ban. Does this all sound familiar?

Yet Orlean’s work of more than four years in research and writing is only a search for the truth of the case, not a proof. Fires do not require human hands.

The original Los Angeles Central Library was built about a century ago. It came to have old electrical wiring and be overstuffed – no, overwhelmed - with books everywhere. Lots of tinder therefore, in stacks off shelves, in places that were never intended for books to be. This aging physical facility was long overrun by its own contents.

There is enough in the telling that you, too, can opine about what might have caused the fire after reading the book. Do read it. If nothing else, Susan Orlean’s closing remarks will move you deeply, but do not peek!