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By Vicki Gundrum (Jul 15, 2005) I am a good example of a type: bibliophile. The word "bibliophile" comes from the French, via the Greek language: "biblio" means "book," and "philo" means "loved one." I did not come from a book-loving family, but I was a born reader-grasping my little cardboard Golden Books as my twin clutched her dolls. I think that book-loving can be nurtured into being among those for whom it is not in their nature-that is one mission of libraries. My mission in reporting this Biblioteca Pública reconnaissance is to encourage others of my type to browse the English-language stacks there. Why? Because you'll have a damned good time! Begin anywhere and start to scan the shelf. If you're like me, you'll immediately see a favorite book-which is a lot like being new in town and running into an old friend in the Jardín. Are you familiar with the world traveler's eerie experience of running into someone from your past in a far-off corner of the world? If you could forget the serendipitous delight and scrutinize for a moment how you and your old buddy might share some characteristics-for example, socio-economic status-and that the world traveler gringo trail is a well-defined route, then you might see that if you consider all the people you've ever known in your life, the chances of running into any one of them at any time, any where is, well, not really that one-in-a-million chance encounter it might seem to be. (I won't speak further about perceiving odds, but if you find this topic interesting, seek out The Book of Risks: Fascinating Facts About the Chances We Take Every Day, by Larry Laudan. You can find it at the Biblioteca Pública. Larry Laudan lived in San Miguel for over ten years. He now lives in Guanajuato with his wife Rachel Laudan, also an author. Look for one of her books, The Food of Paradise, also at the Biblioteca.) If you're still with me, then you're the kind of person who doesn't mind transgressions-which is part of the joy of browsing the stacks. You'll pause at the information on a book spine and recall what you know about the book and its author. You might pull out a few books and leaf through some pages. In addition to finding favorite books, you'll see other familiar ones: books that were useful for a time (Betty Crocker´s Cookbook), good for a peek (Masters and Johnson on Sex and Human Loving), assigned reading for a class, or a fixture on your parents' coffee table for years. You'll see titles you've long wanted to read but have not found time to read. For me, this list includes: The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, by Riane Eisler, The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell; A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Take a few more steps and you'll gaze upon ancient and contemporary classics, including: Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, Dante's The Divine Comedy, Lady Murasaki´s The Tale of the Genji, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote. Never had the time to read some "big" ones? War and Peace, by Tolstoy, is there, and so are Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon; Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace; and One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Have you read much drama or poetry? Now is your chance to read in the genres you've neglected. Let the collection be your guide to the "must-reads." Continue your Dewey Decimal stroll and eventually you will come to the reference section, where part of your brain will happily note the availability of volumes you might need some day. I used to maintain a collection of my own books, often buying books that intrigued me but were not too well known. I'd buy books I was afraid I'd forget about before I had a chance to read them. After many years, this strategy and my big collection became unwieldy. I admitted to being powerless over my compulsion to read, turned the cereal box around to read the side panel, and then decided to give away most of my books. But like the comedian Steven Wright, who said, "I have a large seashell collection, which I keep scattered on beaches around the world," I still feel in possession of my objects of desire. Now I keep lists of books I want to read and I let libraries store them for me. Have you guessed my type's subtype? I'm bibliophile, general reader. Further, if you let people = books, then my personal, book smarts subject headings might read: 1. Broad Topic Survey Knowledge; 2. Knowledge via Twenty Years of Avid Readership; 3. Career in Book Publishing; 4. Special Fondness for the British Writers J.G. Ballard and Geoff Dyer, the Short Stories of North American Lorrie Moore, and Books About Books. I have not had as satisfactory a browse-the-collection experience at the New York Public Library or at other large public and university libraries. The same books are there-the same old friends, experts at the ready, celebrities yet to be encountered-but you cannot hope to run into them. There are simply too many obscure texts, in addition to the misses among the hits. To satisfy your own bibliophile subtype (and sub-subtypes), you'll want to see the library sections dedicated to your special interests. Perhaps you can contribute an essential book to the group. You might discover that another library patron shares your passion and has helped to create a treasure trove for you. To a bibliophile, such a discovery feels like striking gold. If you are a bibliophile who is new to Latin America, as I am, you might stiffen mid-stroll-stride with the sudden thought: "Oh, I wonder if they have that great story about that fantastic, labyrinthine library by Jorge Luis Borges?" They do. You must read it: "The Library of Babel" (within the collection Ficciones ). Of this story Borges said: "Increasing blindness helped me to write [it]." He revealed that in his dreams he was always "lost-hence perhaps my interest in labyrinths." His love for language was apparent in his casual conversations, as in his writing: "Do you know that in Mexico they say 'I am seeing you' when they mean 'I will see you'? I find the translation of the present into the future very ingenious." (Quotations from "The Immortal," by Christopher Hitchens, p. 146, in The Atlantic Monthly, Sept, 2004, Vol. 294, No. 2.) Ah!-another transgression, but one that mirrors the baby half-step that separates bibliophiles from lovers of libraries. And once you fall in love with libraries, it takes only a little push to develop a taste for taxonomies. Bibliophiles, whet your appetite for taxonomic systems of organization by considering this taxonomy of the animal kingdom, which Borges attributes to an ancient Chinese encyclopedia entitled the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge (Borges, J. L., p. 108 in Other Inquisitions. NY: Washington Square Press, 1966; The Biblioteca has a Spanish edition, "Otre Inquisiciones"): On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance. Then, you might join me in thinking: Such strange categories. That Borges was himself a librarian is essential trivia. (Is "essential trivia" oxymoronic? Is "oxymoronic" a word?) I'm jealous of all librarians. (The Biblioteca Pública's chief librarian is Juan Manuel Fajardo.) What makes this passage art? (Linguist/author George Lakoff addresses this question in his book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind.) Finding myself in the Biblioteca-home to more than 50,000 books, both Spanish and English, and one of the largest collections in all of Latin America of books in English-I now want to especially find works by Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jorge Amado, Octavio Paz, Isabelle Allende. First on my new list of books to find, however, is Poems, Protest and a Dream by early feminist and Baroque poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century nun. Her work is known by every Spanish-speaking schoolchild, and its inclusion (the Biblioteca has eight Spanish volumes of her poetry) is a nice reminder of the Biblioteca's founding mission to educate the children of San Miguel. The children have their own room in the Biblioteca. There I spotted shelves labeled "Inglés"-including one that held two volumes of the charming "The Shaggy Little Burro of San Miguel," by Margaret Cabell Self with pictures by Betty Fraser. Self dedicated the book to "all the patient burros of Mexico, but especially to those of San Miguel." Thinking that too many cars have replaced burros, I checked the publication date: The book was published in 1965 by Duell, Sloan and Pearce of New York City. It includes many fine drawings of burros, and one of the stunning Parroquia. Just because the Biblioteca Pública´s English-language collection is the perfect size does not mean I want it to stay the same size. On the contrary: I want it to grow. Think about the size of a dress that fits perfectly on the Mexican girl at her first communion, or the larger and just-the-right-size wedding dresses on brides all over the globe. There is beauty in every age, and to claim that an experience is a good fit often means that the two of you are maturing together. In fact, the collection is growing. Forty-eight new books have been ordered. They will be on the "Recent Arrival" shelves by the end of June. (An English version of Juana´s Poems, Protest, and a Dream is on its way.) Even more English-language books are slated for purchase later in the year. And there are donations coming in all the time. Please read; please donate books so that others and I might read them, please read some more. I hope to see you in the stacks. Vicki Gundrum reads and edits books in her San Miguel apartment. You can reach her at vicki.gundrum@excite.com |