Chilly November Monday. I circle the Wilson parking lot, vainly
looking for a free space to leave my car. No luck. The pay ramp across
the street does nicely. Whenever I come to the Wilson, I recall the
first time I ever came, in college, with my girlfriend of the time, who
revealed the Wilson to me as her favorite place to study. We suburban
collegians hardly ever ventured into the city, so the Wilson seemed
exotic. It still does.
I decide that the books will be my focus here, and head upstairs to
find an unoccupied computer. I'm going to start my research with John
of Damascus, the focus of my first paper. A search for 'Byzantine
Christianity' yields several hits, and since I haven't yet committed to
a topic, I trust in titles: if the title grabs me, at least there was a
good marketing department behind the book, even if the author didn't
title it herself. My first choice: Why
the Nations Rage: Killing in the Name of God, by Christopher
Catherwood. It looks scholarly (Oxford), and the subject listings
intrique: Violence -- Religious aspects; War -- Religious Aspects;
Religious fanaticism. I admit, our last election and the war in Iraq
have me saddened and puzzled, and I'm hoping this book might shed some
light. I see it's a second edition, 2002, with "some reflections on
September 11, 2001."
Now I must reveal my secret: I'm a proximity library user. I use the
catalog to get a rough geographical bearing on where my interests lie,
and then I go to the stacks and browse. I'm ready to be seduced: by a
cover, a title, an interesting binding. This comes from so many years
in used book stores, which don't have catalogs and where hidden
treasures await those with dumb luck and the patience to walk and read
with one's head craned at a 90-degree angle. I must confess that I know
this shows how far I have to go to become a decent librarian, who can't
trust to dumb luck but instead spend time in research before getting to
the stacks. Does it make more sense when I say I'm the kind of person
who, rather than sit in traffic, will go 10 miles out of the way just
so I can have the sense that I'm moving?
So: BL65 .V55 C38 2002 is my new haunt. Whatever I can find in that
stack will become my research topic. Why the Nations... strikes me as a
little lightweight, both in thesis and range. I skip to the end and
read his essay on 9/11. It feels somehow soul-less and naive. Who
knows, he writes, the Muslim world might come to its senses and
surprise us, just as we were surprised by Russia in 1989. While his
core themes -- identity, nationalism, religion, violence -- are all
vital to the conversation about the world we are living in, he writes
[self-admittedly] as a historian. A certain kind of historian. I am
suspicious. I check the bibliography. Lots of references to Bernard
Lewis (how do I know that name?). None to René Girard. I am more
suspicious. He underestimates the violence in American religion, coming
across as overly optimistic and positive about the election of an
evangelical to the presidency. He's writing in spring of 2002, and he
admits it's dangerous to predict what will happen. But he totally
misses the mark on Iraq, saying instead that America's care not to be
overly violent in Afghanistan is a good sign. [A sign we can now be
suspicious about, given where our violent energies went next.]
Overcome by grief and hopelessness at the naive optimism of this
learned historian, I wander back to the shelves. The first title to
grab my eye: Sacred Longing: The
Ecological Spirit and Global Culture. Ah, perhaps this is what I
have been looking for. Mary C. Grey cites Celtic mysticism, feminist
theology, Ghandian ethics, and Girardian psychology [yes, plenty of
Girard here]. I'm soothed. A nice line: "a broken-hearted culture" that
"no longer desires 'the pearl of great price'...but merely the pearl"
[x]. But my WASP-yness emerges eventually, rankling at lines like "the
death of the goddess and the repression of female sexuality" [96]. I
might be in the mood for this in the spring, but today is a cold November
day, before the first snow, and I realize what I really long for is a
good novel.
Back to the shelves. Kierkegaard's
Living Room: Faith and History in Philosophical Fragments. Some
people might be bored by such a title; I get all warm and fuzzy, as if
my old girlfriend had suddenly appeared in the aisle. Time, space,
existential being. Flipping through David Mercer's obviously thorough
book is a nostalgia trip. After a minute, I realize I feel like a
character in a Woody Allen film. Meeting his old flame unexpectedly in
a cafe, on a rainy day, suddenly falling in love again, then,
thankfully, remembering why it was they had broken up so many years
ago, the rueful smile and adieu. Back on the shelf.
Farther afield, still looking for answers, I spy Meta-Reality: Creativity, Love and Freedom,
by Roy Bhaskar. Alright, I'll share exactly the mean thoughts I had. I
instantly imagined Roy mugged and left for dead, the victim of a
violent, tragic and uncreative end after a late-night binge following a
book signing at Higher Planes bookstore in the east village. No doubt
my own rejection of love and fullfillment, but I have a petty and
scurvy heart. I do note, however, that it is volume 1, and there are no
more volumes on the shelves.
I realize I need fiction, a good novel to assuage the guilt I now feel
at wishing Roy such an inglorious end. But does the Wilson have a
fiction section, I wonder, as I pass out of the religion section, past
the ear-phoned, laptopped, lip-balmed, bed-headed undergrads. How can
anyone read with their headphones turned up so loud?
Has Dalrymple written any fiction, I wonder? I check the catalog. There
are over 60 Dalrymples listed in the catalog. I was shocked. I had
never heard of that surname before this class, and there is a long
extended family of authors. Incredible. But no fiction under Dalrymple,
William. A recent book about India sounds interesting; made a note for
later.
Down the hall is the Dewey decimal section, the other half of the
strange hybrid of the U of MN cataloging system. I start looking at
titles. These seem fictional, I think. Here's one: A Bunch of Errors, by Salvador De
Madaricga. A worn book, circa 1954. Perhaps a tragicomic existentialist
farce, sure to lighten my mood? No. Instead, lines like "Duro glanced
at him with contempuous serenity." What is contemptuous serentity? An
emotion I've never experienced or observed. Contempt I know well,
serenity less so, but not the two together. Back on the shelf.
I realize I am hungry. A sure sign my patience is thin. Back down two
floors and out of the Wilson. Heading back toward my car I see the
North Country Coop and decide to see if they have any ready-to-eat
foodstuffs. All the alternative rags are there for the taking, and I
proudly see my local farmers' cooperative represented in the freezer
section, but nothing I'm ready to snap up and devour. Back to the car
then, and on to the St Paul Central library, where fiction abounds and
I can be sure to get something at Zelda's Cafe.
Parking right in front! At midday, even. And Zelda does not disappoint,
offering up a spicy chicken enchilada soup and a buttery croissant. My
mood lifts. Anything is possible. St Paul, good food, and a beautiful
library full of ordinary, unenrolled citizenry.
First stop is always the Magazine room, where I can catch the daily
paper and whatever interesting periodicals happen to be in. I grab a
recent (11/4/04) copy of the New
York Review of Books -- and lo! the cover article is by none
other than William Dalrymple. What a revelation! Here I am chasing
around looking for a topic for this paper, and Dalrymple has been
waiting in my favorite spot all along. It is at this moment that I
realize that I am truly not destined to be a librarian. My joy is in
discovery and reading for myself, not for others, and in the random and
unpredictable, the circumstantial and coincidental, not the careful and
considered. I find little joy in imagining what others will find
interesting, or helpful, or enriching. What I really love is going to
the library without an agenda, and finding things that interest and
entertain me. Perhaps my calling is to be a library-user, not a
librarian.
In any case, I hunker down with Dalrymple. What a great writer. So
humane and funny. The article is entitled, The Hidden Truths about Muslims and
is a review of several books, including Bernard Lewis (mentioned
throughout Catherwood). The first thing I notice is that Edward Said is
referred to as 'late' -- did I even know he had died? I must have
missed that lamentable passing. Ah, and here's the skinny on Lewis: a
neoconservative whose theories about Muslim culture have defined
current neoconservative foreign policy. I knew I didn't trust him!
Richard Fletcher's The Cross and the Crescent: Christianity and Islam
from Muhammed to the Reformation gets a glowing review. Oh! and even an
extended reference to my original research topic, John of Damascus.
Dalrymple writes, "under the rule of Umayyad caliphs of Damascus
religious practice was freer [than under Byzantine Christianity] and
the economy flourishing" [32]. John, and others, assumed Islam was just
a heterodox form of Christianity. Tell that to the hawks in the White
House!
I look up from my reading and around the room. How good it feels at
this moment to be in a busy city library, surrounded by so many
ordinary citizens hard at work on whatever their private errands might
be.
Dalrymple quotes Lewis saying that the Muslims who attacked the U.S.
believed that "the Americans have gone soft." My conspiratorial brain
starts ticking. What if that kind of rhetoric was simply there to
inflame the gung-ho egos of armchair warriors, the ones without sons
and daughters in the military, the ones who hadn't served themselves --
but who are serving themselves very handily right now.
Dalrymple ends with a funny little bit about English cooking and
cultural assimilation in Muslim countries, and I am off to find a copy
of Fletcher's The Cross and the
Crescent. I am hoping that the library has a copy but that it is
checked out -- a sign that someone else is as interested as I am. I am
a little disappointed to find that they have a copy on the shelf. Well,
it's mine for the next few weeks.
I finally make it to the fiction room, with its asthmatic ventilation
system and the great view of the Mississippi River. I wander again, not
at all sure for what I am looking, when I stumple on one of my great
favorites, Shusaku Endo, and a novel I have not yet read: The Final
Martyrs. Endo wrote several novels about the ambivalent presence of
Christianity in Japan and his own ambivalence with his Roman
Catholicism. I look forward to reading it. Armed with the latest City Pages from North Country Coop,
and two books from the St Paul Central, I head for home, anxious to dig
into my reading.
And this leads me to my final thoughts on this project. I have realized
that my joy is in reading and in discussing what I've read with other
people. I have loved the readings for this class and visiting
libraries. I haven't enjoyed the feeling of knowing I have homework to
do and exams to write. So this will be my first and last graduate
class. I've realized, too, that I have a job that I like well enough,
that certainly pays better than anything I could find in the library
world (a sad commentary on the library world more than my current job).
And I've realized something similar to what I learned when I was
considering the priesthood several years ago. I don't need to be a
[priest, librarian, professor, musician, whatever] to enjoy the fruit
of the profession. I still go to church, libraries, concerts; I still
read books, discuss them with others, play music, think and grapple
with ideas and my spiritual life. I just don't draw a paycheck for any
of it. And that actually makes me feel a little freer, to come and go
as I will, to follow the paths that appear before me.
Part book review, part library search, part personal reflection. I
think I deviate significantly from the syllabus. Oh well. I had a great
deal of fun.
Can I Work Here? or, How I Became Confirmed in My Decision Not to Become a Librarian