Our Lady of Latter-day Libraries
What we lose when we lose touch with books
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Uncompensated Endorsement
A paean to what moves me
Our Lady of Latter-day Libraries
My memory for names is decent. For faces, solid. For slights, photographic. I think my ability to hold a grudge is encoded in my Ashkenazi DNA (along with a predisposition to certain gastrointestinal disorders). The Buddhist says: “Be here now.” We say: “Never forget.” The Jewish tradition is, to put it demurely, saturated with slights. In our prayers, holidays, histories, and humor, we recount and relive catastrophes and dispossessions of all sorts, from the toppling of the First and Second Temples, to the Inquisition and pogroms, to the Holocaust and terrorism. The message is clear. Forget and perish. Remember and endure.
Every culture inscribes certain historical traumas with special meaning, each event serving as a brick in a sort of Hadrian’s Wall between civilization and barbarism. In Western memory, few episodes loom larger than the successive fires (some accidental, some intentional) that reduced the Library of Alexandria, one of the greatest centers of scholarship in the ancient world, to ash and obscurity. Lesser known, but no less disturbing, were the destruction of the vast library of the Aztec emperor Montezuma by Spanish conquistadors and the sacking of aristocratic collections by French Jacobins. These tragedies and countless others are part of the long struggle between civilization and barbarism, a story illuminated in equal parts by the light of learning and the glow of burning books.
Why is the destruction of a library so demoralizing? Why is a burning book the ultimate symbol of social decay? Since our first impulse to record, we have committed our lives to cave walls, clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, vellum parchments, and sheaves of paper. So when we subject a book or scroll to ruin, we erase the lives of the creators and collectors who painstakingly constructed the corpus of knowledge: humankind’s most valuable inheritance alongside the natural world that sustains all life. That word, corpus, means “body” in Latin. The very language of “book anatomy” blurs the line between the literary and the living: spine, bleed, head, tail, belly, joint, jacket, and so on. If books embody our humanity, to kill a book, is to kill, period.
“Manuscripts don’t burn,” the Russian author Mikahil Bulgakov famously wrote in his novel The Master and Margarita. But as Roman armies, Spanish conquistadors, French revolutionaries, Nazi propagandists, and religious fundamentalists all understood, and right-wing censors and left-wing “decanonizers” understand, libraries are soft targets, achingly exposed to the elements, natural and human.
Technology promised to solve for the fragility of physical libraries. Barring an internet-crippling world war or cyberattack — neither inconceivable — code has an infinitely longer shelf life than a brittle scroll. But digitization is like nuclear power: it creates new problems while solving old ones. Today, we have infinite Libraries of Alexandria at our beck and call, but it’s harder than ever to absorb real nutritional value from what we consume via screens. Studies have even shown that the mere presence of a smartphone makes us less intelligent. Our fraught relationship with technology proves Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that “the medium is the message.” A weak medium — one that demands little effort and few resources to produce or access — breeds weak communication. In this sense, digital media is as brittle in value as books are brittle in substance.
As we lose physical contact with books and the deep transmission of knowledge it encourages, we sever a vital artery connecting our civilization to its life-giving past. A librarian friend and fellow Substack newcomer recently told me about the advent of "bookless libraries,” where all works are digitally accessible, but nothing is actually there. If books are appendages of human life, then I say it is equally unsavory to burn one than to digitize it into oblivion. Of course, not all books are worth claiming space in libraries, public or private. Others, however, should be preserved in print and kept in close company for reference and review. The English philosopher-statesman Francis Bacon wrote that “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” In turn, some are to be downloaded, and others held.
Plus, let’s be honest, what’s more dignified: slouching over a smartphone, or sitting upright with a book, magazine, or newspaper? Scan the scene on any New York subway and you’ll have your answer. Yes, I recognize the irony of writing all of this in Google Docs on a Macbook for an email newsletter. Forgive me, I just ran out of vellum yesterday.
We can’t sit around like tweedy snobs and mourn the loss of libraries while expecting new generations to return to dim and dusty stacks by sheer force of guilt. Books cost money. They require paper to produce, and fossil fuels to transport. When it comes to conservation, though, digitization is hardly a victimless crime. There’s the extraction of rare minerals and metals required for everything from batteries to computer chips to wind turbines. According to the International Energy Agency, data centers drain around one percent of global electricity annually. That doesn’t even factor in cryptocurrency mining, which zaps another 91 terawatt-hours per year — roughly half-a-percent of global consumption. But even if crypto remains fabulously popular (and equally boring), data centers are fast becoming more efficient. Assuming that curve continues, why shouldn’t we spare the resources required to access physical books when we carry the world’s information in a device that fits in our pocket? I propose a truce. The crisis of cultural amnesia demands new solutions that blend paper and pixels. And I don’t mean a bookstore lined with Kindles.
Enter Saint Heron to the sound of horns. Saint Heron Community Library, a project initiated by the collective fronted by Solange Knowles, powered by an all-star team of creatives and technologists, and backed by the Australian skincare brand Aēsop, offers one brilliant way back into books. “Offered seasonally with selections by guest curators,” the site explains, “this collection of rare, author-inscribed and out-of-print literary works can be borrowed up to 45-days, for free to our U.S. based community.” On the surface, with its superb branding and UX, Saint Heron looks like an elevated ecommerce platform. But instead of dropping coveted garments or skincare, Saint Heron drops books like Beyond the Clearing by poet May Miller. This was the volume I was lucky to land when the Library launched its first “season,” featuring 50 titles selected by Rosa Duffy of For Keeps Books, at noon on October 18th, 2021.
I’d been eyeing The Art of Henry O. Tanner, but by 12:01 it had already been snapped up. I wasn’t the only one with my mouse at the ready. Attracted by its austere cover design, I succeeded in reserving that slender, first-edition collection of poems by May Miller published by The Charioteer Press in D.C. in 1974. It arrived on my doorstep a few weeks later, revealing itself with an unboxing experience exceeding even the most design-oriented digital retailers, from JJJJound to SSENSE. The name Saint Heron felt appropriate, because wrapped with such tenderness, Beyond the Clearing became a holy object in my hands.
Saint Heron will succeed where other digital libraries have failed because it applies the habits of hype culture and commerce, forged in the context of streetwear into a $185 billion dollar industry, to reading. Note the provision of limited quantities, the accumulation and release of anticipation via scheduled drops, the conscious typography and color, the minimalist platform, the shareable unboxing experience, the taxonomy of “seasons.” But where hype breeds possessiveness, you never own a Saint Heron book. After 45 days, it simply passes through you, leaving only an imprint of emotion, some new ideas, and the tactile memory of paper. There’s a beautiful symmetry in using consumerist tactics to fight materialism, and technology to fight distraction.
Saint Heron delivers books that represent a “stylistically expansive range of Black and Brown voices in poetry, visual art, critical thought and design.” I hope to see a constellation of digitally mediated libraries reanimating print media through other cultural lenses — scientific, Marxist, indigenous, design, conservative, and so on. Each can do its part in steering fertile minds away from the accumulation of stuff, and toward the accumulation of knowledge.
I’m encouraged by what feels like a new wave of self-education in our culture, energized by a growing sense that our education system doesn’t adequately equip us to navigate a complex world. Ignorance is decidedly out of fashion. That’s a boon for democracy. It takes an educated civilian to engage in public life, and select representatives worthy of leadership. There’s a quote by Henry Rollins that I love: “If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do.” Standing between civilization and barbarism with a book as a shield, Saint Heron makes that act of rebellion a little easier, a little smoother, a little prettier.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering, “For the love of God, man, where’s the link?” As luck has it, three days before publishing this essay and four days after the second installment of Saint Heron Community Library’s first season went live and again evaporated into the carts of readers around the world, the Library vanished. In its place on the Saint Heron site was an announcement about its (equally laudable) 2022 Ceramics Residency. This should come as no surprise. Saint Heron is not merely a library, but a “multidisciplinary institution reverencing the spiritual act of creation, through its preservation and collection of vital works in art and design.” By nature that charter summons many mediums and commands many fronts, literature and craft among them. Maybe by the time you read this, Saint Heron Community Library will be open again. And maybe this only emphasizes my point: digital or physical, knowledge is mercurial. You have to hold it close while you can, and never let it go.
May Miller says it best in “TRAIL.”
Bright patterns on a dark bed,
A frieze on splintered wood
Above which no young face looks
Toward morning—
Beneath the hedge,
Over a basement sill
A snail has left
His parable in opal.
Sonic Landscapes
A mix, echoing my old college radio show
To accompany “Our Lady of Latter-day Libraries” I’ve assembled 10 songs to spin while reading. No lyrics or drum solos, just simple sounds to play (quietly) while savoring words. Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.
Personal Pantheon
A tribute to someone inspiring
The Cocktail Prince of The Pierre Hotel
This imaginary encounter with Oscar Haimo, inspired and informed by the scant details available about the legendary bartender’s life, transports you to 1946 Manhattan…
Wind from the park whips rain askew when the heavy glass doors of The Pierre Hotel open with a promise of sanctuary. You duck in and shake the storm off your umbrella. A diminutive old couple in smart khaki raincoats waits for the doorman to hail a downtown taxi. The concierge nods a welcome. Your watch says 4:17 pm. Not too early for a drink. Nothing to do but wait out the weather. There’s live music at Café Pierre and The Cotillion Room but you’re looking for quiet so the concierge suggests The Gentleman’s Library. “You’re in luck,” he says. “Oscar Haimo is tending bar himself this afternoon.” On the elevator you realize your derbies are filled with water. They leave oxblood impressions on the crimson carpet with every sloshing step. The doors open and the attendant pulls the brass cage aside. Oscar Haimo looks up from the bar. A broad smile traverses his puckish face. If there were a Golden Ratio for barmen, Haimo would be its exemplar. He is slight, no more than five-and-a-half feet, with big ears as if they evolved to perceive orders shouted through a speakeasy clamor or gossipy morsels whispered among the soused. He gestures to an empty seat at the bar. They’re all empty. He slides forward a napkin embossed with the hotel logo and sets a glass of water upon it. He moves in decisive bursts. You don’t know what to order. You never do. Sensing your hesitation Oscar suggests a MacArthur, his signature creation, named for the hero of the Philippines Campaign. “Something tropical, for hurricane season.” He speaks in a warm, Yiddish-inflected French accent. With your affirmation he sets about measuring white and dark rum, Cointreau, and lime, spooning out sugar, and extracting the whites from a cracked egg. This he shakes with a dizzying behind-the-head technique perfected during tenures at Fouquet’s on the Champs-Élysées and The Ritz on Place Vendôme, the Casino de Monte-Carlo, various underground joints during Prohibition, and, after the fall of Volstead, the Royal Box and Surf Club in Miami and The Plaza and Waldorf Astoria nearby. He places a stemmed glass before you and returns to the far end of the bar to clean his implements. He then resumes a half-finished sketch on the back of an inventory form. You can’t make out what. You’ve seen his jazzy drawings in the Cocktail and Wine Digest: The Barmen’s Bible, which he writes, illustrates, and publishes every year on his own dime. His drawings are often coupled with little poems, like: “Beware Satan’s Temptation / Enjoy Life in Moderation.” Through his imprint, The International Cocktail, Wine, and Spirits Digest, Inc., Haimo will publish an autobiography with the wistful title Nothing Lasts Forever. It will document his upbringing in Passage Bullourde, the old Jewish ghetto in Paris, his lucky break into bartending when the First World War robbed Gallic watering holes of their barmen, his travels from Marseilles to Algiers to Jerusalem, and his eventual voyage to the United States to mix drinks at the Belgian Pavilion of the ‘39 World’s Fair. But that book is a few years away and those stories are still glowing embers in Haimo’s head. You take a sip and spin around. Smoke hovers over a cluster of company men in flannel suits — insurance, advertising, banking — leaning forward to exchange hushed stories between sips of something dark in crystal tumblers. They’re a far cry from the evening crowd known to rock a barstool when Haimo’s here, thirsty stars like Edward G. Robinson. The elevator opens and a tall man with a terrible stoop emerges. He’s wearing a tattered tweed coat, soaked through, with tears along the shoulder seams that yawn like gargoyles as he walks. “Over here,” says Haimo, stepping out from around the bar. With a snap and a point he summons a server to take the tall man’s coat. “Where’d you serve?” Haimo asks. The tall man sits a few stools down from you. “France, Belgium, Germany.” Haimo places a glass of water in front of him. “You got a place to stay?” “Yes, a boarding house on 40th and 8th.” “So you’ve heard I run a little school, teaching vets to mix drinks. It’s a commitment but it’s free, and when you’re through if you show real promise I can find you a place to work. Are you working?” “Not since the war.” Haimo goes behind the bar and gathers some pamphlets and an application. He goes to the register and takes out a twenty. All this he slips into a folder which he sets on the bar in front of the tall man, who hesitates. “Take it,” says Haimo. “Thank you, I’m not sure what to say.” “Don’t say anything, just take it, and take care until I see you next week at the address in the folder.” The tall man stares at the folder. Your drink is finished. It was superb. Fizzy and bright. You sense the man needs privacy to speak openly, so you leave a bill on the bartop, unhook your coat, still heavy with rain, and sneak away toward the elevator. The cage door closes and through the grates you get one more glimpse of that smile. You stand beside the attendant in silence as the elevator drops, each numbered floor illuminating above your heads. Haimo. You mull the name over in your mind, a bit elasticated from the cocktail and smoke. Haimo. Like l’chaim, the Hebrew toast. “To life.”
Sources and further reading
Strip Mall Dining in Central Virginia
A review of local fare
Westwood Fountain of Everlasting Youth
With a heavy head I settle into a red faux-leather chair at Westwood Fountain, a diner tucked within a pharmacy on Patterson Avenue in Richmond. Here on Sundays you can eat your post-sermon steak and eggs and repent with Pepto Bismol all under one roof. I took something to help me sleep last night and feel like a sandbag. Thankfully Westwood asks little of me. Our thick-walled mugs, emblazoned with local advertisers (I had “Hampden Hill Custom Building”), are soon filled with exquisitely neutral coffee. A few years ago a Japanese friend visiting New York admitted he preferred diner coffee to the popular light roasts brewed in Brooklyn, known as a mecca for quality caffeine. Looking over my shoulder and lowering my voice to a whisper, I agreed. Overpriced, acidic light roasts have become the standard in every café in every Brooklyn spinoff around the world, another invasive export of hipsterism (the human kudzu). My Japanese friend would have approved of the coffee springing forth from Westwood Fountain. One can drink cup after cup and never risk a panic attack or digestive disaster. This is democratic coffee for those of us in no terrible rush, with nowhere else to be, and nothing particular to stay awake for. Ideal for a Sunday morning seated somewhere we won’t feel pressure to vacate after the check arrives. At the surrounding tables, weekend editions of The Richmond Times-Dispatch fan out around us, leafed lazily by liver-spotted hands. We sit within a galaxy dominated by pink-scalped Saturns ringed by locks of gray and white. The pre-church crowd looks pious in tweed and tie, the pre-golf crowd from the Western suburbs practical in tortoiseshell and fleece. Time feels irrelevant here. At 9:15 am burgers and sandwiches and fries and sodas are already vanishing from plates and pebbled-plastic cups. Athletic teenagers inhale home fries, eggs, bacon, sausage, and grits while little tyrants lead sleepy parents around the room. Paper menus, so rare in these plague times, echo an age before the wretched (and hygienically useless) QR code. The “Country Boy” beckons with fried steak and sausage gravy, eggs, hash browns, and biscuits, all for $10.99. “Huevos Rancheros” and “Crabcakes and Eggs” are also eligible options, but I order the “Cornbeef Hash Omelet” with a side of grits that I douse in Texas Pete. Our friend orders fried eggs, sausage, grits, and a biscuit. My wife opts for a chorizo omelet and fried apples on the side. As we eat, I propose a challenge to our friend, an artist and fragrance designer at Na Nin, one of Richmond’s most beloved brands. I ask her to describe the scent profile of the diner. She responds by email the following day: smoke, toast, upholstery, paper, plastic, soap, aldehyde, powder, Shalimar. We linger for hours as eaters come and go. Meals are marched out from the open kitchen and empty plates marched back. “Warmup?” our waitress asks on her rounds. “Yes, ma’am.” She tops us off, and we sit around to watch time pass.
Westwood Fountain
5823 Patterson Ave
Richmond, VA 23226
Something You Should Know
New evidence suggests that Casimir Pulaski, the Polish-born Revolutionary War hero and “father of the American cavalry,” was intersex.
god in and grounded in the details. smells like butter. love that.