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| photo: Gaspar Tringale | |
Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1992. Her books include Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. Her newest is The Library Book, which is simultaneously a meditation on the value of libraries, a history of the Los Angeles Public Library and an account of the disastrous fire at the LAPL in 1986. Orlean investigates the possibility that the fire was an act of arson, centering on Harry Peak, a likable aspiring actor who also happened to be a compulsive liar.
How did the story of a library fire end up capturing your attention?
I had decided there was a great story to tell about the life of a library, but I wasn't sure what the narrative arc would be. When I heard about the fire, I was so shocked--shocked by its extent, and shocked that I had never heard about it, even though it was the largest library fire in the history of the United States. That instantly struck me as the perfect entry point into the bigger story I wanted to tell, about the way a public library lives and breathes and endures.
You portray the library fire at the Los Angeles Public Library as an agonizing tragedy. What is it about books that makes their destruction feel almost like an act of violence?
Books seem to possess a sort of life force, something that makes them more than mere objects made of paper and glue. We pour our stories and thoughts into them; they contain everything we know and dream about. They are a kind of DNA, so destroying them feels like an attack on something deep and fundamental.
How did you determine how much of the book you wanted to be about Harry Peak and the arson investigation versus a more general meditation on libraries?
I wanted to weave those stories together organically, keeping Harry's story always feeling continuous, even when I detoured into history and reportage. I assumed the right balance would be one-third Harry, one-third history, one-third present day. I never counted it up, but I feel like that's close to how it turned out.
There's something very tragic about Harry Peak, regardless of whether he was involved in the fire. In researching the book, did you find yourself understanding how he could be simultaneously so likable and so frustrating?
Yes! I think we’ve all met a Harry--someone charming and spacey and irresponsible and lovable. He was perhaps more irresponsible than most of the Harrys I've known, but I definitely felt a familiarity with him.
Is there a way in which libraries represent a vision of a more community-minded society?
Libraries represent a democratic ideal--a community institution that celebrates and delivers knowledge, embracing and servicing everyone, with no regard to race or citizenship or age or any denominator. They shine at this moment in time more than ever.
Is there a positive way in which libraries draw us out of our bubbles?
We've become a society of separateness and boundaries. That doesn't foster the qualities we need to thrive as a pluralistic nation. Libraries' openness, and the fact that they are places of publicness and equality, provides a chance to reconnect to the idea of what community is--for better or worse.
To outsiders, L.A. can seem like a lonely and alienating city. Is there a way in which the fire reveals something about L.A.'s civic spirit?
Now that I live in L.A., I see that its reputation as a soulless, lonesome city isn't really deserved. It's a collection of hundreds of little villages, and sometimes it's hard for people to see beyond their specific little village. But the fire was a distinct moment of drawing people together from everywhere around the city, regardless of whether they used the downtown branch or not. In the end, people from San Pedro to Sherman Oaks, from Atwater Village to Compton, felt that the Central Library was an essential piece of the city that needed to be saved. We do manage to come together when we need to!
Do you think we take libraries for granted? Many of us are so used to having libraries as a kind of public utility--I wonder if one thing the fire revealed was the value of something we assume will always be there.
Yes, we absolutely take them for granted. We just trust that they exist, that they thrive, that they grow and that they will serve us, and we don't worry about it much. Generally speaking, though, many library bonds do pass--so when libraries come looking for money, we usually say yes.
As an author, do you have a particular relationship to libraries different than other patrons?
As an author, the library gives me immortality, so I do think I look at it differently from other patrons. Bookstores sell my books, but libraries say my books are worthy of preserving forever--that's had a profound impact on me.
There may be no answering the mystery at the heart of the book. Does that frustrate you, or can you appreciate the ambiguity it leaves behind?
I don't mind that it's left unresolved. Most of life isn't absolute, and because Harry died, we can't get any closer to knowing the truth of what really happened. I thought I might stumble on something that would move the story closer to a resolution, but I didn't, and I accepted that as the way life often is.
I think part of the horror of the library fire in your book is the apparent senselessness of it, especially if it was set by human hands. Do you see value in the kind of order libraries impose in such a chaotic and strange world?
Libraries express our urge to have life--knowledge, information--follow a pattern, make sense, feel purposeful. To have such a huge catastrophe feels so pointless, so random, makes it that much more disturbing. If it had been an act of war or a political gesture, we might hate it but it would have had logic. This felt terrible, wasteful and meaningless. That makes it so much worse. --Hank Stephenson