Susan Orlean, The Library Book; Unknown

part love letter to libraries everywhere party who done it the library book by susan orlean tells the story behind the nineteen eighty six fire at the los angeles public library a fire that damaged or destroyed more than one million books bestselling author susan orlean brings that story to lawrence's liberty hall at seven pm this sunday at an event sponsored by you guessed it the lord's public library susan orlean joins us from her home in los angeles thank you so much for being with us today i'm delighted to be with you take us back to nineteen twenty six the opening of the los angeles central library could you describe the building in its heyday and it is really wonderful and very unique piece of architecture it is at that time it was in a fairly on and develop heart of downtown now it's surrounded by skyscrapers and huge office towers like bennett was on the grounds of what had been a school

building is and now the aisles it's a it's a little egyptian and it's a little art deco it it's a little pre modern it is it has a beautiful triangular shaped armored you would call it down except it's a shape or a triangle on the top of the building huge gold and holding a torch lit matches i am the light of learning which is dead certain the motto of the building and all around the exterior of the building and also inside that go our ear e grady andrew quotes from about knowledge about learning that are inscribed all over the outside of the building and part of the architects hope was that you would read the bill back that it would be in a sense it's only in sort

of your book that you would travel around the exterior of the building reading these amazing quotes about knowledge about information about the value of a reading and in the student experience no library itself as if you were in its own way a book and it's just one of the most beautiful original pieces of architecture i've ever seen jump forward to april twenty ninth nineteen eighty six and how the events of that day unfolded this is a very typical day at the library it happened to be very beautiful clear day in la not but that's unusual but it was a lovely day the library and i had its usual array of patrons in this is early morning at ten am a fire alarm went off now you would

think that would have been a source of great concern and anxiety of course the fire in him big building full of people like it happened and at that point in its long history the library building was in the affair state of disrepair and it had watson lots of fire code violations the alarms went off frequently it be we're considered something of an annoyance actually and their libraries in particular who had to cancel a kind of pack up their stuff and leave the building even know there was never any fire treated them with the italians aspirationally oh boy here we go again and that was very much the attitude of course a vacuum it could go out of caution but nobody was

panicky nobody was especially concerned the fire department arrived we did a walk through the building didn't see anything went down to reset the fire alarm and assumed it was just one of these instances where the alarm that triggered by who knows what it could reset the alarm back named anu a little nervous so why can't we we set the alarm there must be something wrong with the alarm they decided to then walked in building again just to be extra sure as the firefighters were entering the fiction department notice snow or not they eat radio down to incendiary there's smoke here and within a very short amount of time that smoke a rock did it in two you now have massive amounts of

flame course where would fire find more fuel than in a library is probably every five years dream is to burn in a library because you've got unlimited amounts of fuel and it just exploded the fire burned for seven and a half hours the library at that the structure of the library on which was a fairly common at the time is the bookstores story in these narrow cowell lehrer stacks they were essentially tubes that had concrete block i exteriors and they were inside the building and they were just jam packed with books the problem is they function basically like chimneys it was sort of the perfect environment for a fire in the fire had been done in stacks and it just spoke often

immediately extended up to the very top level of the library and burned uncontrollably for seven and a half hours and the reason why when the fire chief told the head of the library and that they might lose the building that they may not be able to quelch the fire and because it was so high and reached over two thousand degrees i'm visiting the susan orlean see is the author of the library books she's coming towards this sunday october third and speaking at liberty hall as i mentioned the library book is part of who done it and at the heart of that mystery was carry over peek who is harry like many many people in los angeles harry was an aspiring actor and not a very

successful woman who's spent much of his sound he was at in his twenties at the time of the fire eu made a lens in our parking cars being a mass in the aryan and doing some fairly menial all tasks but had dreams of becoming a hollywood star he lived with summer inmates in the canon a bit of a downtrodden neighborhood in la but he had big dreams and he was somebody who loved being the center of attention everything in a war already in it it didn't matter what the attention was orange is a lot of detention because of that particular passionate has he developed an unfortunate habit of being a bit about a fabricator a storyteller it was always plays himself in the sun or whatever was the current dramatic but

events of the day to make himself and be important and i supposed to be a character in a narrative that seemed exciting in this instance he chose a rather unfortunate narrative on and the big question of the book was because harry began telling people that he had set the fire did he set the fire or was he simply doing what harry had a tendency to do which was place himself at the center of the drama in this case of the fire just because it made him feel important deep economy interested in the story of the fire at the los angeles public library i had just moved to la and i will

preface this by saying that for a few years before that move it had begun thinking that there had to be an interesting book to write about libraries and just seemed like they were in and exploring and i'm kind of nice fall minute man in our lives and i i couldn't personally think of a book i'd never read about a library and eyesight i don't exactly know what the story is but i bet there is a good story to write about why were a soapy it was on my mind that there might be a story to tell but without it a kind of dramatic arc to the story i couldn't imagine how i could make that into a book anyway fast forward to mean moving to los angeles with ryan has an i was demanding and truer of the downtown library as a

thank you because i didn't talk to the library foundation as alice were new wave they had in the library foundation and we stop in the fiction department and i will say i just was in love with the building i thought it was just an amazing goal and i was very excited to see such an interesting piece of architecture and just being in a library was so much when we were in the fiction department the head of the library foundation pulled a book off the shelf and it's less debt which i did not understand it i just couldn't understand why i was smelling them but many said you know you can still smell the smoke and some of them i had no idea what he was referring to i said well you did they use to let people smoke in a wider area and he said no no says smoke from the fire and a big fire that close library for

seven years and i just stop dead in my tracks and said what he talking about i mean i had never heard of such a thing i never heard about the spire and the idea that it was such a bad fire that the library was closed for seven years i just i was flabbergasted and i immediately knew that i wanted to know more about the incident and also figure out when down and i what had happened and why someone or a library so that was and the minute i heard that simple comment that you can smell smoke in some of the books i knew that i was doing and i knew that i had my story i have to say when you know when i read that passage in her but they can give me goose bumps oh it was i am glad because that's what i was hoping to get maybe is that was my experience which was what are you

talking about there salman years i mean it was it was really sad if this had been something in a small town and i would have thought oh you know we don't often get news about small towns and who knew that this is los angeles you know you figure and this is the second biggest city in the country the idea that it's main line where you is shut down and in what turned out to be the largest library fire in american history i decide i can't believe i've never heard about this and i wanna learn more i'm visiting with susan orlean she's the author of the library book she's coming to lawrence's liberty hall this sunday at seven pm season it's chapter of the library but is punctuated with the titles of books titled either call letters as they might appear in an old fashioned

card catalog but offered without any kind of explanation did you pick those tunnels you know i had a need most fun doing that hard work eye i just cannot tell you what a pleasure was i mean this decision that i want him to live the new book to feel a bit like the experience he might have been a lie marie going through you know that's one of the great pleasures of being a wider areas been wondering the mood among the box in your eye kind of the land in a casual way and that title you would have never known existed and that is so much of what makes the library so special and and and such a marvelous unique experience so i had in my mind how could i how could i would

do that in the buck and it just hit me like a bolt of lightning and that i should introduce each chapter with i send books drawn from the catalog these are all real works that exists it currently in the la library and also i think that we have this really visceral reaction to the wade catalog listings for books appear with the call number i think all of us learn the dewey decimal system and we were little cairns in it's such a familiar format instantly makes you think libraries so i pulled box for each chapter that either overly or old illegally three figure in some of what the chapter was about and you know these are subtle they're very not obvious necessarily what and what the connection is that

they were very deliberately chosen to you to give you a bit of a hitter of what the chapter include a n i chose the books it like the idea of choosing man on them in a way that might illustrate the incredible brat of what the library contains so i pick some very old books some very contemporary books you know a real range plan but remind us out of this huge array of manuscripts in a library is pretty awesome and it's easy to forget when you just go to live or you get the one book you're looking for anyone don't even realize that there are books that they've been collecting for you know a hundred

years and a range that is quite staggering and i had so much fun i have to say i mean just going into the catalogue and i would put in just a search term where i thought now they want any books from the subject of course there would be like twenty books and said to you there was never a search term that i entered that didn't come up with a bunch of possible books that it is my right in thinking that your dog just joined us yes i mean it feels like it's time to play and i'm disagreeing with him and he's arguing his own talent to do is hold on for a couple more minutes our heads are a season one of the topics

you'll explore in the library book is the relationship between libraries and the homeless can you talk about how what you concluded that in a way you wanted to convey well i think that and this is as some jack mat is absolutely unavoidable and it has a range of impacts and to tell you the truth it's a topic that has come up every single time because since the deinstitutionalization of our mental health facilities which took place in the ed is a belief on line worries have become one of the few places that and because they're all one of the few public places where as long as you abide by the rules you could spend an entire day if you want and they would

be commonplace that embrace everybody including homeless people and this is a huge change from the years before this the institutionalization so this is something that you knew you know that fairly recent past became an aspect of vibrant libraries always were opened every boy it by since new have this enormous population that has found itself out and disenfranchised with few places and where they ate iran welcomed libraries have taken on that role and it in and you to the credit of why murray's you know it's not the easiest in all i'm dave manage to embrace and then said

that this is part of their mission is that they are a place that welcomes everybody and fur for many people of nowhere else to go the library becomes a refuge so it's an issue that has a risk and has a very significant part of what libraries grapple with what how may incorporate this new population into the patronage of the library and you can make it work and make it not be our man a source of conflict one of the few places where home homeless people and people with homes interact or share space so it it's very fraught and there are many people who have lots of strong emotions about it

on any it seemed to mean it to write about a library in the state made without addressing that would have been a huge mistake particularly because libraries deserve a huge amount of credit for all the work and they've put in to trying to make that aspect of their arms their mission down as meaningful as possible i mean big their libraries now have social workers and their staff specifically so that they can service the homeless patrons to come and perhaps needed assistance from a social service person i've been visiting the susan orlean see is the author of the library but susan know what you've been working on since then well i'm very excited because i'm a new book coming out october twelfth it's called on animals and its a collection due the

entire span of my career of stories and read through a bad animals out which is a subject that i've returned to over and over again and i am really really excited about the book and about seeing these pieces all in one place what kind of things do you explore well i've read over the years about animals from a lot of different perspectives everything from better profile of the top show done in the united states to a woman in new jersey who had twenty seven tiger is illegally as pets to you about the role of them mules and the us military and you know i love the wild animals of course and are inspired by wild animals i think what i've been drawn too often is the

place of interaction that place of the interface between ice and the animal world so any i'm very interested in and how we coexist and how we function on you know the story about meals and military friends this was one of my favorites to think of meals is served enlisted on private in the army at the end and the way they the way we use them out in these relationships work with these other species and incest allen fine horse writing about animals you're also always writing about people whether you intended to or not that's an animal's and it comes out october twelfth that's right i thought we'll look forward to that you know i listen to

susan orlean's is the author of the library books she's coming to lawrence's liberty hall this sunday at seven pm you to read about your first trip to the los angeles public libraries studio city branch i love to this islamic season a page eleven it in the box it's early on in the book my son was in the first grade when we moved to california one of his first assignments in school was to interview someone who work for the city i see jessica rich collector or a police officer but he said he wanted to interview a library and we're selling units hand i want to look up the address of the closest library which was all done los angeles public library studious city brand the branches about a mile away from our house which happened to be about the same distance that the birch ruins branch was from my childhood home as my son i drove to meet the librarian i was

flooded by a sense of absolute familiarity a gut level recollection of his journey of parent and child on their way to the library i had taken his trip so many times before but now it was turned on its head and i was the parent bringing my child and that special trap we parked and my son and i walk toward the library taking in and for the first time the building was white and my dish with a mint green mushroom capital ripped from the outside it didn't look anything like a stout rick berke through its branch but when we stepped into the thunderbolt of recognition struck me so hard that it made me gasp decades had passed and i was three thousand miles away and i felt like i had been lifted up and whisk back to that time and place back to the scenario of

walking into a library with my mother nothing had changed there was the same sauce tastes as this occurs on paper and the muffled murmuring from patrons at the tables in the center of the room and a creek in ground book carts and the occasional papery clunker of a book dropped and i guess his scarred wooden chair and the librarians gas as big as boats and the bolton board with its clattering raggedy notices we're all the same lessons and gentle steady dizziness like water on a rolling boil was just the same books and the shallows with some tracks some subtraction isn't a defense or certainly the same it wasn't that time stopped in a library it was as if it were captured here collected here all librarians and not only my time

my life all human time as well in the library time is damned up not just stopped what say you the library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find non is where we can glimpse in mortality in the library we can live forever that's susan orlean reading from the library but she'll be speaking at lawrence is liberty hall this sunday at seven pm and no proof of vaccination is required to attend this event at liberty hall and masks are required doors open at six o'clock seeding is limited to the first three hundred people who attend a streaming apps and is also available on a more at el p l k s dot org susan thank you so much for joining us today oh it was my pleasure and i'm glad that my job was able to make a little guest appearance it's really upped it and so looking

forward to a strep an empty speaking to an audience at a nun been part of this