Treasuries of collective minds

Libraries are the repository of knowledge. Historically, when an important library was destroyed, knowledge was lost, perhaps never to resurface. The library of Alexandria springs to mind. There must have been so many blitzed in war. So the digital revolution is a marvellous boon – perhaps this knowledge can be distributed so much that it will never be lost (unless an ElectroMagneticPulse stills everything). Of course libraries contain more than knowledge; they contain dreams, visions, perceptions of dead people, the emotions that we label the human condition.

When an alien race discovers our planet, doubtless when we’re all dust, maybe they will disinter books, either in tree- or digital format. Maybe they will glimpse what we were, what promise we held…

A long time ago, while serving on HMS Diomede, a group of us were landed at Leith Harbour whaling station on South Georgia, Falkland Islands, an abandoned place, a ghost town.

Leith whaling station

 

Leith was established 1909 as a whaling station and by the end of the 1950s it was utilising every part of the whale, including the baleen which was used in the manufacture of brushes. Nevertheless whaling was going into a steep decline through over-fishing of the whales. Salvesen's ceased operations at Leith Harbour in the 1961/2 season but the station was sub-leased to a Japanese company which operated until December 15th 1965. This was the end of whaling at South Georgia but there is a postscript. Salvesen's bought the leases of all the whaling stations on the Island in the mid-1970s. In 1979, Constantino Davidoff of Buenos Aires contracted with Salvesen's to salvage machinery and other items from the abandoned whaling stations. The involvement of the Argentine navy in Davidoff's venture was a prelude to the invasion of South Georgia and the Falkland Islands in 1982…

Post-conflict, HMS Diomede arrived. Among the derelict buildings was a library that required a little tender loving care. The five of us spent two days and a night there, putting on a corrugated roof, sorting the books on the shelves. You see, from time to time a seafarer would pull into the harbour and might visit the library. I felt there were quite a few ghosts in the library, let alone the station.

Any derelict library is a sad sight to me. Now, having recently seen some pictures of the Mark Twain branch of the Detroit library, I was greatly saddened. The images showed shelves and shelves of books untended, with the roof caved in, serious structural damage. See here:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpdphotography/sets/72157626713779604/

Yes, Detroit is in financial dire straits. Yes, people are more important than books (though some folk might change that to ‘some people’). I don’t know the full story. Initially, it was about eradicating mould, and then asbestos was discovered, so that called a halt. That was all to do with the structure, though. Not the contents. The books were left there – and were left from 1996. They were subsequently, eventually moved (somewhere) and the building was demolished in late 2011. A 2011 footnote with further explanations can be found here:

http://curiousfeet.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/marktwainbranc/
 

 

 

Whoever was responsible seemed pretty slow on the uptake to rescue the books.

 

Last image shows the building after demolition

Those books belonged to the community, bought by the local taxes, I assume. At the very least, they could have been distributed or sold to the people – unless the people didn’t want them, of course. Yes, how we treat books is very much a reflection of how some people treat people, perhaps: out of sight, out of mind?

I’ve seen photos and film of London, Liverpool and other British towns where libraries have been bombed in WWII and people scrabble over the rubble to rescue books. They, clearly, treasured books, the treasuries of collective minds.

R.I.P. Elmore Leonard - dies, 87

Elmore Leonard, novelist and screenwriter, has been the inspiration for many writers. He authored  45 novels, and was in the process of writing his 46th.

Born in New Orleans in 1925, he lived in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Memphis before his family settled in Detroit in 1935. He served in the US Navy during WWII and afterwards studied English literature at the University of Detroit, graduating in 1950. From 1949 to 1961 he worked as a copywriter in various advertising agencies and, apart from a few book reviews, he has concentrated on writing novels and screenplays since 1967. He started out writing western stories before turning to crime fiction in the 1960s.

He was renowned for his terse, no-nonsense style and sparse use of dialogue, stating at one time that he left out the bits that readers would skip.

Much of his work found its way onto the silver screen, for example: Last Stand at Sabre River (19590, Hombre (1961), Valdez is Coming (1970), 3.10 to Yuma (a 1953 short story, filmed in 1957 and 2007), Get Shorty (1990), Rum Punch (1992, filmed as Jackie Brown), and Out of Sight (1996).

 

One of his more heroic characters, US Marshal Raylan Givens in the books Pronto (1993) and Riding the Gap (1995), inspired the TV series Justified, while his 1978 novel The Switch was filmed this year as Life of Crime.

His 10 Rules of Writing, published in 2001,contains some tongue-in-cheek advice but also some great common sense and salutary admonishments, viz: "Never open a book with weather" and "Keep your exclamation points under control".

He has many writing accolades: the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery novel, La Brava, 1983. In 1992 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. The F Scott Fitzgerald was awarded in 2008, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009 and a further lifetime achievement prize, which he received at last year's National Book Awards.

He suffered a stroke earlier this month in Detroit and was in hospital. He subsequently died at his home in the city's Bloomfield Village suburb. He is survived by five children, 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; he divorced his third wife Christine last year.

Another great and influential writer bites the dust, but his words and characters live on.