Books in the dark

Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night is one of those books which looks as if it will be really interesting when you get around to reading it – bit it looks quite serious, and in the meantime, there’s a tense thriller or a weepy novelette to tempt you away.  While, after several months, I ceased to be tempted away recently, and opened the Manguel in earnest, starting with a description of his own library in a medieval barn in the Loire valley.

It’s clearly a book to read in instalments, and I shall pick it up from time to time when in Dorset, where I have left it.  But the first essay – The Library at Night – has an interesting observation: that during the day, Manguel is in charge, is orderly, productive, sequacious of learning and successful in finding the books and references he needs.  But at night, the library is in charge – Manguel is lead astray, ideas coming from the books themselves, producing a chaos and litter of meaning only half understood, of books in the wrong places, of time expended without progress.  Maybe this is why Montaigne famously did not venture in his library after dark, though I find any experience I have in a library always combines the two states, whether my visit is diurnal or nocturnal.

Each successive chapter of the book is called The Library as ...; the first three are The Library as Myth, Order, and Space ...  These are delightful exercises – full of wit, insight and instruction – with comments that every collector of books will recognise:

The existence of every library, even mine, allows readers a sense of what their craft is truly about, a craft that struggles against the stringencies of time by bringing fragments of the past into their present.  It grants them a glimpse, however secret or distant, into the minds of other human beings, and allows them a certain knowledge of their own condition through the stories stored here.

And everywhere there are discussions of the key problems of the library – what to keep when space is limited, whether to discard (No, never!), in what order to keep the books.   Again and again, the tendency of the books to govern the reader or librarian, rather than vice versa, raises its head.  We learn about the library of Alexandria, about the ordering of the earliest Chinese catalogues, and about the life of digital media.  For the book lover, there is delight on every page.

I have arranged, in homage to Manguel's vision of the library at night, that this post will appear at 13 minutes after midnight - a suitable dark time of the soul, although I might well still be reading.

Comments

[Custom Essays]

Hello Sir good article i really love it i have reading this article is awesome so good work keep working.

[Mr Cornflower]

The crime novels, the most obvious threat, are in solitary confinement in the outer hall. As far as the main bookshelves are concerned, those poets want watching.

[Lindsay]

But Mr Cornflower, which books in your library do you fear might leap out and attack?

[Mr Cornflower]

I'm with Montaigne on this one, I think. It must be rather like walking through the zoo after dark; what was visibly shut in safely during the day is, your reason tells you, very likely not only still shut in but now asleep; but you would have to be very strong-minded, or very unimaginative, not to think of what might be lurking in the shadows along your path.

[glo]

Quite the night owl myself, I still prefer to visit the library at daytime and I would really hate to be locked inside a library at night. But wait, why should things take charge at night?
As a student, I used to visit libraries at late hours, and it is true that they were usually less crowded and more silent, and then the atmosphere was more focused and suitable for work and concentration.