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Dear Cory:
Why is our government in the library business? This institution lends books to a large pool of people who are missing out on the pride of ownership. It's breeding a mentality that the world owes them something--in fact, practically everything! It's not just books that are handed out on demand, but newspapers, magazines, CDs, videos, DVDs, access to computers, the Internet, and on and on and on it goes.
I never use the library; why should I pay taxes for it? Libraries are inefficient, bureaucratic, and undermine the income of many talented people whose blood, sweat and tears pour into a product that can then be enjoyed by people who've never worked a day in their life!
If individuals want to share books, that is their right in a free country; nobody is stopping them. But why fund this ubiquitous, unwieldy institution which uses my tax dollars to buy a vast variety of materials which include much immoral garbage (smut!), ivory tower bafflegab from hypocritical eggheads, and anti-civilization screeds by anarchists who would be eating their own excrement if my tax dollars weren't keeping them in their charmed lifestyle!
Libraries ought to be privatised and run by experienced business people.
Don't you agree?
Trevor Enchins
Dear Mr. Enchins
Certainly not. While perusing his in-box, with its motley and sometimes alarming content, Cory keeps in mind how the British were exhorted to act, in the medium of large red posters, should they have been invaded by the Nazis: “Keep Calm and Carry On”. Despite this, your letter brought what can only be described as a scowl to his smooth, moisturized features. At the risk of lapsing into psychobabble, you seem to know exactly where Cory’s “buttons” are -- pounding your fist on them as if they were stops on a mighty Wurlitzer organ.
Rigorous in his research, Cory undertook a field trip to his local library to search for immoral garbage and smut (thank you for using that word). Perhaps Cory’s morals are too elastic, but little of this alluring nature did he find in the library’s contents despite quizzing the librarian. He did find a heterosexual couple engaged in sexual congress in the remote stacks, and must admit their dusty union was taxpayer subsidized. Yet who among us cannot empathize with being young, aroused, in the company of the available, and having nowhere to go?
Libraries are unquestionably one of western civilization’s greatest achievements because, miraculously, they have found a way to make sharing work. Sharing is rare to the vanishing point in our greed-based system where each whirls in his own sad orbit. Libraries succeed because books can take a fair amount of abuse and are just expensive enough to make borrowing one tempting, but not so expensive that the odd unreturned book is going to bankrupt the system. They are also the perfect size, portable and not too big, but not so small as to be easily lost. Library books are not unique; there are many copies, so stealing them to hoard and collect makes little sense. Generally one wants to read them once and then move on to a fresh one. This is a fine balance hard to achieve with other goods.
Cory has contemplated, as he views the many towering apartment buildings visible from his aerie, the tens of thousands of vacuum cleaners that sit in their dark closets 98% of the time. Why couldn’t we have a vacuum cleaner centre to borrow from and lessen our waste of the earth’s resources? Well, they’re not portable enough, they’re too complex, too valuable and too difficult for the average slob to maintain or use properly. To illustrate, Cory recalls a slatternly neighbour who borrowed his vacuum cleaner (a restored vintage 1970 Hoover Constellation in avocado green) and used it to try to unblock the cesspool that was her kitchen sink. The Constellation is not a “wetvac”.
Your love of capitalist consumption was shared by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, yet he saw fit to fund the building of three thousand public libraries. He realized the value of literacy and the respite from corporate slavery that a good book can provide. He wrote that “the man who dies rich dies disgraced”, words you might keep in mind as an unreconstructed capitalist.
What better use of your tax money is there? Libraries provide access to knowledge and entertainment, sepulchral quiet (at least until the mobile telephone came along) and an environment highly conducive to cruising. If you want to buy your own copy of a book to languish unread in your mansion’s show library, feel free – sharing isn’t mandatory, it’s just the best part of human nature.
The phrase “the pride of ownership” is capitalist jingoism, created by advertising to sell the fashionable to the gullible, insecure or egotistical. You may have noticed that the pleasure of acquisition is the most fleeting of feelings, for a new fix is needed almost immediately. The results are all around us: mess, waste, destruction. Possessions must be serviced and maintained -- eventually this becomes a burden. Think how easy it is to buy something, and how nearly impossible it is to sell it. This should tell you something.
Cory couldn’t agree more on one point you make. “Ivory tower bafflegab” is yet another toxin, and an industry all to itself. Your use of the word “smut” is exemplary. Let’s make academics use powerful, clear words like that. In response to your unappealing fantasy about anarchists, Cory would just like to mention his affection for their quaint, impractical way of thinking. They are the court jesters of our time.
Do write again when you’ve had a social awakening.
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