Key Take Aways from Susan Orlean's "The Library Book"

Of the many great books outlining the history of Los Angeles, Susan Orlean’s The Library Book investigates the landmark at the heart of a cultural mecca. As the title suggests, this is a book about a library- Los Angeles Central Library -and the story of its life delivers the same type of fever and all-consuming power as the 1986 fire that stole over half of its inventory. Orlean gives us a panorama view of the life and history of the LA library, but the story is not linear: we travel down many different roads, meeting the characters, historians, and villains that constitute the landmark’s history. In this way, the book functions much like the city of Los Angeles itself; the expansive quality, each page adding a new layer, leading us down new avenues that are seemingly isolated but in the end, come together with profound, new meaning.

Before the digital age, as in our age now, libraries served as a main source to acquire information and knowledge. They were social, they were academic, they were a hub for artists, activists, and even hollywood screen writers, who were once the largest culprits of book theft. Throughout the Library Book, Susan Orlean challenges our notions of what a library is used for, what it encompasses, and the people who run them. She infuses the narrative with anecdotes from her childhood: visits to the local library with her mother, piling as many books as she could in the back car seats- the experience that began her life-long obsession with books. As she continually points out, the aura of libraries expand beyond the mere borrowing of books, even to containing CD’s or restaurant menus. There is a distinct comfort and freedom about a library, as they contain a myriad of lives, histories, and images that are waiting to be discovered.

“In truth, a library is as much a portal as it is a place- it is a transit point, a passage.”

Orlean’s wit and humor whips up the page like a nice tangy meringue you can dip your finger into. After living in LA, I found so many truisms scattered throughout the book:

“In Los Angeles, moments were fortune cookies ready to be cracked open, and in them you might find a movie star, or a successful audition, or a chance encounter with a powerful person who, with a snap of his fingers, would change your life, like a wizard.”

We get to see how LA shape shifts throughout the 20th century and how the Library adjusts to these changes. We learn about the fire and all its destruction, but we also learn about the book conservation efforts: how the city found enough freezers to pile books in before the water damage destroyed all the remaining copies. We learn about the administrative challenges and executives who run the show. But most memorable out of all the characters Orlean introduces, and lets go of, is Harry Peak.

Susan Orlean begins The Library Book with a character named Harry Peak, a hollywood wannabe with a fabulous blonde hairdo. Harry becomes the main culprit for the 1986 fire and is eventually arrested for arson. We weave in and out of Harry’s story, learning about his unstable yet magnetic personality and the extravagant lies that later pile up as evidence against him. From the beginning we are unsure how to feel about Harry, but after gaining an intimate portrait of his sad childhood in the small town of Hemet, to hearing his mother claim that Harry was “the biggest bullshitter in the world,” it becomes less and less believable that he would throw a flame on the library out of spite. More so, he appears to be the incarnation of boy who cried wolf. None the less the city pursued an expensive investigation, which was ultimately thwarted by the lack of evidence.

Towards the end of the book, the Harry Peak plot takes an unexpected turn: Harry is found not guilty and decides to sue the city for $15 million for “false arrest, slander, negligence, emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and assault and battery.” Interestingly, the city sued back for all the lost property, which equaled over $23.6 million. A report from the National Fire Protection Association concluded that the evidence suggests no person was involved. Orlean even admits she couldn’t wholeheartedly believe in Harry’s guiltiness, yet the city still lost millions of dollars in inventory and reconstruction fees and looked for a source (or someone) to blame. Susan Orlean also spends ample time using personal anecdotes of her interviews and tours at the current Los Angeles Central Library, painting a picture of how it has evolved since the fire; we compare the before and after from page to page, understanding how the fire changed faculty dynamics, the library’s visitors, and new procedures and precautions instated by the National Fire Protection Association.

The spell bound magic of the Library Book is its reminder to everyone how important libraries actually are- what they represent and why they are meaningful. As a bibliophile, I found myself skimming over the excerpts that describe this concept- I already know that, I thought. And while it is enjoyable to read what you think you already know, having your own innermost thoughts reflected back to you on a page, I found myself re-reading the paragraphs and sentences, soaking them in as if a new concept. The dialogue about why reading is important is still relevant, and even more necessary in our culture today. Why visit your library? Why read a book about a library? Why write a book about a library? The story inside The Library Book is the answer, and it always will be.

“The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten but that we are all doomed to being forgotten; that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed. If you gaze into that bleakness even for a moment, the sum of life becomes null and void, because if nothing lasts nothing matters. Everything we experience unfolds without a pattern, and life is just a baffling occurrence, a scattering of notes with no melody. But if something you learn or observe or imagine can be set down and saved, and if you can see your life reflected in previous lives, and can imagine it reflected in subsequent ones, you can begin to discover order and harmony. You know that you are a part of a larger story that has shape and purpose—a tangible, familiar past and a constantly refreshed future. We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.” -Susan Orlean