He called it “Unpacking My Library: A Speech on Collecting,” and he used the occasion of pulling his almost two thousand books out of their boxes to muse on the privileges and responsibilities of a reader. Sometime in 1931, Walter Benjamin wrote a short and now famous essay about readers’ relationship to their books. Maybe there’s a certain ancient fidelity in this, a sort of curmudgeonly domesticity, a more conservative trait in my nature than my anarchic youth would have ever admitted. But I can work happily only in my own private library, with my own books-or, rather, with the books I know to be mine. I love public libraries, and they are the first places I visit whenever I’m in a city I don’t know. Polonius echoed my thoughts precisely when he told his son, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” My own library carried this reminder clearly posted. I believe that theft is reprehensible, and yet countless times I’ve had to dredge up all the moral stamina I could find not to pocket a desired volume. I realize how petty, how egotistical it seems, this longing to own the books I borrow. I would say that without public libraries, and without a conscious understanding of their role, a society of the written word is doomed to oblivion. I would defend their place as society’s memory and experience. I would argue that public libraries, holding both virtual and material texts, are an essential instrument to counter loneliness. The home library of William Randolph Hearst.
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