Louisville Mojo: The Pope of the Library

I had a Librarian in Junior High School who brought me into her "office" to scold me for turning down the corners of pages in books I had checked out. She gifted me a bookmark she had made or purchased. I wish I still had it. It was probably returned to a library in a book or something. Maybe it is on one of my shelves, inadvertently secreted in some long neglected book. I haven't seen it in years and I sort of treasured it. I think it is sad that libraries are endangered. They were my place of worship, but without all of the baggage of the church. Just that quietude rule and that rule about turning down the corners of pages. And overdue fees - but I always paid those gladly, assuming, I guess, that the proceeds were invested back into the library's inventory.

Anyway, the School Librarian, Miss Tieman, Miss Marion "Gloria" Tieman had, neatly stacked on her desk, a pile of the books I had checked out, each of them desecrated by my habit of turning down the page corners, just ever so. Evidence! Miss Tieman was a thorough and dogged sleuth....apparently with a lot of time on her hands. But, as she went through her evidence, rubbing it in ("I am Guilty", I silently pleaded, "..and remorseful..."), opening each book to reveal my offense and then pointing out my signature on each of those cards you used to have to sign and file to check out the book, prior to bar codes. She, apparently, only then, noticed and noted that mine was the only name on almost every card in every book in her stack. Incriminating! Case closed! Then she began to examine the titles and authors and then to calculate the volume, the number of books I had checked out and then her mood began to soften. She had discovered a protégé. An eager protégé at that.

For the following five or so years, every week or two she would spirit books to me, in a clandestine manner, leaving them in my locker or slipping them to me when I visited her library....books that had been deemed unsuitable for distribution to children in the school library by the School Board Library Committee or whoever was in charge of deeming. They were from her personal library. She was risking her job (seriously), corrupting my morals, exposing me to some approximation of filth and of good literature.

Among the first authors by whom I was corrupted was Joyce. Then Salinger and Baldwin and Cummings, Updike and the occasional City Lights poetry, Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, European authors, Sartre, Kafka, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Yevtushenko, writers of every ilk, Plath, Neruda, Borges, Langston Hughes.......I devoured them all. We (now "Gloria" and I) would discuss what she had shared with me, quietly (how else) in her library, it was usually unoccupied otherwise but we still spoke in whispers, it was a library.

One of my teachers once challenged me about a book report I submitted concerning "To Kill a Mockingbird", claiming that my report (although "superb") derived from seeing the movie and not from reading the book. Miss Tieman, hearing of this heresy in the Instructor's Lounge, like a lioness protecting her cub, sprang immediately, angrily, to my defense, frightening my instructor into apologetic submission. The soft-spoken, usually timid and virtually invisible Librarian quizzed my teacher (and myself) agressively but quietly, of course,. about the book in detail. I more than held my own. I sat in the same place I had been scolded, then recruited a year or two earlier. My teacher sat awkwardly next to me, both of us in those (I think) purposefully uncomfortable wooden library chairs. Ms. Tieman sat on the other side of her Head (she was the only) Librarian's (I recall it as huge) desk, in the only chair in the room with armrests. We were in her domain. The library was a sacred place. Ms. Tieman was the Pope of the Library. Papa Gloria.

I hadn't even seen the movie although it was current. I saw it later. It was brilliant, but it didn't rival the book.

On one of my few visits back to the now old school building, I visited the Library Room. It had been converted to a computer lab.

My ulterior purpose in writing this message to myself this morning is to express that the names "Atticus Finch" and "Harper Lee" are also names that I liked at first read and still enjoy today. I also liked "Boo" Radley, Scout and Dill Finch. I discovered, by the way, that the book report I submitted was intended to be from an expurgated version of the actual book, provided by my teacher and which excluded the offending racial and sexual references (and later withdrawn from publication following legal action by Ms. Lee). My report was from a copy of the unexpurgated book, gifted to me by the school librarian a year or two earlier, on the (unspoken) condition that the gift source was to remain anonymous.

Interestingly (to me) I continued the practice of "courting" the chief librarians at each school which I have attended or taught since those days....and even the Librarians in public libraries in the communities where I have lived. Many benefits (another life's excerpt altogether) accrued from those friendships. Librarians, on the whole,not at all unlike their reputations. Having an appreciative fan base, even of one, I have discovered, can make or break their careers.I have had first pick of the inventory targeted for sale or destruction because of extended lack of interest or use. I have thus captured a few genuine gems at little or no expense.

I worked at and/or managed several book stores on or near several campuses while attending colleges and, having been schooled in the subtle art of discerning talent and curiosity, have developed a few protégés of my own. I number two or three of my children among them.....and the children of friends. I have also been the catalyst for several spontaneous reading groups, made up of faculty, students, housewives, co-workers, strangers and hangers-on who gathered around the counters where I worked, discussing their assisted but essentially self-assigned reading lists with me and with one another, finding an unlikely oasis for a thirst no longer satiable in the schools themselves or even in the libraries.

Over the years, I have lost my "allegiance" to the flag and nation (although I remain a patriot). I have lost my reverence to the church (any church) although I remain a believer (buoyed by revelation). I have lost my faith in virtually every institution which I was taught to respect and essentially submit to (marriage, kinship, "organizations", even those of lofty intent. I pretty much am not any sort of a "joiner", although I remain vaguely hopeful. I have always been skeptical of the "sciences". But the arts including especially literature and the "word", in all forms of expression, written, sung, danced, the theater, the word artfully expressed, or even raw, even the sensation of taste or the exhilaration of flesh on flesh, all remain an anchor to my values and aesthetic. They define me. They are my link to humanity. And history. And flight. To both the illusions of mortality and immortality.

I have Marion Gloria Tieman (among many others who have encouraged me to gratify my senses and appetites) to thank. I'd bet she never expected anybody, maybe forty-five or so years later, to both remember and appreciate her. Or maybe she had dozens of secret protégés in her stable of protégés. Maybe we (her secret army) passed every day in the hall, our forbidden booty stashed in absolute discretion in our book bags and saved to secretly savor in the in the solitude of the libraries in our mind's eye. Maybe it was her mission.

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FullaShyt tue sep 15 2009 at 12:43 am ·


	Best blog submission ever, including mine! I think I have the same passion for the written word, but not near the history (come to think of it, your history is ALWAYS better than mine!)Did I ever tell you of my unusual "thing" for To Kill A Mockingbird? Years ago, my sister, God's girlfriend, had read a copy loaned to her by a friend. She loved it so much she recommended it. The copy she had was older and well read, so the spine was compromised. When I got it, and while reading, several pages liberated themselves from the glued binding. I felt so bad since it wasn't her copy, I went out and bought a replacement..giving her the original copy. In the meantime, she knew the book was suffering, and went and purchased a replacement copy herself. So, she now had 3 copies of a book she loved. When she went to give a copy back to her friend, she was told she could keep it. This started a sick(minded) trend from me. Every year for her birthday, I would purchase another copy of the book, usually from a Peddler's Mall or the ilk. When I had found paperback copies with as many covers I could find, I found a hard-cover. Then, the following year, I purchased the Cliff notes version. And so on. One year, I found a book entitled "Tequilla Mockingbird" as a joke and she liked it. Several Christmas' ago, I bought her a DVD of the movie. Now, I think she's the Devil's lying whore and would never think of buying her anything with whimsy again. =)

Sissy Marlyn wed oct 21 2009 at 11:36 am ·


	You sound like a 'true' readers. I'd like to invite you to come to the Almost Famous Authors' Faire on Nov. 7, 2009 at the Galt House Hotel. For more details, check the website: www.almostfamousauthorsfaire.com

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