We’re About to Lose Libraries

I was already planning a paean to the nation’s libraries for National Library Week, which starts today, but this year in particular invests our message of advocacy with an element of urgency.

But first the promised appreciation, for I am a creature of libraries. In the literal, etymological sense: they created me. As a child I was encouraged to read. Many people regard the sentiment as a commendable truism, but then they never bother to do it. I took the injunction with existential seriousness. The fact that it suited me temperamentally is not to be discounted as a motivation. I don’t look to be admired for something that is at bottom a Faustian compulsion, akin to greed. Do you know how lucky you are, to have all the combined knowledge of the world available to you at no cost? Before the internet, it was just the places of brick and mortar: schools, museums, archives, printing houses, and libraries. And even in the present age, there is much that these institutions do that the internet cannot. The contents of libraries are vetted by professionals who know the difference between a fib and a fact. This is what makes them dangerous to tyrants — but we get ahead of ourselves.

Benjamin Franklin founded America’s first lending library in Philadelphia in 1731, though it was subscription based. The first free municipal library in America was established in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1833. I availed myself of that library’s resources during my stay at the MacDowell Colony (which also has its own terrific library) in 1994. I went there to do additional research for a couple of plays I was writing. I have always done this. There are few towns I have visited where I did not take note of the local libraries, and fewer still where I have stopped for any length of time that I did not patronize them.

The picture you see above is of the Peace Dale Public Library in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, established 1891, where I spent countless hours reading through the Great Books during the gap years before I began my studies at the Trinity Rep Conservatory. Unable to afford the college of my choice, I did my best to make my way through the classics on my own, and they became a kind of foundation for who I am. I read all of Plato, all of Aristotle, all the Greek tragedies, on and on, and even theologians like Thomas Aquinas whose ideas I would frankly never have any use for, as far as I could see. I also read popular and outdated writers of world ideas like Will Durant. This library was a ten minute walk from my house. When I was feeling restless, I would ride my bike to the nearby Kingston Free Library (built 1779), or the one in Narragansett. (I was thrilled beyond expression to speak from the podium at the former institution in 2006). For months at a time these libraries were all I had going on in my life. I was solitary and an auto-didact. This stubborn independence is why I seldom warm up to suggestions for topics or directions for this blog. I am on my own journey. You do yours.

During my brief time at the University of Rhode Island, I skipped classes and read books like Walter Kerr’s The Silent Clowns and Gerald Mast’s The Comic Mind in the school library. When I went to Trinity, the Providence Public Library was where I first got my hands on works by modern European playwrights. Then I moved to New York where I availed myself of whatever branch of the New York Public Library was nearest my home or work. I owe the most no doubt to the NYPL’s Library for the Performing Arts, where I drew from its several useful collections to research my first book No Applause. When I was at NYU I naturally made use of their terrific Bobst Library, but I worked at a bookstore uptown (Brentano’s) which I used like a library as well. At the same time, I made frequent use of the film collections of the now-defunct Donnell Branch of the NYPL, where I saw many silent films for the first time. They had booths with projectors, and you could actually screen reels of film in private! This of course was a step at the beginning of the path that led to my second book Chain of Fools. When I worked at Theater for the New City, my local branch was the Tompkins Square library, which has been serving working class local people on the Lower East Side since 1904.

When my books came out I spoke several times at the main branch of the NYPL, and even at the Jefferson Market branch (that occasion was in honor of Mae West, who had been jailed there when it was still a courthouse). And then there’s the Brooklyn Public Library, whose Greenpoint branch was the first one my kids knew, and the main branch of which I have spoken at several times, and where I recorded the audio-book of Chain of Fools. Later I visited every single Brooklyn Public Library branch as the outreach director of a public access tv station to give informational talks about our services.

When my kids moved, I availed myself of their city libraries, in Ithaca, New York, and Portland, Maine. The Ithaca one is where I first saw a wonderful exhibition about the Wharton Film Studios. The Tom’s River Library in New Jersey is where I first met illustrator Drew Friedman, and John Lennon’s paramour May Pang (at a book fair, natch). These days, my local library is the main branch in Great Neck, where I have spoken, and performed research. It is a wonderfully useful institution.

Today, libraries all over the country carry MY books! My wife, who is an even bigger bibliophile than I am, has a half dozen library books going at any given time. She gets electronic versions sent to her Kindle. My son, who just moved to the big city, has been using his local library to research jobs on the internet. I’m conveying all of this not to talk about myself, but to try to provide a sense of all that libraries do, what they are, and what they can be to people. My books, this blog, and many of my plays would not have existed without them.

Now, every day since the start of the new administration has brought some new sucker punch with it — for those who possess the awareness to notice they are being punched. It comes in various forms. A friend, a 30 year vet of the National Parks Service, was let go. They’re taking books about the Holocaust out of the library at the U.S. Naval Academy. The Smithsonian isn’t allowed to talk honestly about slavery. On March 14 came another one. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is now on the DOGE hit list. I interacted with this agency a lot when I was a fundraiser for the New-York Historical Society. The Society’s library is one of the nation’s oldest — it dates to 1803. (I’ve used that one as well, obviously). The IMLS gives grants to libraries big and small all over the country, and those organizations rely on that support to keep the lights on. (It funds museums too. I obviously love them just as much as libraries, but this is National Library Day).

Some libraries get half their budget from the IMLS. And it is a tiny agency: 70 employees and a budget of just under $300 million. Think of what it does compared to what the U.S. military does with ITS budget. Nonetheless, on March 29, the IMLS was forced to put most of its staff on administrative leave. Grants have been cancelled; some of which had already been spent down, and presumably will need to be repaid? Nearly half the states are suing the Feds to stop this unconstitutional action of the President’s. I know it’s tough when every facet of American life is under assault, but I just want to make you aware that this happening.

You know who gets the most out of libraries? Poor and working class people who are trying to get ahead. Donald Trump is literally telling you to put aside the American Dream, to just wallow in your place like peasants under feudalism. That’s not only anti-American, it’s anti-Republican. That party’s watchword used to be “Opportunity”. Now it’s “STFU”. And you know how I know something about how peasants used to live under feudalism? I read about it in a book, one that was freely available to borrow from a library. I know there are a million fires to put out and we each have but one squirt gun, but please don’t let this vitally important American institution be one of Trump’s casualties. The American Library Association has put together a list of concrete steps to help protect your local library. Get it here.