The Library

When I first came to America, I took graduate courses at Harvard University. I was so occupied with language difficulties and the other rites of passage immigrant scholars undergo that I had no time to consider what was happening to American under-graduates there. Years after leaving Harvard, I read that one initiatory task for a Harvard undergraduate was to have sex in the vast and complex stack system of Widener Library. Although I spent a considerable amount of time reading in Harvard libraries, particularly the Tozzer in the Peabody Museum, I never came across anyone involved in this activity. I did, however, encounter people who experienced another kind of obvious pleasure in the stacks: chance discovery of an obscure book that changed the course of their research. I know it is not the most efficient way to conduct research, but I often roamed the stacks reading from books adjacent to the one I needed. Chance discoveries of relevant volumes provided a distinct thrill, perhaps not so intense as that experienced by the Harvard undergraduates referred to above, but certainly longer lasting.

What started me thinking about the sensual nature of books and libraries was a remark by Vartan Gregorian. “I loved the smell of textbooks, and for me, from childhood, the library occupied a major role in my life.” It might seem natural that a man who loved the smell of textbooks would end up working in a large library. But in his autobiography, The Road to Home: My Life and Times (2003), the road Vartan Gregorian traveled is anything but straightforward. His childhood was one of poverty and deprivation in the Armenian quarter of Tabriz, Iran. His mother died when he was seven years old and shortly after that, his father left to fight in World War Two, so young Vartan was raised by his grandmother. From the age of eleven until he left Tabriz, he was a part-time page at the local library. This position did not pay a wage, but it did give him access to new worlds through the works available in translation in the stacks. When his father returned and remarried, household relations became strained, so at age fifteen Vartan left home with $50 in his pocket to study at the College Armenien in Beirut. Although various opportunities opened for him, he decided to attend Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1958. In 1964 he completed a Ph.D. at Stanford, then taught history at San Francisco State, UCLA, and the University of Pennsylvania where he became the first dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences.

A career reading and writing scholarly books might have been enough for most of us, but not for Vartan Gregorian, who began a campaign to defend books. From 1981 to 1989, he returned to the world of the library at a time when libraries were endangered. Gregorian took on the roles of president and CEO of the New York Public Library, then a network of four research libraries and eighty-three circulating libraries. Cuts in public funds during the seventies usually struck hard at libraries. Libraries had no political clout and no constituency except scholars, children, and ordinary citizens who liked to read. Politicians took it for granted that libraries were not important and that their budgets could be slashed. Schools lost funding for new acquisitions, sometimes losing libraries entirely. Hours of service at public libraries were cut and librarians were laid off. Branch libraries were closed or had their hours drastically reduced. Gregorian started with the premise that support for libraries was “not negotiable.” For eight years, he reminded New Yorkers (and readers of his autobiography) that they were dealing with an institution that was as old as civilization: “From the clay tablets of Babylon to the computers of a modern library stretch more than five thousand years of man’s and woman’s insatiable desire to establish written immortality and to insure the continuity of culture and civilization, to share their memories, their wisdom, their strivings, their fantasies, their longings, and their experiences with mankind and with future generations” (page 283). But moral arguments about the abstract value of libraries were insufficient to secure funding for even the most basic costs of maintaining a library. The stacks of the central New York library, for example, contained eighty-eight miles of bookshelves that had not been dusted for seventy-five years. The cost of cleaning them was $1 million. Through what he calls “a confluence of forces,” Gregorian succeeded in rescuing the New York City Public Library and reestablishing its central educational, civic, and cultural preeminence in New York. Along the way he changed the national attitude toward public libraries and raised $400 million to restore their status throughout the country.

Gregorian became president of Brown University in 1989. In 1997, he was selected to head the large non-profit Carnegie Corporation of New York, with its mantra, “The free library is the cradle of democracy.” It is, therefore, altogether appropriate that we have chosen Vartan Gregorian to serve as keynote speaker for The Center for the Humanities’ annual celebration of Washington University authors—Celebrating Our Books. At a time when the undergraduate library at the University of Texas, Austin, removes a huge collection of books to install a coffee shop, computer terminals, and lounge chairs for students—many of whom come from nearly book-free homes—it is good to have someone remind us that books are not irrelevant and that great public libraries are not optional for the populace of a democratic nation. It is a great pleasure to have someone who knows and loves the smell of books help us celebrate our authors.

Jian Leng, Associate Director
The Center for the Humanities

The New Children Studies Minor Kicks Off With a Presentation by Anita Silvey

It would be hard to find a more authoritative voice than Anita Silvey.
- Publishers Weekly

The Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis is proud to announce that the well-regarded author of 100 Best Books for Children, Anita Silvey, will visit our campus on November 9th at 4:00pm. Professor Gerald Early will also use this occasion to announce the Center’s Children Studies Minor. The event will take place in Old McMillan Café (Room 115), Old McMillan Hall, on the WU Hilltop campus.

Anita Silvey’s presentation, entitled “100 Best Books for Children: Our Greatest Children’s Books and the Stories Behind Them,” is an illustrated lecture and discussion on some of the best books for children (1908-2000). This presentation stems from her research on these books and points toward some idea of future research possibilities for those studying children’s literature in an academic program.

Anita Silvey, one of the nation’s leading experts on children’s literature, estimates that she has read 125,000 children’s books, starting from childhood and continuing through her years as a reviewer and editor of The Horn Book Magazine and publisher of children’s books for Houghton Mifflin. She is the editor of The Essential Guide to Children’s Books and Their Creators. Silvey’s lifelong conviction that only the best is good enough for the young forms the cornerstone of all her work. A professor, reviewer, writer, and well-known children’s book advocate, Silvey lectures throughout the United States and Canada and has appeared frequently on radio and television in her efforts to promote the best books available for our children.

Please RSVP by calling the Center for the Humanities at 314-935-5576, since seating is very limited. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

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The Center for the Humanities
Advisory Board 2005-2006

Nancy Berg
Associate Professor of The Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies Program

Ken Botnick
Associate Professor of Art

Lorenzo Carcaterra
Writer

Letty Chen
Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Language and Literature

Robert Henke
Associate Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature
Chair of Comparative Literature

Michael Kahn
Attorney at Law, Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin

Larry May
Professor of Philosophy

Steven Meyer
Associate Professor of English

Angela Miller
Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology

Linda Nicholson
Stiritz Distinguished Professor of Women and Gender Studies

Dolores Pesce
Professor of Music

Joe Pollack
KWMU Theatre & Film Critic

Bart Schneider
Editor of Speakeasy

Jeff Smith
Associate Professor of Performing Arts
Director of Film and Media Studies

Robert Vinson
Assistant Professor of History and African and African American Studies

James V. Wertsch
Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts and Sciences
International and Area Studies

Ex officio

Edward S. Macias
Executive Vice Chancellor & Dean of Arts and Sciences, Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor on Arts & Sciences