PAPERWORK: Walk among the shelves and hear the whispers

"The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book."

Those words were torched, set on fire and burned up by author Susan Orlean.

This from a woman who won’t toss a broken and torn book into the trash. Because she believes books have souls.

But she forced herself to put a match to the paperback pages of Ray Bradbury’s novel, “Fahrenheit 451.”

Appropriate. A story about book burning. Something Orlean was trying to understand.

And explain. Which she did in detail in her latest nonfiction book, “The Library Book.”

“The flame moved like a bead of water from the tip of the match to the corner of the cover. Then it oozed. It traveled up the cover almost as if it were rolling it up, like a carpet, but as it rolled, the cover disappeared.

“Then each page inside the book caught fire. The fire first appeared on a page as a decorative orange edge with black fringe. Then, in an instant, the orange edge and the black fringe spread across the whole page, and then the book was gone — a nearly instantaneous combustion — and the entire book was eaten up in a few seconds.”

Orlean admits the flames were seductive but she was left with a realization — “how fast a thing full of human stories can be made to disappear.”

That understanding seems critical to grasp the significance of the throbbing heart of her book — The Los Angeles Public Library.

And April 29, 1986. The day a monstrous fire (called arson but never proven) nearly gutted the historic library.

The fire burned more than seven hours, damaging 700,000 books and silencing 400,000 — including all Ray Bradbury books.

Orlean’s book is journalism at its best. Knitted around the fire and the arson investigation are stories about the library’s history, the daily operations and the people who open books and knowledge to the community they serve.

Readers also are left with a better understanding of the role of libraries and how that is changing.

The book also is personal for Orlean. A sentimental tribute to her mother who took her as a child to libraries several times a week. And a pledge to her son to open the same doors.

I, too, remember the libraries I nested in when young. I can relate to her memories.

“… I would leave richer than when I arrived,” she writes. “… In the library I could have anything I wanted.”

Her book illustrates chapter over chapter how libraries are sanctuaries and lifelines.

Yes, it’s about books but also about what they stand for: opportunity, escape, truth, discovery, support, comfort, joy, and on and on. Sort of like the ultimate and perfect definition of a parent.

I cannot say it as well as Orlean. So I have to share a slice of the message she is serving:

“A library is a good place to soften solitude; a place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years when you’re alone.

“The library is a whispering post. You don’t need to take a book off a shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believes that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.

“It was that affirmation that always amazed me. Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage — the writer’s belief that someone would find his or her book important to read.

“I was struck by how precious and foolish and brave that belief is, and how necessary, and how full of hope it is to collect these books and manuscripts and preserve them.

“It declares that all these stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past and so to what is still to come.”

Thank you Susan Orlean.

Now …here’s the part that resonates. Think about her closing words the next time someone suggests libraries are relics and outdated and without purpose.

Listen and realize the grief that would engulf you if all this turned to ash.

“This is why I wanted to write this book, to tell about a place I love that doesn’t belong to me but feels like it is mine, and how that feels marvelous and exceptional,” she said.

“… All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.”

LONNY CAIN, of Ottawa, is the former managing editor of The Times, now retired. Please email thoughts, comments or ideas to lonnyjcain@gmail.com or mail care of The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.