Libraries are created worlds. Row upon row of shelves holding miles and miles of books arranged meticulously down to the last decimal point, they combine the glories of a tale out of the Arabian Nights with the hidden terrors of an ordered, card-filed bureaucracy from Kafka. That the books within libraries contain terrors and pleasures aplenty has been a source of delight since before the Great Library of Alexandria, and for many budding writers and bookworms the public library off Main Street was the magic portal to new worlds.
In In the Stacks, noted librarian Michael Cart has assembled the cream of twentieth century short fiction about libraries and librarians. They range from such classics as Isaac Babel's "The Public Library" to Jorge Luis Borges's tale about a library stretching into infinity ("The Library of Babel"), to such contemporary masters as Ray Bradbury ("Exchange"), Alice Munro ("Hard Luck Stories"), Francine Prose ("Rubber Life"), Nikki Giovanni ("The Library"), and others. Lunacy, love, obsession and the joy of reading are all gathered together in a volume most readers-and librarians of course-would agree is long overdue.
In In the Stacks, noted librarian Michael Cart has assembled the cream of twentieth century short fiction about libraries and librarians. They range from such classics as Isaac Babel's "The Public Library" to Jorge Luis Borges's tale about a library stretching into infinity ("The Library of Babel"), to such contemporary masters as Ray Bradbury ("Exchange"), Alice Munro ("Hard Luck Stories"), Francine Prose ("Rubber Life"), Nikki Giovanni ("The Library"), and others. Lunacy, love, obsession and the joy of reading are all gathered together in a volume most readers-and librarians of course-would agree is long overdue.
