A trip to the temple.

I drove into town early this afternoon to get paper towels, ice cream,
and cigarettes. And to make a stop at the library. Hadn't been there
for a couple of weeks, what with a fresh new Kindle to play with and
all that.

Sparta is one of the towns across the country (as well as in the U.K.
and other places) that benefitted from the largesse of Andrew
Carnegie, its library, one of nearly 3000! funded by Carnegie, getting
its initial grant in 1902. It's a surprisingly unimposing library, in
both its physical size and presence and in the size of its collection,
for a town of 9000 or so. I've visited many a town half Sparta's size
and found bigger and better libraries. Still, a temple is hallowed
ground.

It wasn't so very long ago that calling a library hallowed ground
would have been considered blasphemous by many. Not as many as would
blanch at any other building not reserved for religious purposes being
so described, perhaps (after all, even the most zealous of religious
bigots generally have some sort of sense of the holiness of scripture
and, by extension.....to one degree or another.....of the written word
in general), but certainly enough to matter. But the very idea of
blasphemy has pretty much died a quiet and unremarked death in Western
culture. So the hallowed ground rubric is open for business.....well,
should be. The trouble is that the American public of today takes
that concept (insofar as people are even aware of it) about as
seriously as they do blasphemy.

Oh well. Things change.

Here's something else that has changed. As I walked through the lobby
my eye was caught by a printout of the New York Times non-fiction
bestsellers list dated 2-6-11. Not something I generally pay much
attention to, and certainly not something I bother to search
out.....but I'll look at it when it comes into view.

There are fifteen titles on the list, along with brief descriptions of
each. All in all, not a whole lot that interested me.....with three
exceptions. Twain's Autobiography is there. I'm already reading
that.** The other two are, at no. 11, "Assholes Finish First" by
Tucker Max, and, at no. 12. "Sh*t My Dad Says" by Justin Halpern.

Now it's no great secret that I'm not particularly squeamish about
strong language.....right?

But, my how the world has changed! When I made my first forays into
the temple as a small boy back in the 50s, a book that had the word
"****" (even thinly disguised) or "asshole" anywhere in it, let alone
in the title, was almost certain to be banned from most, if not quite
all, libraries throughout the country. And that's assuming that any
reputable publisher (that is to say any publisher not already known
for publishing the sort of smut that NEVER made it into
libraries.....and, for the most part, still doesn't) would have
touched it. Hell, most dictionaries didn't even have those words. I
know.....I looked. And today, in a nation that is by all accounts
more religious than it was half a century ago, such titles (if not the
actual volumes, in this instance) not only make it through the door,
but are more or less prominently displayed in the lobby where any
sweet young Methodist or Presbyterian soccer mom's darling child can
peruse the list on the way in. And this ain't exactly Sodom we're
talking about here....this is small town heartland!

My how things have changed.

giles
upon whom the delicious irony of finding "assholes finish first" in a
carnegie library was entirely lost.

**the kindle version of the autobiography is pretty nearly
unreadable. this is a more or less scholarly work whose complexity
requires fairly complex formatting, very little of which comes through
in the kindle. whoever is responsible for this abortion should be
gutshot and left on the curb as a warning to others.