Freeing the Spirits

More than a year ago, my wife and I decided to sell our house, and it sold—quickly. So we found an apartment in Asheville, about 30 minutes east of our home for the previous three-and-a-half years. Being that we—plan in mind—thought it a temporary situation, we delivered most of our possessions, save for the essentials (a couple of chairs, a mattress, corkscrew and computer), to three plywood-walled storage units. What had become a fairly extensive personal library—450 volumes or so—would be sheltered from the musty 100-square-foot containers in gray plastic bins and cardboard boxes (see Boxing Up Bukowski, this blog’s forebear).

A writer’s library is a room full of muses.

But the temporary situation, well, evolved; in the meantime a challenge presented itself: finish a book I was co-writing without a little help from my friends (i.e., the spirit and words of the authors of the books that once filled the space in which I wrote). The rich red walls, lined with just enough shelves to accommodate the collection, and a regal-looking cherry wood desk had been replaced by bland white walls, with only a few books stacked on the floor, and a black square card table. Though trying at times during those months, I survived—but not without adding about a hundred new books to that stack on the floor.

It was a Sunday when I had boxed up Bukowski and the hundreds of others. It was a Sunday, less than two months ago, when I maneuvered the 17-foot U-Haul up to the curb outside the apartment in Savannah, Georgia. “Jesus is Lord,” read a sign above the window of the storefront church that occupies the first floor of the two-story brick building. The air was visible, like vapors squirming above the surface of an airport runway, from the heat of an obscenely radiant sun. The movers we hired were no where in sight.

But a revival was underway.

One cannot overstate the importance of a library to a writer. Of course, every writer has their own quirks and habits, their own methods and approaches, their own time and place, when it comes to practicing the craft of creation through the use of words. But most writers, I would argue (from merely my own experience and that of other writers I know), are most at home, most comfortable, when surrounded by words, by books.

So I, obviously, was thrilled to have finally left the purgatory of shelfless life. I could have done without having to carry those 100-plus-pound bins up two flights of stairs in 110-degree Savannah steam. But I knew what awaited.  (When we were apartment hunting a few weeks earlier, designated space for a library was a prerequisite.) Still sweating from the effort, I pried off the lids, ripping one book at a time from the coffins, reacquainting myself—however briefly—with the title, the author, and the pages. With some, it felt like a brand new discovery—only that it wasn’t. But I also found myself forming a wish list in my mind. In the matter of a few days, I bought and assembled new bookcases appropriate for the unique loft-like space. Only one task remained: arranging the books on the shelves. Though not totally without any method to the madness, I avoided any stringent categorization system, instead grouping them based on my own intuitive sense of where each belonged.

Finally, the muses had returned. After a year of library deprivation, my preconceptions, formed as I was dismantling my library nearly 16 months ago, are all true. The need for inspiration is an unavoidable reality for any and all creative artists. For writers, there’s no better source that their personal library. From the mere presence of the books to the spirits of the authors who filled them, from the simple act of scanning the spins to pulling one off the shelf, a library furnishes the writer with an endless supply of stimuli—both real and otherworldly.

I’m surrounded by friends again—Bukowski and Bangs, Talese and Zinsser, Orwell, Hemingway, and Melville. Reminders of what’s possible with the written word. Irving, Friedman, Thoreau. Reminders of why words matter. Hersh, Gonzo, and all the rest. Reminders that it’s not about rejection or recognition—but about the process, the writing itself.

Alberto Manguel, reflecting on the meaning of libraries throughout history in his book,  The Library at Night (highly recommended), traces its origins back, in part, to the third century B.C. Library of Alexandria. He provides an inscription believed to have been etched into a wall above the shelves: “The place of the cure of the soul.”

A revival was underway indeed.

Each night, in my library, a revival.