Susan Orlean - The Library Book

The Los Angeles Public Library

For Edith Orlean, my past For Austin Gillespie, my future

Memory believes before knowing remembers.

William Faulkner, Light in August

And when they ask us what were doing, you can say, Were remembering.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers

Stories to Begin On (1940)

By Bacmeister, Rhoda W.

X 808 B127

Begin NowTo Enjoy Tomorrow (1951)

By Giles, Ray

362.6 G472

A Good Place to Begin (1987)

By Powell, Lawrence Clark

027.47949 P884

To Begin at the Beginning (1994)

By Copenhaver, Martin B.

230 C782

Even in Los Angeles, where there is no shortage of remarkable hairdos, Harry Peak attracted attention. He was very blond. Very, very blond, his lawyer said to me, and then he fluttered his hand across his forehead, performing a pantomime of Peaks heavy swoop of bangs. Another lawyer, who questioned Peak in a deposition, remembered his hair very well. He had a lot of it, she said. And he was very definitely blond. An arson investigator I met described Peak entering a courtroom with all that hair, as if his hair existed independently.

Having a presence mattered a great deal to Harry Omer Peak. He was born in 1959, and grew up in Santa Fe Springs, a town in the paddle-flat valley less than an hour southeast of Los Angeles, hemmed in by the dun-colored Santa Rosa Hills and a looming sense of monotony. It was a place that offered the soothing uneventfulness of conformity, but Harry longed to stand out. As a kid, he dabbled in the minor delinquencies and pranks that delighted an audience. Girls liked him. He was charming, funny, dimpled, daring. He could talk anyone into anything. He had a gift for drama and invention. He was a storyteller, a yarn-spinner, and an agile liar; he was good at fancying up facts to make his life seem less plain and mingy. According to his sister, he was the biggest bullshitter in the world, so quick to fib and fabricate that even his own family didnt believe a word he said.

The closeness of Hollywoods constant beckoning, combined with his knack for performance, meant, almost predictably, that Harry Peak decided to become an actor. After he finished high school and served a stint in the army, Harry moved to Los Angeles and started dreaming. He began dropping the phrase when Im a movie star into his conversations. He always said when and not if. For him, it was a statement of fact rather than speculation.

Although they never actually saw him in any television shows or movies, his family was under the impression that during his time in Hollywood, Harry landed some promising parts. His father told me Harry was on a medical showmaybe General Hospital and that he had roles in several movies, including The Trial of Billy Jack . IMDbthe worlds largest online database for movies and televisionlists a Barry Peak, a Parry Peak, a Harry Peacock, a Barry Pearl, and even a Harry Peak of Plymouth, England, but there is nothing at all listed for a Harry Peak of Los Angeles. As far as I can tell, the only time Harry Peak appeared on screen was on the local news in 1987, after he was arrested for setting the Los Angeles Central Library on fire, destroying almost half a million books and damaging seven hundred thousand more. It was one of the biggest fires in the history of Los Angeles, and it was the single biggest library fire in the history of the United States.

Central Library, which was designed by the architect Bertram Goodhue and opened in 1926, is in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, at the corner of Fifth Street and Flower, on the downslope of a rise once known as Normal Hill. The hill used to be higher, but when it was chosen as the site of the library, the summit was clawed off to make it more buildable. At the time the library opened, this part of downtown Los Angeles was a busy neighborhood of top-heavy, half-timbered Victorians teetering on the flank of the hills. These days, the houses are gone, and the neighborhood consists of dour, dark office towers standing shoulder to shoulder, casting long shafts of shade across what is left of the hill. Central Library is an entire city block wide, but it is only eight stories high, making it sort of ankle-height compared to these leggy office towers. It projects a horizontality that it probably didnt in 1926, when it debuted as the high point in what was then a modest, mostly four-story-tall city center.

The library opens at ten A.M. , but by daybreak there are always people hovering nearby. They lean against every side of the building, or perch half on and half off the low stone walls around the perimeter, or array themselves in postures of anticipation in the garden northwest of the main entrance, from which they can maintain a view of the front door. They watch the door with unrewarded vigilance, since there is no chance that the building will open earlier than scheduled. One recent warm morning, the people in the garden were clustered under the canopy of trees, and beside the long, trickling watercourse that seemed to emit a small breath of chilled air. Rolling suitcases and totes and book bags were stashed here and there. Pigeons the color of concrete marched in a bossy staccato around the suitcases. A thin young man in a white dress shirt, a hint of sweat ringing his underarms, wobbled on one foot, gripping a file folder under his arm while trying to fish a cell phone out of his back pocket. Behind him, a woman with a sagging yellow backpack sat on the edge of a bench, leaning forward, eyes closed, hands clasped; I couldnt tell if she was napping or praying. Near her stood a man wearing a bowler hat and a too-small T-shirt that revealed a half-moon of shiny pink belly. Two women holding clipboards herded a small, swirling group of kids toward the librarys front door. I wandered over to the corner of the garden, where two men sitting by the World Peace Bell were debating a meal theyd apparently shared.

You have to admit that garlic dressing was good, one of the men was saying.

I dont eat salad.

Oh, come on, man, everyone eats salad!