Skimming through the October issue of CILIP Update, I was struck by the article by Andrew Taylor (pp24-25) regarding the presentation of librarians in the media (he doesn't mention The Hollywood Librarian, maybe he's too young). The gist of his opinion piece is that novelists stand up in public to speak out against library cuts/closures, yet portray librarians in a negative light in their books.
In the literary world, says Taylor, libraries are mystical places, where keepers of knowledge stand guard over a wealth of information inaccessible to the casual reader. I don't know how widely read Mr Taylor is, but his few examples of librarians in print are hardly representative of the whole literary canon.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2006) features a vampire librarian. An unsurprisingly unhelpful character, but not exactly representative of real librarians, as vampires do not exist in the real world. Making the librarian a vampire is obviously a plot device to add tension and provide danger for our hero. If you want a positive portrayal of librarians in vampire fiction, I point you in the direction of Rupert Giles from Joss Whedon's TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (he unfortunately lost his job as school librarian when he blew up the library at the end of series 3 - however, he did stop the mayor from eating Sunnydale and destroyed hordes of vampires, so it was for the common good).
The Librarian in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series is actually a positive portrayal of a helpful information professional - it shouldn't matter that he is also an orang-utan - he knows where all the books are and actively helps library users. Again, this is fantasy, not reality. The author's creation has attributes unobtainable in the real world, therefore the representation is perfectly valid in the context of the novel.
Summer by Edith Wharton (1917) - the library is underused and the books are dusty. Sorry, but quite a lot of people were fighting a war in 1917, so visiting the library may not have been their top priority. The library represents the protagonist's need for a fulfilling life: it is knowledge and experience personified but unused, another literary device to represent Charity's inner feelings. Her place of work needn't have been a library, but where else would she meet a visiting architect in 1917?
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is set in a 14th century Italian monastery and is quite probably historically accurate. Medieval libraries were very possessive of the few books they owned (and rightly so, bearing in mind the cost of a book in the 14th century) therefore any librarian would guard his treasures with his life. Poisoned books aren't that unusual as a form of death in crime fiction. An episode of CSI:NY involved the New York Library's collection of antiquarian books, one of which was contaminated with radioactive isotopes [Season 5: Episode 2, Page Turner]. May I also point you in the direction of Susanna Gregory's excellent medieval crime series featuring the physician Matthew Bartholomew, in which 14th century Cambridge College librarians play a part.
I admit that I have not read Summer, The Historian or The Name of the Rose, but there isn't enough of a range of genres in these examples to conclusively state that librarians are not positively represented in literature.
Further reading may be necessary. Perhaps Librarians in Fiction: a critical bibliography by Grant Burns (1998), McFarland & Co. ISBN: 9780786404995, but as it's out of print, perhaps just look at this useful webpage by Laura Cobrinik: Librarians As Characters In Fiction: Biographies, Poetry and The History of Libraries, Including Textbooks For Library Studies.
An excellent play about libraries and librarians is Alan Plater's 1991 comedy-drama I Thought I Heard a Rustling (available from Samuel French) - just as relevant now as it was 20 years ago, and a pretty real representation of the politics of library service closure (it's also rather funny).
My advice to Mr Taylor is to go to his local library and borrow a book that isn't in the historical/fantasy/horror genre and see if any of his choices portray "real" people doing "real" things. Then he will realise that it's not just librarians who are misrepresented in fiction: it's everyone.
That's why it's called fiction.
In the literary world, says Taylor, libraries are mystical places, where keepers of knowledge stand guard over a wealth of information inaccessible to the casual reader. I don't know how widely read Mr Taylor is, but his few examples of librarians in print are hardly representative of the whole literary canon.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2006) features a vampire librarian. An unsurprisingly unhelpful character, but not exactly representative of real librarians, as vampires do not exist in the real world. Making the librarian a vampire is obviously a plot device to add tension and provide danger for our hero. If you want a positive portrayal of librarians in vampire fiction, I point you in the direction of Rupert Giles from Joss Whedon's TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (he unfortunately lost his job as school librarian when he blew up the library at the end of series 3 - however, he did stop the mayor from eating Sunnydale and destroyed hordes of vampires, so it was for the common good).
The Librarian in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series is actually a positive portrayal of a helpful information professional - it shouldn't matter that he is also an orang-utan - he knows where all the books are and actively helps library users. Again, this is fantasy, not reality. The author's creation has attributes unobtainable in the real world, therefore the representation is perfectly valid in the context of the novel.
Summer by Edith Wharton (1917) - the library is underused and the books are dusty. Sorry, but quite a lot of people were fighting a war in 1917, so visiting the library may not have been their top priority. The library represents the protagonist's need for a fulfilling life: it is knowledge and experience personified but unused, another literary device to represent Charity's inner feelings. Her place of work needn't have been a library, but where else would she meet a visiting architect in 1917?
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is set in a 14th century Italian monastery and is quite probably historically accurate. Medieval libraries were very possessive of the few books they owned (and rightly so, bearing in mind the cost of a book in the 14th century) therefore any librarian would guard his treasures with his life. Poisoned books aren't that unusual as a form of death in crime fiction. An episode of CSI:NY involved the New York Library's collection of antiquarian books, one of which was contaminated with radioactive isotopes [Season 5: Episode 2, Page Turner]. May I also point you in the direction of Susanna Gregory's excellent medieval crime series featuring the physician Matthew Bartholomew, in which 14th century Cambridge College librarians play a part.
I admit that I have not read Summer, The Historian or The Name of the Rose, but there isn't enough of a range of genres in these examples to conclusively state that librarians are not positively represented in literature.
Further reading may be necessary. Perhaps Librarians in Fiction: a critical bibliography by Grant Burns (1998), McFarland & Co. ISBN: 9780786404995, but as it's out of print, perhaps just look at this useful webpage by Laura Cobrinik: Librarians As Characters In Fiction: Biographies, Poetry and The History of Libraries, Including Textbooks For Library Studies.
An excellent play about libraries and librarians is Alan Plater's 1991 comedy-drama I Thought I Heard a Rustling (available from Samuel French) - just as relevant now as it was 20 years ago, and a pretty real representation of the politics of library service closure (it's also rather funny).
My advice to Mr Taylor is to go to his local library and borrow a book that isn't in the historical/fantasy/horror genre and see if any of his choices portray "real" people doing "real" things. Then he will realise that it's not just librarians who are misrepresented in fiction: it's everyone.
That's why it's called fiction.
2 comments:
I watched the Hollywood librarian and it was less about depictions of librarians in film and more about the plight of public libraries in small town US. It was someone's PhD and my husband and I thought it wasn't that good. I wrote an article in 2005 titled 'The Librarian as Hero' http://www.librarian-image.net/2005resources.html but it isn't available online anymore ...
I notice that November's CILIP Update has a letter mentioning Alan Wesencraft - the apparent archetype of a lot of Librarian depictions in popular culture (p24).
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