by Susan Orlean
It’s a cliché to say “I couldn’t have done this book without . . .” but in the case of my husband, John Gillespie, it happens to be true. He’s simply amazing. He helped me plow through a huge amount of research material—and even though I could barely read his handwriting, I’d still be digging through those archives if he hadn’t pitched in. He read every word I wrote—multiple times—and gave brilliant editing suggestions and reporting advice and boosted me whenever the task of writing this seemed too daunting. Most of all, he gave me support and love throughout, for which I am deeply and adoringly grateful.
To my son, Austin, who led me into this story and has endured me working long nights and weekends when we could have been playing Fortnite together, I love you.
Mom, I made a book for you.
Los Angeles, California
May 2018
More from the Author
Rin Tin Tin
Saturday Night
Throw Me a Bone
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© NOAH FECKS
SUSAN ORLEAN has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the author of seven books, including Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in upstate New York and Los Angeles, and she may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and Twitter.com/SusanOrlean.
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ALSO BY SUSAN ORLEAN
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People
Lazy Little Loafers
Saturday Night
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NOTES ON SOURCES
The story of the Los Angeles Public Library and the 1986 fire required years of research and scores of interviews with current and past library staff, deep dives into the Fire Department’s archives and the City of Los Angeles’s court records, and a lot of digging through the musty boxes of material stashed in the library’s Rare Books room. There I found a trove of information, including newspaper clippings about the library from the twenties; book lists from the thirties; paraphernalia from every decade; and countless, fascinating odds and ends left behind by the hundreds of librarians who passed through Central Library at some point in their careers. This material was essential to the writing of this book. I also found a great deal of valuable material in the many books and published papers about California and library history. Here is a selected list of those resources:
BOOKS
Banham, Reyner. Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. University of California Press, 2001.
Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451 (Sixtieth Anniversary Edition). New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012.
Burlingham, Cynthia, and Bruce Whiteman, eds. The World from Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Casson, Lionel. Libraries in the Ancient World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Verso Books, 2006.
Ditzel, Paul. A Century of Service, 1886–1986: The Centennial History of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association, 1986.
Fiske, Turbesé Lummis, and Keith Lummis. Charles F. Lummis: The Man and His West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.
Gee, Stephen, John F. Szabo, and Arnold Schwartzman. Los Angeles Central Library: A History of Its Art and Architecture. Santa Monica: Angel City Press, 2016.
Gordon, Dudley. Charles F. Lummis: Crusader in Corduroy. Los Angeles: Cultural Assets Press, 1972.
Klein, Norman M. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory. New York: Verso Press, 1997.
Knuth, Rebecca. Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003.
Palfrey, John. BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Polastron, Lucien X. Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries Throughout History. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2007.
Rose, Jonathan, ed. The Holocaust and the Book. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Soter, Bernadette Dominique. The Light of Learning: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles Public Library. Los Angeles: Library Foundation of Los Angeles, 1993.
Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
———. Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
———. Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
———. Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Thompson, Mark. American Character: The Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Rediscovery of the Southwest. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001.
Ulin, David. Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015.
Wiegand, Shirley, and Wayne Wiegand. The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2018.
Wilentz, Amy. I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
ARTICLES AND PAPERS
Blitz, Daniel Frederick. “Charles Fletcher Lummis: Los Angeles City Librarian.” UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations M.L.I.S., Library and Information Science thesis (2013).
Hansen, Debra Gold, Karen Gracy, and Sheri Irvin. “At the Pleasure of the Board: Women Librarians and the LAPL, 1880–1905.” Libraries & Culture Magazine, vol. 34, no. 4 (1999).
Mackenzie, Armine. “The Great Library War.” California Librarian Magazine, vol. 18, no. 2 (April 1957).
Maxwell, Margaret F. “The Lion and the Lady: The Firing of Miss Mary Jones.” American Libraries Magazine (May 1978).
Moneta, Daniela P. “Charles Lummis—The Centennial Exhibition Commemorating His Tramp Across the Continent.” Los Angeles: Southwest Museum (1985).
PHOTO CREDITS
Los Angeles Public Library
Jack Gaunt copyright © 1986. Los Angeles Times. Used with permission.
Demitri Hioteles
Boris Yaro/Los Angeles Times
California Librarian Magazine
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum, Los Angeles; P.32537
Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum, Los Angeles; P.35484
University of Southern California Libraries and California Historical Society
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Gary Leonard/Los Angeles Public Library
Photo by Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Jack Gaunt copyright © 2011. Los Angeles Times. Used with permission.
University of Kentucky Special Collections
Acción Visual/Diana Arias
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ISBN 978-1-4767-4018-8
ISBN 978-1-4767-4020-1 (ebook)
