Vicious, bloodthirsty advertisements make perpetual assault against your nerves, traffic jam exhaust burns in your lungs, and your days are pissed away haggling over goods in the marketplace: this is your America. Must there not remain here but one sanctuary left to find solace and protection from this nasty, brutish existence? Is there no nourishing habitat left where a healthy soul can thrive amidst a foul morass of culture? Actually, there is – the public library. Somewhere, squalid and forlorn in your city or town, a massive building filled with books, music, computers, and videotapes waits for you the citizen to go inside and use it all for the low cost of nothing. You may not be well-liked, or even talked about in social circles, but these facts will not prohibit you from obtaining a library card and gaining complete access to a storehouse of profound knowledge that could only serve to rectify and make straight whatever deformed and twisted life you have led thus far.
If you happen to be one of the rare citizens with an appetite of a slightly higher mettle, you may even find yourself wandering about in the stacks of books. If your library is a good one, you could probably while away many a pleasant hour lost in the titillating and depraved love affairs of a Dostoyevsky novel, uncover a mystery with the venerable Sherlock Holmes, or (provided you are not a prohibitively retrogressive anti-Muslim racist) embark on an fanciful adventure through the strange tales of the Arabian Nights (note to the voluptuary: look for the naughty version).
The higher meaning in all this, for those with an interest in such things, is that the library as an abstract idea represents the opportunity for any lost bungler to acquire knowledge and develop a refined experience of consciousness, even the lowliest scumbags who dangle off the bottom rung of society. One can use a library as a means to conduct utilitarian ends, or as a sanctuary for pleasure gratification; it is all a matter of taste. Be assured that earlier civilizations restricted access to their books for aristocrats and the nobility. That is, of course, until they realized that the effort was needless, that their treasure was quite safe: the poor keep away from literature of their own accord, much as dogs are mistrustful of fire and dislike cooked food. The public availability of books simply reduced their appeal as objects of value and thus safeguarded them from knavery and the money-grubbing schemes of the poor. It has been the final proof that education is in the end the real difference between the upper and lower classes. Public access to literature was the greatest historical concession the rich could have accorded to the poor – perhaps through it they hope to absolve themselves of a guilty conscience, as if to say “look, we give you all that has been given us!” The poor pay for it, of course, but that matters little – the poor ultimately pay for everything through their servitude and the sheer brute intensity of their manpower. The gesture would still be a noble one were it not for a simpler human dilemma: the immense rewards of public access to literature are available only to those with the courage to use it. If the lower castes really were to educate themselves, well then, look out! Then we would have a very different set of problems at hand. Thus far the potential has not been realized, society is evidence to that, but the future development of a civilization could hinge on such a point. Until then the ground remains unmined and gems lie mixed about like common rocks in the dirt.
Try your mind at the following simple fact: a library is a valuable resource that will save you much of the pointless expense that comes with the ignoble craving for ownership. You need to use a computer to write that long awaited manifesto, update that pornographic web page, or maybe you’re just homeless and searching for that dream job – well, the library can help you do that! The library is full of computers, free for any able-bodied, man, woman, or child with the will to use one. Or perhaps you’d like to rent a few movies for the weekend – well, you certainly cannot rent movies at the library because they let you check them out for free. Of course the quality is not quite like the selection you’ll find at your local video chain: it’s actually much better, and it may take you some time to get used to that. Whoa, instead of the sixty duplicate copies of that new Chuck Norris flick I was expecting to see here’s a whole array of diverse, introspective, and artistically stimulating films for the serious connoisseur. Hey, here’s a bunch of documentary films about real-life reality, I wonder what that’s all about? But look, oh how quaint: they even carry Hollywood’s latest batch of summerfun-blockbuster-boobjob-kneeslappers to keep you in hee-haws on through the night. Well, to say the least your local video store starts to look a bit meager by compare; and the price-comparison math is so simple even you can work it out.
Lastly, let us not forget that many of our larger, urban libraries are places of architectural beauty, monuments unto themselves that are worth visiting for their grandeur, paintings and murals, and the occasional museum relic. Even our smaller, rural libraries have outdoor courtyards and activity rooms where one can sleep off that drug binge or channel a creative psychosis. In a good library, one can relax to music or watch videos with public audio-visual equipment, or check out music from Rachmaninoff to Run DMC. In the time you spend waiting in line to buy the latest Depeche Mode CD you might have already listened to it for free. What, you think that is so different? And how many times can you listen to that CD before it finally dies in your ears and you bury it away amidst the rest of the rubble on your CD rack?

When one considers what our modern library has to offer us, the only objection one can rightly raise concerning its operation is that it should ever be closed. In a world where one must eventually pay for everything, why not institute a library system that is open at any hour, so that knowledge and information is obtainable at any hour? Why is the library only open during the workman’s shift? Like rats, poor people are active at night. Maybe if the libraries were open they would feed themselves with textbooks instead of beer. This is a call for militant action: it is time to give the people full access to their books at any time. Do this, and this grand institution will see its greatest achievement as a public service come to complete fruition. Until then, I’ll be nervously pacing mornings outside the Boston Public Library, the first library in America to establish the free public lending of books, waiting to write you, the public, a seething, hate-filled letter.

Hatefully Yours,

Brendan Britton

Perhaps your tastes will evolve and eventually require a finer grain to be satiated, and you will have no choice but to plum the weighty depths of a philosophical argument with your good friend Socrates. Not a thinking a man, you say? No problem, we have scores of mindless magazines available for your browsing pleasure, keeping you up-to-the-minute with the latest celebrity antics. Perhaps you dig archeology – why, you can dig up a good book on great archeological excavations! If you’d rather stick to stamps, then you might just stick to catalogs to help you price out your obscure possessions. It seems like the library has something for everybody, no matter how much of a freak you are.