Literary Dalliances with the New Orleans Library

The rain slaps softly against my window. The grayness of the light tends to make everything seem a little softer, a little slower. But I can still hear the sluice of traffic cutting through puddles on rain-slick streets. They have places to go, maybe even things to get done.

That’s the thing about New Orleans. There is always somewhere to go, some friends to meet, some beat to dance to. Maybe even some work to get done. If you’re not careful, it can get awful hard just to squirrel away a little time to yourself, to get back inside your own head.

What I’m really talking about here, at least for me, is curling up with a good book. My reading time has recently dropped off precipitously, and that tends to make me feel off-kilter.

So rather than send my life into a downward spiral caused by a dangerous deficiency of literature, I did the only reasonable thing a new resident with a craving for words and an appreciation for the smell of old books could do.

I got my New Orleans library card!

The closest branch to me is the Milton H. LatterBranch, a gorgeous old converted mansion with lovely grounds to boot. It’s one of the smaller branches, so the selection isn’t the best, but they have a lovely cluster of reading rooms and nooks inside and out. Plenty of spaces to tuck yourself away for a while.

                                   

I’m trying to make amends for my shameful tracklist with classics and notables, so I picked up some James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Joyce Carol Oates.

                                 

Laying the books out like that, I appreciated the complement of the symmetrical Joyces, and only wished that a copy of Orlando would have been available to make a really nice gender spectrum there.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to eating my way through the vast literary collections I have access to. This is only the first course.

I leave you with Mrs. Dalloway, reflecting on those glorious drops of time we should savor, but so rarely do:

 Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over – the moment. Against such moments (with women too) there contrasted (as she laid her hat down) the bed and Baron Marbot and the candle half-burnt.