Booklist has this review of Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangsters in the Public Library, by Don Borchert:
“In this aptly titled memoir, Cleveland native Borchert recounts his experiences working in a small Southern California public library. Having arrived in the public library as a new father with a checkered work history, Borchert never ceases to wonder at the great cross section of the American population that crosses the library’s threshold. All the quotidian pleasures and pains, the comedy and tragedy of public library work, appear here—angry patrons, latchkey kids, befouled bookdrops, Internet porn, bomb threats, drug dealing—the characters and incidents that make providing library services a roller-coaster adventure. As Borchert tells it, in gritty language, library staff find themselves too frequently trapped in bureaucratic jungles, caught between often-desperate need for basic library service and inflexible local-government regulations. Librarians have often recorded their stories of lives led in public service, but Borchert’s vantage point from within the clerical staff gives his voice and perspective unique authority.”
Wow. Now, I work in a public library, and I think we do good work. But a ‘jungle’? The “comedy and tragedy” of working in a library? Providing library services is a “roller coaster adventure”? And I guess we do live “lives led in public service”, but yeesh, we’re not soldiers or firefighters or anything. All in all, I think the reviewer might be trying to oversell this to his audience, made up mostly of librarians as it is.
Also, I understand that working the clerical side give the author a different perspective, but how the heck does it lend him ‘authority’?
UPDATE: The author of the actual book has been kind enough to drop a note, as seen below. As evidence that I actually was mocking the cited review, and not his tome (which I haven’t read), let me offer this somewhat less purple review from Publisher’s Weekly:
“Jack-of-all-trades Borchert shares wholesome, guardedly witty dispatches from the suburban L.A. library system in this charming tell-all. For 12 years the family-man author has held the post of assistant librarian, keeping a wary eye on unruly kids, mollifying mystified parents and repairing sadly manhandled materials. Borchert relays a conversation with an aged librarian who reveals how it was in the good old days (staff lunches used to be served with wine), then contrasts that account with modern-day multicultural crayons and the preponderance of latchkey kids abandoned in the library for long, numbing afternoons. A few of the regular patrons are inspiring Renaissance types, but most are unsettling and unsavory, such as intensely reclusive crossword-puzzler Henry hounding the reference desk; loser Max looking futilely on the Internet for a South American wife; or the drug dealers working the restroom. From patrons who rack up hundreds of dollars in fines to missing pet rats and fist-fighting mothers, Borchert has seen it all, and his account gives a human interest spin to this undervalued profession. ”
Certainly the title of this blog entry may make it seem that I was actually refering to the book itself as the subject of the post, and that was bad writing on my part. However, I think the difference in the two reviews is evident, and that the second makes the contents of the book sound a lot less outlandish.
That said, good luck to Mr. Borchert.
