In the Stacks: Short Stories About Libraries and Librarians - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585672599 ISBN 13: 9781585672592

Verlag: Overlook Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

In The Stacks, by America’s leading librarian, is a volume of most unusual stories about that most evocative place: the library.

Libraries are created worlds containing row upon row of shelves holding miles and miles of books. For many writers and bookworms the local public library was the portal the imagination first stepped across. In one volume, the cream of twentieth century short fiction – from Borges’s "The Library of Babel" to John Cheever’s "Trouble of Marcie Flint" to Lorrie Moore’s "Community Life" – about libraries and librarians, and the terrors and pleasures contained in books. Lunacy, love, obsession and the joy of reading are all gathered together in a volume most would agree is long overdue.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Cart was for many years the director of the Beverly Hills Public Library. He is the author of many books, including Tomorrowland, a collection of short stories for young adults, What s So Funny: Wit and Humor in American Children s Literature, and From Romance to Realism: Fifty Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature. In addition, he has been the children s book editor for Parent s magazine and is a columnist for Booklist.

Rezensionen

Librarian Cart (Tomorrow Land) gathered these 19 stories about what he calls "the many-splendored universe we call the library." What is impressive is the list of writers: Italo Calvino, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Isaac Babel, Alice Munro, John Cheever, Jorge Luis Borges, and more are represented in these pages. A librarian's love of books is dramatically demonstrated in Le Guin's "Phoenix," where the librarian risks his life to save some precious examples from fire, and in Anthony Boucher's "QL696.C9," the call number is a clue to a mystery. Librarians and romance are subjects in Sue Kaufman's "Summer Librarian" and Francine Prose's "Rubber Life," while other stories focus on the value of the library itself. Calvino's "A General in the Library," the strongest story in the collection, reaffirms the power of books as a general is told to clean out all the politically incorrect books in a library and ends up wanting to read them all. Frustratingly, while most of the stories praise the library and books, the librarians portrayed often fit the stereotype of the lonely, timid character that librarians have been struggling to overcome. Recommended for large library collections. Josh Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Contributions from such major figures as Borges, Cheever, Alice Munro and Ray Bradbury carry the day in In the Stacks: Short Stories about Libraries and Librarians, assembled by former librarian Michael Cart (My Father's Scar). Borges's well-known "The Library of Babel" is the best of the bunch, with its thought-provoking musings on the possibilities of an "infinite" library. Cheever chips in with a noteworthy contribution in "The Trouble of Marcie Flint," a typical exploration of infidelity and the dark side of suburbia. A handful of the remaining stories are pedantic, underdeveloped or ill-conceived, but there's more than enough wheat among the chaff to make this an intriguing collection.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Overlook Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1585672599
• ISBN 13: 9781585672592
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Herausgeber: Cart Michael
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar