Excellent | The Library at Night

A wealth of erudite anecdotes about books and libraries, but not much more | The Library at Night | Alberto Manguel

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	• The Library at Night Alberto Manguel Yale University Press, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The scream of a dying star

Alberto Manguel's The Library At Night is a curious confection: ostensibly a love letter to bookishness, it rejoices in collections of books and their owners through many prisms; how they're collected, how they can be arranged (as many different ways as you like), how they represent knowledge, time or space - even how the space they occupy can express the personality or idiosyncrasy of their collector.

It will instantly appeal to those, like me, who aspire to have their own "real" library one day (I am hoping mine evolves from its current status as a mere collection of books on a few dusty shelves, though I don't know - and this is one aspect Manguel doesn't delve into - what it takes for a merely juvenile collection of books to matriculate to a mature library).

Manguel also describes libraries through the content of the books they hold, and his range is eclectic, from Greek poets, Arab philosophers and Jewish philanthropists to Anglo-Saxon fantasists like Shelley and, memorably, Stoker. Each new vista builds a new perspective, but curiously after these multiple shafts of light, while one is well illuminated, the general impression is no more specific than that libraries - physical libraries - are pretty neat and we'd be worse off without them.

Which, for a while, made me ponder what the point of the book really was. After all, who could disagree with that?

But then it occurred to me, as surely it did to Manguel, that *we* could, in the same way we've, collectively, disagreed that it's strictly necessary to have a record collection or a even a television any more. Books may not have succumbed quite so easily to the digital ether as did music or film - yet - but there's no reason to suppose that state of affairs is irreversible, and if dear old Amazon would kindly (!) sort out its Kindle supply chain, we might yet shortly see a precipitous decline.

Manguel's subtext is that this would be a frightful outcome. He is certainly more equivocal about digital libraries than he is about physical ones, and sees the advent of the electronic book as a threat to the legitimacy and, possibly, longevity of his bibliophilia. For what good are batty old books, occupying acres of floor-space, however splendid the architecture, when you can have millions of volumes on a portable hard drive?

This issue Manguel only really addresses obliquely, and many of his arguments to counter this position are fatuous (especially as regards the durability of electronic information). The gating issue will be whether les gens can be persuaded to curl up with a Kindle rather than a book. I haven't seen one yet, so I'm yet to be persuaded, and that question alone might save the library's bacon. But otherwise the digital realm solves many of the drawbacks (like an optimistic computer programmer, I suppose he would call them "features") of physical libraries that Manguel documents, such as their physical space and susceptibility to combustion. Such as their inherent need to be ordered one way, no matter how cleverly, to the exclusion of all others. Such as the extreme limitations they impose on the actual retrieval of information (imagine how powerful it would be to be able to Google search the text of an entire library. With a digital library, you can).

All told, Manguel adopts a narrow concept of the value of a library, suitable for dinner parties and night time expeditions, but which won't be familiar to the younger generation who have grown up with Google. Though I am sure he would hotly dispute it, I suspect Manguel would emphasise the space, spirit and idiosyncrasy of a library over its actual, textual content; he would accentuate the intellectual statement a library makes over the intellectual statements contained within it; he would value a book's spine as much as he would the pages bound by it. There is a place for that view - to a certain degree, I share it: I like visitors to my house to see my collection of books, which one day may be a library, and I don't expect them to open any of them.

But when using it in anger, when studying or writing; when I need to quickly find what I am looking for, my physical collection can irritate me intensely. At those points - real ones for genuine scholars, you would think - Manguel's cosy view seems Luddite and hopelessly outdated. For professional library users - as opposed to literate bon vivants - the Google revolution will bring only positive change to what used to be a rather painful and time-consuming endeavour.

Whilst this remains a heartfelt and warmly written elegy, it remains likely that, before long, its subject will be a bygone age. We will have to find new ways to represent our learning. The web is already generating them: perhaps Alberto Manguel should set aside his scepticism and sign up to LibraryThing, and catalogue his books there. Wonders never cease.

Olly Buxton

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Excellent

For those who enjoy reading and perhaps a bibliophile or two, I found this book to be a very pleasant accounting of Manguel's love of books. It caused me to think about the reasons I appreciate books and enjoy those that are well written. Highly recommended.

A wealth of erudite anecdotes about books and libraries, but not much more

In part, its most successful part, THE LIBRARY AT NIGHT is a collection of anecdotes about books and libraries, a worthwhile addition to the pantheon of "books on books". To give you some idea of the broad array of bookish matters and historical or literary figures discussed at some length, here are ones that were new to me or which I found particularly interesting: Zumarraga, who spent seven years as head of the Inquisition in Mexico and tracked down and destroyed much of the vast literature of the Aztecs; Michelangelo's Laurentian Library in Florence; the Islamic libraries in Chinguetti and Oudane, in Mauritania; the repository at Dunhuang, along the Great Silk Road; Borges and his library; and Aby Warburg and his idiosyncratic library.

But Manguel clearly has tried to make THE LIBRARY AT NIGHT more than a collection of anecdotes; he interlaces his rich array of factual information with his personal observations and comments about books, libraries, civilization and culture, and humanity. I find this latter effort much less interesting or successful. Manguel seems to be a poet at heart, such that many of his "philosophical" forays flirt with nonsense and impart a tone that is a little too precious, at least for my taste. He has a smooth, flowing writing style, but like the waves at the shore it begins to lull you to sleep if you read more than a chapter at a time. And speaking of chapters, I find the "structure" -- fifteen separate chapters, titled "The Library as Myth", "The Library as Order", "...as Space", "...as Power", and so on through eleven more conceptual nouns until at last we arrive at "The Library as Home" -- too contrived.

I fear that I have been overly harsh. So I will add one more star to my overall assessment and move on.

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Ideal Mix

The LIBRARY AT NIGHT is an ideal blend of contemplation and observation, of thought and history. With chapters that read like short stories it is accessible to the 'not enough time" as to the "google stupidized" reader. A great gift for any librarian, or reader of books. Books in history . . . back to the shelves. Leaves the reading feeling like he's just left a scene from The Ninth Gate.

The Romance of Reading

Alberto Manguel has produced a romantic history of libraries which incorporates their best feature: the ability to wander down hitherto unsuspected byways and make new discoveries, often winding up far from your original objective but still satisfied by what you have found instead. This is a discursive history of libraries through various categories: Myth, Order, etc. with fascinating essays for each. Those who love reading and libraries will learn much history and philosophy and will recognize in Manguel a kindred spirit and friend.

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Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. ?Libraries,? he says, ?have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I?ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.? In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.

Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the ?complete? libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought?the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral ?memory libraries? kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written?Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel?s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.

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