Once again, Fate slips a horseshoe into the boxing glove of life . . .

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

. . . Fortune vomits on my eiderdown . . . Satan drops ice cubes down the back of my dress. No more fun, no good news for Baby.

I am nearly through with my next book (due out this summer) and hopefully trotted off to the Lincoln Center library to research my next, whatever that may have been. But the recent “renovations” were much worse than even my direst forebodings. It used to be a LIBRARY: walls lined with research books and biographies; a whole lovely back room full of theatrical scrapbooks going back to the mid-19th century (mine for the browsing, as the librarians knew me and gave me the leeway). All gone. The money they SHOULD have spent digitizing or microfilming the priceless, one-of-a-kind scrapbooks and clippings (which will have completely gone to dust in another 10 years) was spent on “modernizing” the place to look like something from a low-budget sci-fi film. The books and scrapbooks are now off-site and pretty much inaccessible. You can’t even photocopy most of the clippings now.

Now, the only way I could possibly research a book would be to quit my job and live at the library eight hours a day for months, using a bionic wrist to copy out thousands of clippings and scrapbooks—if I could even access them. I went back day after day, to see if they had enough on anyone, that I could somehow get photocopied or microfilmed material on. No luck. Everyone hates these changes, patrons and staff alike. I sent furious letters to the director of the Library for the Performing Arts, the curator of the Theater Collection, the vice president of research libraries, and the president of the New York Public Library—none of which will do the slightest bit of good except to burn a few more bridges behind me.

Oh, well, five books is a pretty good track record—six, if my publisher will do a Vol. II of “Golden Images.” I guess I’ll just have to do what everyone else does with their lives: go to work, come home; repeat until dead. Typical of New York—there’s never a taxi or a suicide bomber when you need one. So here I sit, my personal and professional life at a dead-end; in a fetal position, humming thoughtfully to myself,

"Where do we go from here, boys? Where do we go from here?
Anywhere from Harlem to a Jersey City pier . . .
I saw a dead man next to me and whispered in his ear—
‘Oh, joy! Oh, boy! Where do we go from here?’”

On the bright side, my shopping skills have not been affected . . . I’ll be the best-dressed terminally depressed woman in New York. Well, maybe not New York, there are so many well-dressed terminally depressed women here . . . The only bright spot of my whole month was finding an actual AP Newswire headline reading, “Adopt-a-Sailor Program Runs Out of Seamen.”

2

I feel your pain Eve. Libraries seem to have forgotten their role as a sanctuary of work, study and learning.

My own local library is too astoundingly noisy to study as it is full of gossiping kids, clandestine English-as-a-second-language classes, and at least once an hour the librarian herself gets on the intercom to distract me with “Ladies and gentlemen, little Tommy Generic has read one hundred books! (yey…)”. Feh.

Making matters worse, the big San Francisco Public Library has not only given in to the “Starbucks” approach, but it thoughtlessly dumped thousands of archival books to accomodate it.

3

Nicholson Baker is my hero. Now that I no longer have a life or a career, maybe I can hire myself out to dust the magazines in his New England barn . . .

4

Nicholson Baker overstates his case, but I feel your pain Eve.

I just about quit librarianship in disgust when the University of Washington dumped their fabulous online catalog in favor of some generic piece of crap.

But I didn’t. I quit librarianship so I could make twice as much money with fewer headaches.

5

This is terrible. I hate these bloody modern libraries. Just the loss of good 'ol info pisses me off.

I’m very sorry for you, eve, but if you’ve got five novels under your belt, I don’t think you should give up so easily.

6

I wish they were novels, Gorgon—those I could write at home, with just my own imagination and a tot of gin . . . I write biographies, and am the mercy of historical documentation. Lincoln Center used to be the best theater/film history archive in the world: ran rings around the Academy and AFI in L.A. and the BFI in London.

Now, everything I need to research a biography is . . . well, if not “gone,” hugely inconvenient and inaccessible. If I had a McArthur grant, I could sit around all day eating bon-bons and ferreting out what Lincoln Center has hidden away. But I have to work nine-to-five, and can no longer get done what I need to on weekends, after work and vacations, like I used to . . .

Bastards. They should die like pigs in hell.

7

The Boulder, CO library has always been a piece of crap. When I first moved here, they didn’t have what I would consider basic books - things like Joseph Campbell’s books on mythology, the complete works of Tolstoy, and such essentials as “Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld’s Broadway.” Soon after I moved here, they did a renovation. I was ecstatic - they were making it bigger! They’d have room for more books!

Nope.

They did expand - into a huge, open air type thing that went up three stories with lots of glass and steel beams. The floors were all tile. They plopped the children’s room right in the middle of the first floor of this monstrosity, and adult fiction right next to it. Upstairs held all the non-fiction.

Note what I said: The children’s room is in the middle of a tile, glass, and steel two story room.

What the designer’s apparently didn’t realize was that children tend to congregate in the children’s room. Children have very high voices, and they tend to scream and squeal a lot. The tile, glass, and steel amplify the screams. The Boulder Public Library could be a case study for a place where it’s virtually impossible to sit and quietly read. It is, however, a wonderful place to go and hear children squeal whilst browsing the displays of colorful plaster penises.

They never did get any new books as far as I can tell.

8

We all think you’d be a terrific novelist if your passion could ever be exported over. Have you considered this option or are you committed to your craft?

9

Bless you, Athena.

Lieu—I have no talent for, or interest in, writing novels or scripts. There’s too damn many crappy novels and scripts out there as it is, without me adding to the pile. And after I quit my Movieline column (my editor, you may recall, was replaced by a trained chimp), I found it impossible to place another column eslewhere. Oh, I didn’t mind . . . AS LONG AS I HAD MY BOOKS TO WRITE.

Athena: “Why—you’re Eve Golden! You used to write biographies! You used to be big!”

Eve: "I AM big . . . It’s the libraries that got small . . . "

10

I’m not sure how the library where you are works, but at the library here we can order stuff from the depository and check it out that way. Also, is the storage facility completely off-limits to the public? You might be able to use it, (ie, look at the items on-site) since you’re a professional researcher/writer on the topic.

Does the library have an exchange program with local universities? If it does, and the items are cataloged, there should be some policy on borrowing/using rare items for research.

11

Eve, so sorry to hear about your plight, may the people who made this ill-thoughtout decision be subjected to non-stop readings of the menu at Wendy’s.

This may seem like a silly question, but I wonder why more of these resources are not available online? I love tp research stuff on the internet, I would hope more and more stuff will be available that way.

12

Hows 'bout an autobiography then, Eve? I think you’re far more interesting than many other people I’ve read about.

13

Eve, if I read you correctly, one of the big problems is not having access to a photocopier at the new location for the archives.

Have you considered bringing in a laptop and a portable scanner?

That way, you can even do Optical Character Recognition on some of the clips, and have them available as searchable, quotable documents.

It wouldn’t be too tough to set up. I’d be glad to help any way I can, if you think this might be a solution.

In return, all I ask is any dirt you have on Errol Flynn.

14

:eek:

They didn’t even donate them, or sell them? That’s HORRIBLE!!!
I just got back from the Carnegie in Oakland.

That sucks, Eve. Almost as sucky as Corbis.com-the majority of images I had saved in my portfolio are no longer available. Of course, I have most of them saved. BUT IT STILL FUCKING SUCKS!!!
What was this biography on?

(BTW, Eve, do you know of any really good searchable photo archives online? I have corbis and hulton down, as well as the AP-although I can’t get access to it…I need more royalty pictures-it’s like a drug!)

15

Philistines - 1
Eve - 0

Chin up, Eve. Think of it as a challenge – one which you’re more than capable of rising to overcome. Remember Ruby Keeler in 42[sup]nd[/sup] Street. You’ll have to work your tail off kid, but you’ll go out there an understudy and come back here a star’s understudy.

16

http://www.dawsoncity.com/stories_The_Great_Hollywood_Film_Find.asp

Unless, of course, you already knew about that. I haven’t had a chance to see any of the films yet, but Dawson has them…

I realize that doesn’t help for the terrible situation you’ve found yourself in. Administrators that make those kinds of putrid, thoughtless decisions should be slow-roasted over a fire of creosote bush, where the branches are positioned to drip creosote onto the victim.

17

Eve

Over and above your books (which are a delight), you still write the best subject line in the world to tease a person to read your thread.

A librarian in my area said he was going to cut back on books so he could have more room for video tapes, DVDs and computers.

Who knows? Maybe we have reached that point that Ray Bradbury wrote of at the close of Fahrenheit 451 where everyone had to memorize a book.

TV

(Note : Coding fixed. - E.)

[Edited by Eutychus55 on 11-26-2001 at 07:16 PM]

18

From your description, it seems as though the higher stories all open out onto the central Well of Sqalling Brats™. I seem to recall that most books worth reading usually have a good heft to them. Remember, gravity is your friend. With the little buggers located in the crosshairs, just lob some suggested reading over the railing. I’m sure they’ll quite down right away.

PS: Eve, as always, your threads are a gas. Have you considered making your next book a compilation documenting the now lost archive whose passing you lament so loudly? You could kill two birds with one stone by assembling the information in one (digital) file and then condensing it for your own nefarious purposes.

Either that or just hose down the director’s meeting with automatic weapons fire.

19

Eve
I think you would be a brilliant novelist!
But what about a collections of your observations/essays?
A humorist perhaps?

20

Aw Jeezus, Eve! Words to describe my anger and disappointment at what those clowns have done to your library are failing me. Guess I’ll have to go look some up. In my thesaurus. My real one. Made out of paper.