As a former librarian, I am always keen to learn of writers, artists and musicians vastly more illustrious than me who also worked as librarians at some point in their lives. So far, my list includes Proust (who took a job as a volunteer librarian, to please his father, but hardly ever turned up for work), Marcel Duchamp (who worked briefly as a librarian, to free his mind for other things), Borges of course (director of the National Library of Argentina for 18 years), Marianne Moore (library assistant at the New York Public Library's Hudson Park branch during the 1920s), Hector Berlioz (librarian at the Paris Conservatoire), Philip Larkin of course (university librarian at Hull), Anne Tyler (assistant librarian at McGill University Law School) and Angus Wilson (British Museum Library, as it then was, before and after the war). Has anybody got any more names to add to the list?
And then, of course, there is Keith Richards, bibliophile extraordinaire, who spent many happy boyhood hours in Dartford public library, was fascinated by the Dewey decimal system, and might well have been a librarian if his career hadn't taken a somewhat different path. In 1998 he suffered the least rock'n'roll accident that ever befell a rock god, when he fell off his library steps while reaching for a book, breaking three ribs and puncturing a lung. You can read about it here (and follow the link, if you can, to one of the most curious books in my own library).
Wednesday, 19 August 2026
Librarians
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I've just thought of another – Caron Wheeler, shortly before she found fame as a singer with Soul II Soul, worked as a Saturday assistant at the library where I too was employed. Very nice she was.
ReplyDeleteI was once expelled from a library because other users were annoyed by my habit of walking up and down while I thought through what I had just read, and then returning to my seat to read a bit more. I didn't protest; if they were genuinely being disturbed, fair enough.
ReplyDeleteBut I did look round the room and resolve that if any of those blighters ever asked for my help with knotty problems they would be met with a stern refusal. Happily the chance arose several times.
Turner Cassidy, poet, for almost forty years was a librarian at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Jennings, poet, worked at Oxford city library
Eric Ormsby, poet and essayist, for 20 years was director of libraries and professor of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal and also served as chief librarian of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, in London
Frank O’Connor, poet and fiction and nonfiction writer, was a librarian at the Pembroke District Library, Dublin.
Thomas Berger, novelist, was a librarian at the Rand School of Social Science
Baron Wormser, poet, fiction and nonfiction writer, was a librarian for 25 years in Madison, Maine
Thanks so much, Dave – I was hoping I'd hear from you!
DeleteCasanova ended up as librarian to Count Waldstein.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, I'd forgotten about him! Thanks, George.
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