Читать книгу The Dark Library - Cyrille Martinez - Страница 9

According to my information, the Reading Room of the Great Library sees a considerable crowd. To be sure to find a place, it’s best to go right when it opens.

At 8:45 a.m., I cross the avenue to get to the light grey wooden square where there is a white block called the multiplex: sixteen rooms for just as many films. Multiplex is a recent word which means cinema. It doesn’t mean anything different. I preferred cinema. One day, perhaps, the word library will be deemed outdated. It will be replaced by another. I prefer to not be around to hear such a thing.

On the square, people circulate in uniforms of charcoal, black, navy. Cup in hand, headphones over their ears, or their minds on their phones, they’re in the process of sorting out details relative to the organization of their day, they’re taking advantage of their last moments of freedom to listen to music and consume energy drinks. I think they have the look and style of middle managers or employees, but who’s to say that they aren’t readers? Certainly not me, who is claiming to be one. Because who knows how to recognize a reader when he’s on his phone and drinking an energy drink? How do you recognize a killer without his weapon? A reader without a book? Once again, I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that we’re all going in the same direction. We pass by the multiplex, the wind picks up, the towers rise in the distance, I inhale, my heart is beating, I advance further still, four glass towers with an aesthetic that is classic yet minimalist: the Great Library.

The first tower is comprised of novels, the whole family of novels. Found there are the old classic novels, the contemporary classics, the mid- to long-term bestselling novels, all the subfamilies of legitimate novels, to which is added all the novelistic sub-genres: Novels about the Past, the Present, Novels for the Future; Fan Novels, Sports Epics, Technological Fables, Uchronia; Self-Writings, Earth-shattering Confessions; National, Regional, Urban, Suburban, Rural, Stateless Writings; Novels with Police and Vampires; Novels that Make You Feel Good, Inoffensive, Super Nice; Novels that are Disturbing, On Edge, Mad; Novels that are Weighty, Chatty, Interminable; Novels to Read on the Train, to Enjoy at Home, Comfortably Settled into an Armchair, in a Hospital Bed. More surprisingly, this tower also contains essays that aim to clearly respond to society’s questions, to help with its personal growth or, in a short hundred pages, provide you with the keys to success. Lastly, the tower holds collections of classical poetry and volumes of lyrics from recent popular songs. Despite the presence of essays, poetry, and lyrics, this first tower is commonly referred to as the Tower of Novels.

The second tower gathers together the sciences, in the broader sense: hard science, physical and natural, Earth science, but also human and social science, to which is added criminology and law, the history of technologies. The tower also houses fiction that is derived from these sciences, supplementing or responding to it, which is why Science-Fiction, Biofiction, Geophysical Operas, Post-Human Speculations, Utopias, and Heterotopias can also be found here. Logically, this second tower has been baptized the Tower of Sciences and Humanities.

Unlike the previous two, the third tower is not dedicated to the storage and conservation of pieces belonging to larger and smaller categories of knowledge. It contains a wide array of genres that have in common the fact that they all belong to niches or super-niches of general literature. Whether they are without scientific backing or lack intellectual legitimacy, these are secondary books, which seem not to have been written but rather thrown together: outdated textbooks, improbable treatises, delirious catalogues, wild theories, books that are crazy, unacceptable, badly compromised, in the grip of incurable diseases. A whole series of publications whose intention is obscure, their composition astonishing, their genre problematic, and their language bizarre. This is the Tower of the Unclassifiables.

The fourth tower benefits from special protections: it is where the rare and precious documents are kept: stamps, bibles, parchments, high-quality editions, and documents of great historical value. In this fourth tower are also the personal libraries of writers that the Great Library has purchased or received as gifts. More so than the others, this last tower is subject to a close monitoring of its temperature and humidity. Without even mentioning fire, a simple bacterium can prove destructive to these precious documents. Officially, this tower bears the name Tower of Heritage. But when they speak of it, the employees and readers simply say: the Reserve.

This distribution of the collections is not simply the result of sorting the works by type; it corresponds to the turnover rate.

Those in the Tower of Novels are by far the most requested: on average, between 1,000 and 1,500 volumes are consulted each day. The readership is composed of students, teachers, the unemployed, the employed, the retired, high-schoolers. They come to inquire about one or multiple books likely to answer questions they’re not sure about, to satisfy their curiosity, to quench their thirst for learning, or to bring them pleasure. These are Novel Readers, that is to say the people for whom reading is strictly limited to the novelistic genre. Of course, they are on occasion appreciative of rare editions, deluxe editions, copies annotated by renowned writers or fitted with pretty dedications, signs of an intellectual friendship between two eminent persons. But this aesthetic taste for the book object cannot distract them from the primary subject of their attention: the tale, the characters, the story that carries us away, makes us travel, amuses or torments, distracts, questions, instructs, edifies, comforts, worries, questions, or reassures. From their point of view, only a novel deserves to be given time, only a novel is worth reading. The Novel Readers are not only interested exclusively in one genre, but in a limited number of titles within that genre. The best books are the most read, and one commonly held idea is that it is precisely because they are the most read that they are the best. Wide reading prevails: here, the readers read a lot but rarely the same book twice. Except in exceptional circumstances, the death of a novelist or the anniversary of their death, the readers of the Tower of Novels never revisit a text.

According to the most recent data, between 200 and 300 volumes leave the Tower of Sciences and Humanities every day to find themselves in the hands of a public made up of researchers, students, or enlightened amateurs. The works from the Tower of Sciences are the subject of in-depth study. Their readers go through them carefully, while taking notes, not hesitating to go back if necessary, to look over the same chapter several times, the same page, the same paragraph, in order to better understand a concept’s formulation, to clarify a complex idea. A title can be requested and read three or four times, or more, by the same reader. Unlike in the Tower of Novels, extensive reading is practiced in the Tower of Sciences.

The day when more than 100 volumes leave the Tower of Unclassifiables within the span of twenty-four hours will be a milestone. Like the contents of the tower itself, its readership is varied, heterogeneous, difficult to define and even more so to describe: let us list pell-mell and without concern for exhaustiveness the researchers who work in niches, the individuals keen to find a publication by an eccentric great-uncle, lovers of experimental poetry, plus a whole range of those who are curious, asocial, sick, lost, or weird. Their methods of reading are so varied that it is almost impossible to find a constant: studious readers rub shoulders with those who are browsing, some come to find a text that cannot be found elsewhere, others seem to have requested a book at random, typing into the catalogue the first word that comes to mind, selecting the first item to appear, before sitting down, placing the book on the table, opening it, and diving nose first into the opening paragraph.

If the books of the Tower of Heritage are by far the least consulted, it is due to the conditions for access. A preliminary request must be made to the Chief Curator, describing one’s motivations, attaching a CV, and not forgetting to specify one’s affiliated institution, publications, and research. In the event the request is accepted, the consultation will take place in a reserved room, under the surveillance of a staff member who will make sure the rules are followed: notes taken with a grey pencil (it is forbidden to use a pen, even felt-tip), the wearing of silk gloves, and limited consultation time. The readers from the first three towers should be under no illusions; The Tower of Heritage is not for them. It is only the scholars, the learned, the lettered, and the researchers who have the right to access the heritage collections. One doesn’t come to the Tower of Heritage to read, but rather to gather information, make progress on work, and also, experience has proven, to commit larceny.