Like me, you may wonder upon seeing this shopfront, "What's a concertina?" Well, I can tell you. It's a small hand-held accordion. I don't think Mr. (or Ms.?) Crabb is still in business, though. I think it's an art gallery now. In any case, there's a little sign in the window saying "paintings."
I don't have much time to blog this morning. I have to get to work because the library closes early today, and my shift has been moved up a couple of hours. That's to make time for all-school cultural competency training this afternoon, where we explore all the various -isms and -phobias that plague our society at large. (I'm not being snarky about it, honestly. I think this training is probably a good thing.)
We've been reorganizing the fiction section, trying to make room for more books. Over time, any collection of books will grow more in some areas than others, and will need to be shifted to redistribute them more evenly on the shelves. Last week I spent a couple of days doing that, and in the process I weeded out more stuff.
Proust, for example. We had sad-looking early '70s paperback editions of all eight volumes of "Remembrance of Things Past." Most of them hadn't been checked out even once since being added to the collection in 1972! Obviously Proust is a classic, but realistically, high school kids are not going to read all of that novel. (Just as they aren't going to read Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa," which you may remember I weeded last year. Incidentally, both "Remembrance" and "Clarissa" are among the ten longest novels ever written.) My solution was to buy a fresh new copy of the first volume of "Remembrance," which is called "Swann's Way" and is the one most people read if they read any Proust at all. I suspect no one will check it out either, but at least it takes up less shelf space. We can always get the rest should the need arise, but I suspect it will not, since no one's wanted it in the last half-century.
It sounds terrible, I know, getting rid of a classic. But the truth is, we need more room for Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the stuff that kids really do read. Am I dumbing down the culture? I don't think so. I think I'm just being realistic.
Anyway, off to work!
I think I need some "cultural competency training" myself as I often suffer from cultural incompetence. It can be very debilitating. As for weeding out classics I say "Good!". After all it is a school library and what is on the shelves should reflect the preferences and interests of the pupil population. Or is this just another example of my cultural incompetence?
ReplyDeleteIf no one has checked out a book in half a century, the culture may have already been "dumbed down" although quite frankly, I doubt if a more than a hundred high school age kids in the history of the universe have read any Proust at all, much less the entire eight volumes.
ReplyDeleteLet us know if you gain any new insights on cultural competency.
just because someone designated some old fart's writing a 'classic' doesn't mean it is or that it is still relevant. especially to school kids. I remember having to read things like Tess of the D'ubervilles, The Mill on the Floss, another along those lines I can't remember the name of in English class. my daughter had to read The Last of the Mohicans which was so wordy a paragraph 3/4 of a page long could be summed up in a sentence or two. it was tedious to read.
ReplyDeletethe effort to get children to read is the bottom line. to read for pleasure, the love of reading and learning,not just for grade. If they are curious about reading the "classics" they are offered for study in Lit classes. You did a good thing! Encouragement in a library is always welcomed especially for children, whatever it takes. I do not even know what cultural competency is but it sounds like something I might need.
ReplyDeleteYour topic today brought back some rather pleasant memories for me of my time working in Chicago. While I was in the city, I started following the theatre career of Mary Zimmerman who adapted classics into fantastic plays. One of those plays was called "Eleven Rooms of Proust" and it was staged in an old warehouse where the audience went from room to room to see scenes adapted from "Remembrance of Things Past". It was such a wonderful experience. She also did an adaptation of The Odyssey (also fantastic) but I think my favorite of all was "Ovid's Metamorphoses". That one was simply genius. I went to see it 3 times in Chicago and the it went to Broadway and I saw it there. Mary Zimmerman is an artistic genius.
ReplyDeleteThe most important thing is to get kids to read and keep them reading.
ReplyDeleteMy wife tried to read Proust and said she couldn't believe how many pages it took him to describe his bathroom habits. On the other hand I once knew a guy who insisted Proust was the greatest writer ever. I haven't tried him yet. I'm only 78. Saving him for my old age.
ReplyDeleteI was an English major and Proust never came up once as a must read at my college. Or maybe I avoided those classes. Harry Potter is a modern classic by my lights. I do think the series will endure and be read fifty years from now. We’ll see though.
ReplyDeleteIt's okay to get Proust off your library shelves. His long writings will always be available someplace if someone has a desire to read them. You make me wonder if you have the old beats there... any Kerouac, Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti?
ReplyDeleteI love the little concertina maker/art gallery shop. It's so neat and compact. I can imagine selling my needle felting and crafts and some antiques and old books in the shop and living through that door to the side. Nice little daydream!
ReplyDeleteConcertina maker - there couldn't have been too many of those around!
ReplyDeleteWho decides what's a classic? Just because it's old doesn't make it so. I wonder what the criteria are? All I know is that I can't get through an awful lot of them. And using "an awful lot" like that probably designates me as a culturally incompetent boob, too :)
On the other hand, I sometimes I wish I had terms of reference for some classics when I find them used to make points in other writings. But not enough, I'm afraid, to actually go and, you know, READ them.
There is something to be said about not having young people read "classics" that they don't have the maturity for. I had a high school English teacher who stopped me from reading Green Mansions which I found boring. She said I shouldn't read it until I was ready to love it, which took a couple more years. Better to keep the kids reading something than to put them off the idea of reading.
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