Love among the stacks

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
-Anais Nin

Something about it felt illicit. After all, I wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d run away (again) from the bells and schedules, slipping down the halls unnoticed, hiding amongst the oft-ignored shelves.

He knew that I was there. I could feel him watching me from his desk as he stamped and catalogued. “You’re different because you love it here,” he’d told me the first time he deliberately “forgot” to ask me for my pass. I sat curled-up in a corner of the quiet library, lost in the pages that the others saw as obligation.

I had an odd bond with this man. Mr. Spear (“like the thing you throw,” he’d always say and chuckle proudly at his little joke) was the stereotypical embodiment of his occupation: bespectacled, quiet, he had a few stories that he routinely told me. My favorite being the one about a friend who owned 6 cats, each named for one of Jane Austen’s novels. “I’d hate to be Northanger Abbey,” he always added at the end. He was a friendly man who let me hide out among the stacks on the days when I wanted to skip biology, concert choir, or Phys-Ed (my three least favorite courses).

It was on one of those afternoons that I discovered her. I’d been looking for something else, when my eyes happened to stop on the fading, nearly illegible words: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and other essays. I placed my forefinger on top of the book and tilted it out slightly. Anais Nin. The name reminded me of the flowery perfume favored by several of my aunts. I pulled it out completely and studied the black and white picture on the cover. It was of an older woman with a childish face. Her long, graying hair was twisted around her head in an intricate braid, and her slim figure was wrapped in an embroidered kimono. There was an aura about her that was at once inviting and exotic. I immediately wanted to know who this woman was.

I brought it back to my chair where the book released a tender sigh as I cracked its spine for seemingly the first time in years. A turn to the faded names and dates on the brittle card in the back revealed that it had indeed been nearly two decades since it had been read. Library books are memento mori; relics read and left by students past. I thought of the others that once rummaged through these stacks—uniformed ghosts that had long since left their adolescence behind. I gently turned the pages, at first pausing randomly over the paragraphs, then hungrily going back and devouring each of the essays. The writing was dreamlike, erotic, and completely out of place within the crucifix-studded walls of my Catholic high school library. In those passages I recognized the feelings I’d long been unable to explain.

I worked my way through her words until Mr. Spear gave me the look that meant that he could no longer afford to hide me. There was something about it, though. I was loath to return it to its spot, and yet I didn’t want to check it out for the maximum two weeks. I wanted it. And not just that title, I wanted that very same book. I wanted to take home the musty pages, the fading cover. It was love at first read and I didn’t want to let go. And so, with only a slight hint of guilt, I slipped it into my black nylon book bag and walked out with the broken eighth commandment hung casually over my shoulder.

That afternoon marked the beginning of a love affair that has spanned a decade. After that moment I sought out Nin’s work in whatever form it appeared. I amassed every volume of her revolutionary diary, as well as the many volumes of fiction, erotica, and literary criticism. My favorite of these was—and still is—the intimate collection of letters she exchanged with Henry Miller, her long-time lover, friend, and literary colleague.

I was fascinated by her ethereal use of language and intrigued by her life. She was brilliant, damaged, and brazenly naked. Her work is a stunning juxtaposition of aching fragility and unapologetic strength. I find comfort in her words, often seeing bits and pieces of myself as she details her struggle as a writer, her desire for passion, her constant need to transcend reality by imagination.

Today, as I searched for a book among my own collection, I came across that well-worn copy. The catalog number is still printed in a typewritten font along the yellowed spine. Holding it in my hands, the scent of the pages transported me back to Mr. Spear’s library. Once I again I was that 14-year-old girl in droopy kneesocks and pleated plaid, escaping from the tedium of required classes in an attempt to find something bigger. It’s far from my favorite of her books, but it’s one that I hold dear for it introduced me to a world that I might have otherwise missed.