We Are All There for the Same Reason

If you’re the sort of person who’s inclined to stop by a blog like this one, there’s a pretty decent chance you’re the sort of person who’s interested in libraries and what happens to them.

But in case you haven’t heard, what’s happening to libraries right now is not very good.

This week, along with many other people, I rolled my eyes at an article that does not bear linking here written by a man who had not set foot in a library in many years and yet was completely convinced that they were musty old relics, well past their usefulness, that would not be missed if they were all shuttered tomorrow because there is Google.

I have been fighting for libraries for many years now, and of all the eye-rollingly dense arguments against them I have heard, that is certainly the least original one, and yet, it never fails to drive me crazy.

Oh, you don’t use, value, or understand libraries, so OF COURSE, you are very qualified to speak about them.

When somebody like me speaks out in defense of libraries, an uncharitable person might think, Of course the librarian and YA author doesn’t want cuts to her precious libraries for she knows what side her bread is buttered on. But that’s sort of a backwards way of looking at it.

The truth is, I’m a writer and a librarian because of every library I ever set foot in between the ages of 8 and 18, and because of every librarian who ever helped me find a good book or track down an answer, or left me alone because they knew I was feeling prickly and wretched and teenaged and wanting to be left alone. But they let me know that I could do that in the library because it was my place and it belonged to me and I was welcome to be there, prickly or not.

That is a nice story, and I daresay it is a common story, but it is the kind of story that makes someone disinclined to support libraries shrug their shoulders and say, “Why should my tax dollars support that?”

But it is also a story that I have in common with the kids who spend every single day at the library over the summer and the families who check out giant bagfuls of books every week, and the people learning English, learning to read, learning to knit, writing books, doing homework, figuring out how to prepare legal documents, registering to vote, volunteering, and job-hunting.

My library is up the street from Skid Row, and the thing that the staff and social workers and mental health professionals tell the vulnerable populations they work with is the same thing Paul Krugman told his readers last week on his New York Times blog:

We go to the library because it is a nice place and it improves the quality of our lives.

No matter where we come from, we are all there for the same reason.

Right now, the New York Public Library is facing $47 million dollars in cuts to their libraries, cuts that would close branches, reduce hours, and eliminate staff. Library visits, program attendance, and circulation of materials were all up in 2012, but still, the cuts are threatened.

The slogan for the letter-writing and outreach campaign to stop these cuts is “No place does more for more New Yorkers.”

I think that’s putting it modestly.

This is the time of year when library budgets are decided by city councils and boards of trustees. Some of those people understand why it is important to adequately fund nice places that make our lives better. Some of them do not. Of this latter group, I believe that most of them maintain a view that the library is a noble, if outdated institution that froze in time at precisely the moment they last set foot in one, which was sometime around 1975.

That is why, when people who don’t use, value, or understand libraries start cutting their budgets, it’s important that the rest of us stand up and tell them exactly what they’re cutting.

If you’re a New Yorker, take a minute and write a letter on behalf of NYPL. And even if you’re not, it’s a good time of year to check in with your local library and ask what their funding situation looks like. Will they have to cut hours, materials, or staff this year? Ask what you can do to help.

I keep coming back to two sentences I wrote before:

We go to the library because it is a nice place and it improves the quality of our lives.

No matter where we come from, we are all there for the same reason.

That seems like a small and simple and insignificant thing, but I don’t think you could say those words about any place other than a library.

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Mary McCoy is a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library, and has been a contributor to On Bunker Hill and the 1947project, where she wrote stories about Los Angeles's notorious past. Her debut novel, DEAD TO ME, will be published by Disney-Hyperion in 2014. It's a YA mystery set in Golden Age Hollywood about a teenage girl investigating the attempted murder of her aspiring film star sister.

Somebody Call the Police!: Fridge Logic and Baby Jane

When I was 14, I became obsessed with the 1962 Robert Aldrich film What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, a cult classic starring Bette Davis as an unhinged former child star named Baby Jane Hudson who terrorizes her invalid sister, Blanche, played by Joan Crawford.

Bette is ghoulishly terrific, cracking her thick, pancake makeup every time she smirks at her own wickedness, and even though Joan looks like a 19th century Sunday school teacher, it eventually becomes clear that she’s no saint either.

It is a weird movie, too harrowing, dark, and studded with Hollywood royalty to be as campy as it is (Blanche's supper tray! The doll! “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy!”). This either works for you or it doesn’t, something I realized when I dragged a friend to a revival screening. He was quiet when we left the theatre, and when I finally asked what he thought of it, he said, with some dismay, “Why didn’t somebody just call the police?!?”

This struck me as hilarious because it is true. What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? would be over in 45 minutes if some responsible party - the maid, the nosy neighbor, her daughter, the creepy pianist who shows up to help Baby Jane with her “comeback,” or even Blanche herself - had just tried a tiny bit harder to get help. However, as someone who had seen the movie half a dozen times and totally bought into its grotesque, wonderful world, this point had never once occurred to me.

There’s a term for this: fridge logic. Alfred Hitchcock allegedly coined it when explaining that audiences probably wouldn’t notice a plot hole in Vertigo until they were home “pulling cold chicken out of the icebox.”

To me, the “plot hole” that ruined the film for my friend didn’t bother me at all because, as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t one. It made sense to me that the neighbors, the maid, and even the creep acted just the way they did.

And now, I must force myself to stop writing about What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, about which I could go on all day, and get to my point.

When writing mysteries and thrillers for teens, you will likely have young protagonists who are in over their heads, who are dealing with adult problems, and who probably stand a chance of falling into real peril. One of the challenges of telling this kind of story is keeping readers from thinking, “Why doesn’t she just call the police?” or “Why doesn’t he ask for help?”

If you can anticipate those moments in your writing, you can find ways to make your readers believe in them, and in your characters.

Maybe she can’t go to the police because social services would get involved, or because they’d be considered a prime suspect, or because the police can’t be trusted.

Maybe the person your character trusts most in the world is too far away to do them any good, or asking for help would involve breaking a trust, or endangering a friend, or destroying a relationship. Maybe your protagonist only thinks it will, but if that belief is compelling, readers will buy into it, too.

Like most right-thinking people, I am fond of Harry Potter. However, one thing about the series that drove me nuts was the way Harry was always was wandering off into grave danger without telling his teachers and friends, who had on numerous prior occasions shown themselves to be trustworthy and capable, what he was up to.*

Of course, J.K. Rowling has her reasons. Harry has his reasons, because for all of his winning qualities, Harry can be headstrong, stubborn, myopic, narcissistic, and he has a little bit of a hero/martyr complex. So, when he wanders off to save the day all by himself against impossible odds, I don’t like it, but I believe it. And the reason it drives me nuts is because it reminds me that Harry’s not perfect.

Your characters don’t have to do what’s logical or reasonable or likeable. But they do have to earn it. Otherwise, your readers are going to reach for the cold chicken in the icebox and realize that your story could have ended on page 75 if only some sensible person had just called the police.

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* A teen at the library where I work once shared this observation with me: “Did you ever notice his scar hurts every time he’s about to do something really stupid?”

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Mary McCoy is a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library, and has been a contributor to On Bunker Hill and the 1947project, where she wrote stories about Los Angeles's notorious past. Her debut novel, DEAD TO ME, will be published by Disney-Hyperion in 2014. It's a YA mystery set in Golden Age Hollywood about a teenage girl investigating the attempted murder of her aspiring film star sister.