The Page

I’m a work-study student at my university. That isn’t unusual in itself, since almost every campus has dozens of students working in all the buildings and departments. The hourly pay isn’t great, but the money really comes in handy and it’s very convenient to work right where we have classes. The jobs make for good contacts with faculty and staff, which can result in decent letters of recommendation. We also might have opportunities to discover some of the inner workings of groups on campus. Those bits of information can cover a range of things, from rivalries to romance. The important thing, of course, is not to get caught snooping. Never let them catch you doing that. The consequences could be dire. Just saying…

Having decided to tell this story of entry level employment, I should include the fact that I am older than most of the work-study hirees, and for good reasons. The main one is that I ended up with two small children before I figured out I wanted to go to college. Not that they were accidents or unwanted, not at all, but they did limit my free time for thinking. That was what really got me thinking about getting a degree in something so I would have to read and reason and write - things other than grocery lists, instructions for giving medicines, and memorizing children’s books.

I wanted to be with my family, but I still had a secret dream, one that had started when I first discovered books, or soon after, when I understood the worlds they held. Books made me happy, but there was something more about them that I had difficulty identifying, something big and mysterious, like a promise. This might sound off topic, but it’s the reason I gravitated to the university library position when the work-study spots were announced. I wasn’t going to make a living wage at the job, but it was possible to fit hours in and around my classes, setting my own schedule. I wouldn’t have to get daycare, which I wasn’t opposed to, but which was a big expense.

This is why I found myself happily wandering among the stacks (i.e., bookshelves), checking to see all the items were correctly placed, but also looking for those that needed repair. I learned the letters for each section, and tried to spend most of my time where the literature was located. I liked other subjects, such as natural history, but as a would-be writer, it was fiction that had the strongest attraction. It was fun looking at books that had been written in other languages and trying to imagine I could read the originals. Maybe some day, after my children were out of high school, a few years down the road.

I think I was considered a good worker - after all, I seemed more mature - and there were never any complaints. I assumed the library would want to hire me again the next year. My courses were also going well, and I did every assignment meticulously. In a World Literature class we got to read lots of those books that I could only read in English translation. One writer who was quite the challenge was Jorge Luis Borges, from Argentina. Borges was hung up on labyrinths and libraries, which worked for me. He also used a lot of metaliterary references (where literary works refer to other literary works) and played little games to intrigue or fool readers. I fell headlong into all his traps. You’re really missing something if you don’t know his works, particularly the stories.

Another writer was Umberto Eco, whose The Name of the Rose was another tribute to books and ends (spoiler alert if you haven’t read it or seen the film with Sean Connery) with a friar by the name of Jorge - more intertextuality - who is obsessed with a certain volume in the library he runs to the point where it isn’t clear he’s lucid. 

All these literary references might not make you enthusiastic about books and writing like I am, but I’ll try to focus now on my story, which is of course about more than earning minimum wage organizing books on shelves. I was a model employee, true, but I was also curious. As I scoured the book spines and the carts where items had been dropped for me to return, my gaze caught a supposedly locked door on a back wall of the library’s third floor. Nobody ever used it, as far as I knew, and it had no sign above or beside it to either identify what laid on the other side or to forbid people to open it. 

I couldn’t help it. I tried the door, expecting nothing, although images from novels by Stephen King and Douglas Preston came to mind. So many doors to the imagination! Not that I considered myself an Agent Pendergast, but I admired how he was undaunted by barriers, particularly doors. So, expecting to meet resistance if I turned the door handle, I was shocked to sense its movement. It opened inward as if it had always been waiting for me.

There was no light, no illumination of any kind, but I was glad, thinking I didn’t want to be caught and reprimanded for shirking my duties as a work-study student. Still, I gradually became able to see what were nicely finished wooden walls that had no remnant of mustiness or dust. Not even a spider, which I would have welcomed because spiders are very useful.The apparently empty space did not frighten me. It held a promise, like I figured out books held promises when I was little. This space was blank, however, with no words or illustrations. It was like a blank page, waiting for someone to inscribe something on it. I laughed, although I laughed very softly and it sounded slightly shaky.

I kept walking ahead, gradually acquiring a clearer vision of my narrow surroundings, with walls ‘like two book covers’, I thought. Then the transition started. If I had more time, I would provide the details of my progress, how I stepped forward cautiously yet not terrified, inquisitive but not forcing my surroundings to give up their information immediately. 

“Ha!” I said to myself. “This must be what they call ‘trusting the process’ when you’re trying to write or paint or compose music.”

Now for the part where you as my readers will have to participate actively in what I’m revealing to you. (To you, not to my supervisor at the library. You need to keep that in mind.) Walk with me while I identify some of the things in this hall or tunnel or room. Then you will need to decide if I’m a reliable narrator, if what we have entered is fantasy, horror or madness, but also if there is enough proof to render it fact rather than fiction. I will be trying to connect some dots or words or names. Am I lying, making it all up? Or does it all exist, if not in another universe, at least in another country, another book?

While I was saying that led you to an area that is different in construction. The walls are no longer wood; they are rough stone. (Keep telling yourself I’m a reliable narrator. If you need more clarity on reliable vs. unreliable, the classic reference is Wayne Booth, although you should have read The Rhetoric of Fiction years ago. If you decide I am unreliable, you may need to find another storyteller to get you out of the situation I’ve put you in. I might be your best bet after all.)

To summarize, the university library where our pilgrimage began - oh, wait, you didn’t know this was a pilgrimage, meaning instead of reliable or unreliable, I might just be deficient - has left off somewhere. It is gone, for now, at least, and we are surrounded by books that are far older than the ones college students check out to write their term papers. These books we’re standing beside now date from the first volumes ever published up to the present.

Who put these books here? When? Why? How? Are they books, even, or holograms? How did the bringers get them to fit? How big is this space, anyhow? No library in the world could hide all the books, magazines, treatises, and what-have-yous that humans produce. This is certainly not the Tower of Babel nor the Library of Congress nor the one in Shanghai, which are supposedly the biggest and second biggest in the world. 

If you have followed my narrative this far, you may be starting to figure things out. Among those things you ought to figure out:

Who I really am 

What I really do for employment

How old I actually am

If this is a true story or fiction

If the door really exists

If I ended up losing my job at the library

Why any of this matters, if it does.

If you prefer to write your own ending. Or find a new plot.