Books and libraries

What is your first memory of a book? That was a simple question that unfortunately had more than one simple answer. Racing through the many rooms in my mind, I found not one but many childhood memories of books. One is a picture book from a film called “The Red Balloon,” about a boy and a balloon stoned by bullies. There was a multivolume illustrated Art Linkletter Encyclopedia that perhaps encouraged my love for useless knowledge. There was a volume on Greek legends and another on Roman legends that didn’t have many pictures, but provided hours and hours of fun. Before I discovered porn, I had my fill of nudity from my aunt’s medical books hidden away in a cabinet.

My earliest memory of Filipiniana was “Philippine Tales and Fables” by Manuel and Lyd Arguilla. The cover was designed by Vicente Manansala, and if memory doesn’t fail me, as it usually does, the Juan Tamad stories retold were illustrated by Romeo Tabuena. I think the book was even autographed and should be worth something today, but then for us it was just another children’s book. My other childhood memory of a Filipiniana book was an illustrated version of “Creatures of Midnight” by Maximo D. Ramos. I borrowed it many times from the school library until I found my own copy in the Ato Bookshop on Session Road in Baguio. While other children were reared on Mother Goose, Andersen and tales from the Brothers Grimm, I learned about the different types of aswang, their characteristics, and how to combat them. Reading these two titles at an early age probably encouraged my love for Filipiniana long before I started to collect them in earnest when I was in college.

My father is a lifelong reader and he dedicated a small room for his books. I spent many hours in that small room because it was dark and cool, and there seemed to be an unwritten rule that you were not to be disturbed in it. The other room where one was left alone was the toilet. The library was my refuge from my mother’s attempt to wean me from books by enrolling me in: tennis, swimming, and karate workshops. I discovered early on that I preferred a book in the shade. At 87, fresh from laser eye surgery, my father still reads, and the two photos I cherish are of him and his favorite grandson in the living room reading. One photo has them reading books, the other has them both on iPads. The world has indeed changed so much in my lifetime. I grew up in a room with books while my nine-year-old favorite nephew has a whole library and a different world on his iPad. Both of us prefer reclining in the shade with something to read and a cold drink.

From a small home library in my childhood I have moved on to other libraries, my favorites being: the Ateneo de Manila University’s Rizal Library, the University of the Philippines Main Library in Diliman, the Lopez Museum, and the National Library. Then I discovered the New York Public Library, the Newberry Library, the Kroch Library, Cornell University, the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies Library, and the Sophia University Library. The University of Michigan Library was open 24 hours, allowing me to work at dawn and sleep in the daytime. People get envious of the many places I have been for research, but they do not realize how difficult and lonely a historian’s life can be. When abroad, I sometimes spend eight or nine hours straight in a library. This is a life you would not even wish on your enemies, but again it all boils down to my odd but happy childhood. Freud could also add a footnote about toilet training and how this forms who we are and who we turn out to be in later life.

The grandest of libraries I have visited are the New York Public Library, the US Library of Congress in Washington, the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, and the British Library when it was still the physical heart of the British Museum in London. I am sentimental about the British Library and often remember it as it was before it moved from Bloomsbury to St. Pancras. I am told it has moved to a more modern space with state-of-the-art equipment. My fond memories are of the “Great Reading Room” that was connected to many smaller rooms for specific collections. The Great Reading Room was under a magnificent blue dome that provided a cathedral-like setting for printed catalogues, bibliographies, and reference materials. In the days before Opac or computer catalogues, everything was done by hand.

Call numbers were found in oversize heavy scrapbooks with bibliographic cards glued to sturdy paper. You filled a request slip and handed it to a librarian who dispatched it in a small glass vial into a pneumatic tube. It took at least an hour before the book would arrive so you either: searched for more materials, had a beer in a pub outside, or just wandered around the British Museum (my favorites being the ancient Egyptian mummy room, the ancient Greek sculpture room, or the King’s Library where manuscripts by famous people were displayed: manuscript music from Mozart and Bach to the Beatles, drafts from Shakespeare and Shelley to Hemingway).

Looking back on books read and libraries visited, one sees the outline of a life and a real education.

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