WEBVTT - American Alexandria: Susan Orlean on the Great LA Library Fire 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.360 I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.400 Of all the staff writers at the New Yorker magazine, 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:16.480 Susan Orlean covers perhaps the most ground thematically and geographically. 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:21.280 She's been embedded with fertility, shamans and Bhutan, and orchid 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:26.400 thieves in Louisiana. She's profiled a dog, a boxer named Biff, 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:30.960 and the entire city of Midland, Texas. She combines a 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:36.040 deep emotional understanding of her subjects with rigorous reporting, and 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.760 she spends pretty much as long as she likes on 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:43.080 each project. If that weren't enough, her book The Orchid 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:47.400 Thief inspired adaptation one of the more successful art house 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:51.400 movies of the past twenty years. Her most recent book 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:55.600 takes as its heroes the librarians and archivists of Los 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.640 Angeles County. Her entree to this story was her shock 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.120 upon hearing for the first time just three years ago 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:08.200 about the six arson at l A's Central Library. The 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:13.080 fire is mostly unknown outside southern California, overshadowed by the 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:19.080 Chernobyl event, but it's our Alexandria, the most devastating library 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:23.400 fire in American history. So we have four hundred thousand gone, 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:28.240 just gone. The whole collections. The l A Library had 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:32.840 the largest cookbook collection in the US. They're out of print. 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:38.000 They're gone. I mean, they had car manuals for every 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:41.840 make and model of cars, starting at the model t irrecoverable. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:47.480 It had been developed. Librarians developed these collections over the years, 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.520 finding these books, putting them together. So each library is 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.880 also unique in that way. What's in the New York 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.360 Public Library is not the same as what's in the 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:03.960 l A Public Library, but the core stuff. And while 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.120 you can quantify it, you can say four hundred thousand books. 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:11.720 The library was founded at the turn of the century. 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:16.120 Many of these collections had been built from that time, 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:24.120 and that can't be fixed by money. And it's like Fantasia. 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.720 It's an incredibly beautiful building that is a sort of 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:33.880 combination Art Deco Egyptian downtown, right in the center of downtown. 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.200 And this was the central library of the entire l 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:41.560 A Library system in it was in bad shape. It 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.440 was a time when downtown l A was in bad shape. 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.320 People weren't even sure that it was important to have 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:51.320 a library. Downtown Los Angeles has changed. It's unrecognizable from 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.160 when I first came here. No one lived inland that 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:56.440 what Nola Wood lived in Silver Lake in Los VELAs. 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:58.440 The air quality was so poor that everybody lived as 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:01.440 far west as they could afford, and nobody lived downtown. 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:08.960 Describe what happened um April. A fire alarm went off 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.119 and everybody thought it was a false alarm. The library 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:16.160 had a lot of false alarms, and lo and behold, 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:23.840 firefighters found smoke in the fiction section. Suddenly it absolutely erupted. 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:26.119 I mean, you can imagine a fire in the library, 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:31.000 that's the perfect environment. More than that, it wasn't only 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.400 that it was books. It was in the stacks, which 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:39.120 are almost like chimneys. They were thick, concrete walled tubes 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.120 filled with books. Biggest library fire in the history of 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.720 the US, which at the time I heard about it, 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.760 which was very recently, I am shocked. You would assume 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:55.000 there would be coverage in the New York papers. So 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:57.960 I went back to look at what was going on 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:03.160 that somehow obscure. You're this news. There's a little story 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:05.680 on the front page in the New York Times saying 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:13.360 radiation detected in Scandinavia was the Chernobyl meltdown, and I 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:18.880 had kind of forgotten how terrifying that had been. Nobody 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.080 knew what was going to happen, and it really was 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.960 days of the New York Times being wall to wall 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.840 Chernobyl coverage because we none of us knew if this 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:34.480 fallout was going to end up traveling around the world. 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.240 In fact it did, but the Chernobyl I don't want 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.080 to digress on this, but I had lived in Los 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:42.359 Angeles pretty much full time, the only time of my 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:46.680 life that I lived only in l A. And in 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:48.600 December eighty five and moved back to New York. So 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:52.560 you just missed and well, I and I commuted back 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:54.719 and forth forever, but I was mostly in New York 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.719 and Chernobyl was six and I was living in New 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.479 York at the time, and remember that never heard a 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.400 word about this fire. Yeah, so how do you first 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.760 become familiar? How did this cross your desks? I had 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.480 just moved to l A. And I was offered a 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.240 tour of Central Library by the head of the Library 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:16.800 Foundation because I had done a little fundraising thing for them, 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.919 and I thought, well, I've never actually been to Central 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.360 Library in l A. And libraries had really come back 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:29.200 into my consciousness when I had a kid and started 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:34.080 taking my son to the library and was reminded so 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.960 powerfully of what it is like as a child to 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:41.479 go to a library. And it was really vivid and 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.800 very poignant for me because my mom had just developed 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:48.000 Alzheimer's and I was thinking a lot about our trips 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:52.559 together to the library, so libraries were on my mind. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.520 When I was offered this tour of Central Library, I thought, 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.640 oh great, so I went down there was really struck 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.680 by the building because it's so beautiful. And as we 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.760 were walking through on this tour, Ken Brecker, who is 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:08.799 the head of the foundation, pulled a library book off 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.560 the shelf and he took a deep whiff of it 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:17.080 and I thought, I guess I'm new to l a. 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.599 Maybe that's the way people do it here. What do 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:25.279 I know books? Actually, it's a nice thought. And he said, 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:29.040 you can still smell the smoke and some of them. 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.640 And I said, oh, did they used to allow smoking 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.720 in the library And he looked at me like I 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:39.800 was crazy. Of course, he said no, the fire And 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.840 I said what fire And he said the big fire, 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.600 the fire in six that shut the library down for 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:51.360 seven years. And my jaw just dropped and I said, 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:56.240 what tell me about this? And how did I never 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:00.719 hear about it? Because the more I learned, more I 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.920 learned the scope of the fire, the more amazed I was. 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:07.560 That was one of those stories that was kind of 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:11.920 hiding in plain sight. So my interest in writing about 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:17.480 libraries then had this hook because besides just being a 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:22.200 chance to write about my feelings about libraries, it was 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.960 a chance to write about this event that was fascinating. 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.120 I mean both the investigation into it, the reason that 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.880 I didn't know about it, the libraries recovery from it, 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:40.280 and all of the emotions around it, which we're really 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.960 powerful because obviously people in l A knew about this, 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:48.200 and for seven years that library was closed, the main library, 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:54.240 the library still around. He just passed away. We spent many, 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:59.040 many many hours on the phone. He's he was an 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:08.480 amazing care during His name was Wyman Jones and he's irascible, um, arrogant, fascinating, 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:14.560 multi talented guy who was an amateur magician, very talented 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:21.720 magician and jazz pianist who's also this head of libraries. 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.559 He had come from running the libraries in Fort Worth, 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.200 Texas and was the head of the library system in 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:33.319 l A for twenty years. Very opinionated. He actually believed 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.440 that central Library should be torn down and that the 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.640 land should be sold and there should be a new 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.720 library built somewhere else. But he conceded the point when 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:48.200 public opinion rose up to preserve the building. So why 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.240 if back then, when the fire happened and it was 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.320 closed for seven years in that area isn't favorites, why 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:55.920 did they bother resurrecting the library. Well, there were a 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:58.280 lot of people who made the argument that there was 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.720 no need for a central downtown library and that the 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.960 city could function very well just having branch library. And 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:06.920 those people who wanted to resurrect it, how did they 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:11.840 win the day. I can't say that people had the 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.960 ability to see twenty years into the future and realized 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.440 downtown would be renovated um the way it's been, because 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.600 I was downtown in that period of time here as 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:25.240 a visitor and no one lived down here. It was 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:29.280 desolate at night. So the idea that the library would 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:35.720 be a centerpiece in a revitalized downtown sounded ridiculous. But 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.160 these people really had the hope that downtown would turn 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:43.760 into a thriving part of the city. But there were 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.559 also people saying the building is too small, we should 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:50.160 tear it down, sell the land, will get all sorts 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:53.360 of money for the land, and we'll build another central 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:58.200 library somewhere else. Yeah, and that there was a very 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:03.720 strong um kind of movements supporting that. Now, looking back, 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:06.960 I would say, we're really lucky that that didn't happen. 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:11.040 Is there a hero of the preservation cause absolutely there 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.959 was a woman named Margaret Bach and another architect named 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:19.120 Barton Phelps. A number of architects got together and said 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:23.320 we have to preserve the library. And that actually was 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:29.679 the first organized group doing any kind of historical preservation 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:33.319 in l A. So we have them to thank that 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:36.880 that grew into being the l A Conservancy, which has 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:41.199 preserved all these Loutner houses, all these Schindler houses that 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:45.719 wouldn't have happened if the library hadn't been threatened. Now, 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:51.040 described the devastation of losing that volume of these things 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.280 to them, precious volumes of beautiful books. Who did you 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.960 talk to about that? I spend time with a lot 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.240 of the librarians who many of whom are now retired, 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.719 who were here at the time the librarians were devastated. 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:09.840 I mean they had spent their entire professional lives developing 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:15.679 the collections in their departments also, and I found this 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:23.400 really touching. They were absolutely frantic over the prospect of 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:28.040 the patrons not having the library to come to. And 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:30.959 the city of l A hired a psychologist to work 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.240 with the librarians because a lot of them really were 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:37.360 suffering kind of PTSD and they had seen their life's 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.480 work go up and smoke. They care. They care about 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.760 books in a way that you probably you do on 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:44.600 the park as your this is your stock and trade. 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.120 But uh, you know similar, I guess to art, where 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:51.240 there's an inventory of material that exists purely for a 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:57.679 humanistic reason. People who work there are horrifically underpaid. I 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.040 was guided recently by a New York Time writer, uh, 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:07.440 to the plight of libraries in Iowa, and we were 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.080 my wife and I have a charitable foundation, my family, 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.559 and we were pointed towards this group of people. And 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.320 there's three libraries she's been in touch with who are 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.120 struggling too. I spoke to I said to one of them, 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:22.439 I said, what do you need? I don't want to 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:24.640 assume anything. I said, what do you need and how 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.840 much money? She said, the budget for the library is 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.199 five thousand dollars. I said, I said, wait a second. 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:33.319 I said, you mean like a day or a week 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:35.920 or and she said no, no, She said everybody's volunteers 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.240 and part time people, and no one's getting paid. And 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.120 she's books are given to us. She said, books we 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:42.800 don't need. She said, what I need in this library, 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.680 it's food. I need money for food because the kids 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:47.559 are coming here and asking for food and they want 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.200 to eat. They come from poor homes. And I thought 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.600 the average person just can't appreciate how much they must 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:57.200 have suffered. Yeah. A number of librarians um marriages fell 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.480 apart in the wake of this. They were really pressed 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.120 and out of a job, yeah, and felt useless, felt 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:07.880 they didn't know what to do with themselves. One woman 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.800 librarian told me she didn't get her period for for 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:14.000 four months after the fire. She was under so much 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:20.400 stress and she was so dismayed. I think it's very difficult. 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.000 I think it would be the only analog I can 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.920 think of is if your house burned down. When Dick 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.000 Cavitt's house, one of the Seven Sisters houses in Montalk, 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.320 the Stanford White Houses on the bluff there in Montalk. 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:37.040 The house burned down. A good deal of what was 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:40.000 his on the personal level was destroyed in the fire. 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.520 The house was ruined, and for that reason, I keep 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:45.360 nothing of any value like that in my Long Island home. 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.120 It's in storage in the city because I'm terrified of 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:53.080 a fire. It's terrifying. And interestingly, the insurance coverage that 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:58.760 a library has covers the building and not the contents, 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:03.360 so the insurance did not cover the cost of the 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.800 lost books. It's like two million dollars worth of books. 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.760 The money had to be raised. It was raised by 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:17.079 tiny donations from school kids, big donations from the Getty Foundation, 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:22.160 from some of the studios George Lucas, Sydney Sheldon Um. 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.880 There was a real rallying in the city, and I 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:27.920 suspect it was a lot of people who had never 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.680 really before given the library much thought. Well, of course, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.800 all books now in the world we live in existed digitally. 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.240 Everything is on a file somewhere and backed up, and 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:39.880 there's no fear that that's going to be raised forever. 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.080 This fire, because it was so epic, did it launch 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.600 some kind of program where people could preserve these books 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:51.960 better and in case this happens and these fabled collections 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:57.320 aren't lost. It's interesting because, um, the fire occurred right 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:03.560 at the moment when technology was first entering library management. 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.720 The l A library at that point switched to an 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:15.280 electronic catalog because even losing the card catalog was devastating. Yeah, 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.880 I mean they had to read catalog two million books 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:23.880 they didn't even know. And that was actually one of 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:29.520 those odd pieces of timing that electronic cataloging was just 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:34.680 becoming widely available. So l A had to read catalog 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:39.120 all of its books. Anyway, it was purchasing all of 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:41.720 these new books to replace the ones that were lost, 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:47.920 but the books themselves all new books. Digital copy exists, 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:53.800 but of old books they Google has a huge project 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:58.400 where they are digitally scanning old but they don't exist 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:00.840 on a file that that book is it. Yeah, and 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:03.920 they're gonna make a file. I mean for an individual 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:11.200 library to do that, it's probably Google. Yeah. And so 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:15.320 we are putting more safeguards in place so that if 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:20.800 you had a devastating fire and you lost these rare 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.240 in many cases, now I think there is a backup 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.000 on the other hand, the l A Public Library has 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.000 the largest or one of the very largest collections of 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.280 maps and atlas is of any library in the country. 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:40.160 They have over two thousand. It would take a very 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:42.920 long time and a lot of money for them to 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.920 digitize all of them. That's the goal, because that would 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.680 be fantastic to have all those maps, a digital copy 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.840 of all of them. But it's it's an enormous amount 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.680 of work for a library to do. For me, what 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.240 I find interesting with a book like this, You don't 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:03.480 make it into a detective story. You don't build this 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.359 book in that way. This book is a lot of history. 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.240 How does the book begin to emerge? And how do 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.239 you piece together? I guess what I'm asking is, how 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.640 does Susan Lean write a book? What do you do? 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:17.120 I'm still trying to answer that question, actually for myself. 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.280 But what I do I have a My approach is 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.920 to throw my net as wide as possible in the beginning, 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.119 to have no preconceived idea of what the book has, 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:32.199 show me everything, just I want to learn everything. The 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:34.560 way I look at it is in the beginning, I'm 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:39.639 a student. I'm I'm doing a graduate course in the library. 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:43.520 Library history, the history of this particular incident with the fire, 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.360 the people who work there. The people who work there 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.440 now what the day to day life is of a library, 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.399 and in the course of it, you know, and the 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.600 history of arson and the history burning books, in the 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:02.680 course of world of events, which sadly has been a 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:09.560 theme since the beginning of time. As I'm doing all 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:15.240 of this and gathering so much material, themes begin emerging 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:20.760 to me. And what this was about was storytelling. We 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:26.359 are creatures who tell stories, We preserve stories, and we 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:31.440 make stories up about yourselves. And I feel like this 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:34.960 was about the story of the library, and the library 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:39.880 is the repository of stories. The people who became very 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.159 interesting to me in the book, like Harry Peak, the 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:48.080 person who is accused of starting the fire, of Charles 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:53.600 lammis one of the really fascinating characters who ran the library. 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.520 These were people who were who made up stories about themselves, 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:01.600 who created stories around the who they were in the world, 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:06.440 even more than the average person. So as that theme 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:11.320 began to emerge, it helped me organize this material and 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:15.080 begin pruning away at what was important for me to 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:19.520 know but wasn't important to put in the book. I 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.960 chose to start the book with Harry Peak because I 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:26.560 think people are more interested in people than they are 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:31.600 in places or events that a book that invites you 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.399 in through a character is often one that you're willing 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:39.840 to keep reading. And he as a person who was 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:47.280 a compulsive storyteller otherwise known as a liar, he symbolized 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.120 so much of what the book was. He's a kind 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:56.160 of classic creature of l A, a want to be actor, dreamer, 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:58.920 a drifter, how old at the time of the event 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.280 he is in his to Ennis, And he also kind 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:06.280 of intersected with l A history in a very interesting way. Um, 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.080 and I won't necessarily tell you the de nument of 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:12.800 his story, so that will leave a little bit of mystery. 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.600 But even the way he left this earth was very 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:20.840 much a part of what was going on historically in 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:25.800 Los Angeles. Yeah, but my challenges. I like writing about 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.200 things I don't know anything about. So I begin as 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:31.000 a student and then I become a teacher, and I 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.280 try to turn to readers and say, let me teach 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:37.760 you about this amazing thing I learned about, And like 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.040 a teacher, I have to figure out how can I 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:43.879 tell you this story in the most compelling way that 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:48.000 keeps you engaged. And I don't have to include every 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:50.919 single thing that I learned, because there's just too much, 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.760 but instead create a narrative that will bring you into 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:59.320 the story and you can follow the journey of learning 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:05.160 about why this topic interested me. Susan or Leave New 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.760 Yorker writer and the author of the library book about 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.080 l a Library Fire. If you're as fascinated as I 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:17.320 am by all things New Yorker, you should listen to 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:21.880 my interview with the intrepid Tina Brown coming from Vanity Fair. 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:25.120 She was greeted with skepticism when she took over The 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:30.480 New Yorker. It was much more open warfare against me 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:32.320 at the New Yorker at the beginning, you know, because 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.480 we had this huge kind of pushback from the old 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.399 guard expecting that this was going to be me putting 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.639 Demi Moore and in the magazine. I mean, first of 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.560 the cartoonist Bob Mankoff. He thought that I was going 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:48.560 to cancel all of cartoons and just put pictures in here. 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:52.680 The full interview with Tina Brown in our archive at 0:21:52.760 --> 0:22:08.160 Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin, and 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:11.639 you're listening to Here's the Thing Now, more of my 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:17.679 conversation with New Yorker writer Susan or Lean. In February, 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:21.199 ten months after the worst library fire in American history, 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.879 the l a p D arrested a man named Harry Peak. 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:29.480 He confessed to starting the fire, and then he recanted. 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:35.800 He confessed multiple times, actually and recanted multiple times with 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.399 different alibis each time. It assumed that that was coached 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:41.840 by an attorney. Did a lawyer coach He didn't even 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:45.840 have a lawyer for the first several times that he 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:49.959 confessed and recanted. This was he confessed to friends, and 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:54.240 friends turned him in as one's friends do. There was 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:59.800 a reward. He had confessed multiple times two friends. He 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:04.360 confess to the police in a casual interview where they 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:08.600 were simply saying, what were you doing that day? Where 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:11.720 were you? What happens in days prior to no video 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:13.960 cameras that are getting people in and out. There were 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:19.000 simply security keeping people from coming into early There was 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.280 no there's no record. Take your feet off the table exactly, 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:28.280 and don't eat potato chips on the rarebus quiet and 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:33.959 even today libraries are open to anybody, anyone can come in. 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:39.920 That is both their greatest strength and sometimes their greatest challenge. 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:43.560 I did this movie with Emilio Estefays. He did this 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:47.359 movie The Public and it's about a guy who's on 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:50.240 the staff of the Cincinnati Public Library who joins a 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:55.879 protest by homeless people who are denizens of the library, 0:23:55.880 --> 0:24:00.359 and a bane to the board of the library stage 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:02.639 a demonstration and they seal off a section of the library, 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:05.600 takeover and have a protest of a demonstration. And the 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:09.000 movie just screened at the Toronto Film Festival did quite 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:12.680 well with great We all went up there, Michael Michael, 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:17.719 Kay Williams and Taylor Shilling and all these wonderful actress 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:21.400 who working film and m and Amelia plays the lead role. 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:25.359 And the support he's gotten from the library community is really, 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:29.680 really wonderful. They are a warm, friendly, welcoming place, full 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:34.240 of interesting stuff costing nothing, and there aren't that many 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:38.800 places in our world that exists like that. So there 0:24:38.920 --> 0:24:43.080 was no record of Harry Pea coming into the library, 0:24:43.600 --> 0:24:46.800 as there was no record of anybody coming into the library. 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:50.479 And in regards to him confessing and becanting, did he 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:52.879 indicate any motive? Why did he do it? Once he 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:55.520 confessed to the next question is why he never he 0:24:55.640 --> 0:25:00.680 never said. The library opens for employees or elier than 0:25:00.720 --> 0:25:03.879 it does to the public. So a door is open, 0:25:03.920 --> 0:25:06.439 a security guard sits there to make sure you have 0:25:06.600 --> 0:25:10.840 an employee badge to get in. On that morning, a 0:25:10.960 --> 0:25:15.040 young man started walking in. The security guards stopped him 0:25:15.400 --> 0:25:18.920 and said the library is not open, and the young 0:25:18.960 --> 0:25:24.119 man apparently was annoyed by being stopped and left. The 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:29.480 city's final explanation for why they believed Harry Peake did 0:25:29.520 --> 0:25:32.200 it on top of the fact that he had confessed, 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.680 was that he was angry that the guard had turned 0:25:36.720 --> 0:25:39.359 him away. I want to get into the apple store 0:25:39.400 --> 0:25:42.000 early too. But did anybody venture what was wrong with him? 0:25:42.000 --> 0:25:45.240 Did they get into his mental health? And that's part 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:49.080 of what the mystery is because usually people who are 0:25:49.160 --> 0:25:56.480 pyromaniacs generally display that behavior fairly early in life. It's 0:25:56.640 --> 0:25:59.320 very rare for someone in their twenties who has no 0:25:59.560 --> 0:26:03.320 history ever and has never been to torch the l 0:26:03.359 --> 0:26:08.639 a central library. Did uh? Did experts determine how the 0:26:08.680 --> 0:26:14.800 fire was set? It's a big question. Arson is the 0:26:14.880 --> 0:26:19.480 one of the most difficult crimes to analyze and investigate 0:26:20.160 --> 0:26:24.359 and In fact, it's the least successfully prosecuted felony for 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:28.320 that very reason. Usually the means of starting a fire 0:26:28.480 --> 0:26:32.040 get destroyed in the fire. And believe it or not, 0:26:33.160 --> 0:26:41.040 libraries until the late eighties did not have sprinkler systems. Librarians, yeah, 0:26:41.119 --> 0:26:45.200 it's pretty shock library they didn't have sprinkler systems because 0:26:45.240 --> 0:26:51.679 the worry was water is as damaging. Someone set them right, 0:26:51.880 --> 0:26:55.200 someone lights a match to you know, and and sneaking 0:26:55.200 --> 0:26:57.360 a cigarette back in the set and then boom, you've 0:26:57.359 --> 0:26:59.600