Barbarians at the library

Wear This Book (but Bring It Back Friday)

The Times: To make room for shiny new books, librarians cull the texts that have been loved literally to pieces, as well as volumes that haven't been stamped with a due date in years. The rejected books are given away, tossed in Dumpsters, melted in acid, even burned — visions that could stop any author's pen in midsentence. It is, as the librarian Michael Whittaker puts it, the book-lending world's dirty little secret.

Mr. Whittaker works for the Portland Public Library in Maine, where a small portion of such ill-fated books are given a new life as art. And this art can now be checked out at public libraries across the country.

Last year, the Portland library joined forces with the Maine College of Art in Portland for a first-of-its-kind project: "Long Overdue: Book Renewal." To inaugurate it, the library invited a Brooklyn-based book artist, Doug Beube, to lecture about his work. That was followed by a "book grab," during which artists were invited to take any of the library's discarded volumes and do with them as they pleased.

Nearly 200 artists, mostly from Maine but also from Boston, California and Wisconsin, participated. Megan Dunn transformed text into a spiny bracelet by cutting pages into long, skinny strips and attaching them to an elastic band. Susan Winn gutted a copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and remade it into "Field of Greens," a potted patch of turf in which the waving blades of grass are lines sliced from the book.

"It's like a magical recycling program," Mr. Whittaker said. "They turned trash into art."

The artists had about 90 days to work before their books were due back at the library. In February, the collection of 186 altered books were put into circulation, and within two weeks about 100 had been checked out. Some library patrons used them as centerpieces at dinner parties, others held mini-exhibitions in their homes.

This article made me physcially cringe; it was hard looking at photos of mutilated books.

Plus the breezy tone of the whole thing bothered me. There's still something sacred about a book, even in our digital age and despite the best efforts of the dead trees crowd.

It's like when somebody dies. Humans have evolved ways of dealing with the body--sure, from a utilitarian point of view maybe it makes more sense to strip all bodies of any useful organs or parts, and put it to good use.

But I have full sympathy for people, and religions, that would rather not, and instead choose to cremate or bury the body intact.

Likewise, yeah, we know some books are unwanted, and get thrown away or burned or otherwise destroyed. So from a practical point of view, turning it into art shouldn't be bothersome.

Maybe it's the way the people quoted speak as if these books were worthless until they were imbued with art. (Uh, literature is art). Or the way people display these objects at dinner parties... the same people who buy big shiny books to put on coffeetables.

It'd make me feel better if these books were quietly placed in someone's well-thumbed home library.

Photo of Susan Winn's remade copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" into "Field of Greens" by Adriane Herman/Maine College of Art via the Times.

Photo of "Candy Dish," made by Brandy Bushey, by Adriane Herman/Maine College of Art via the Times.