The Anderson, South Carolina Public Library of Whatever

I am beginning to loath the beautiful Anderson, SC Public Library. It stands in Historic Anderson as a beacon of intelligently spent wealth in a small struggling southern town. Unfortunately they have the audacity to cater to the only recently anurous local population.

Today I stood at the help desk with a bibliography of essential reading for my upcoming PhD residency and was made to suffer through a tedious explanation of how a library such as theirs cannot stock the specialized books that I needed. Being the pragmatist that I am, I was expecting that the vast majority of the text was not to be found therein. But it is what came next that brought my blood to boil. Interrupting, as is social norm for Southerners, a very portly, waddling, effervescent woman squealed “Where can I find that new Jackie Collins book?” to the lady who was helping me. To my horror, the librarian turned with delighted eyes and brandished it from the depths of her own terminal. The two then had a quick, scatty conversation about the poetic prose of Jackie Collins where they both seemed to speak at once without ever hearing the other. Once the gaggling had died down and the native had wandered off with her masterpiece of literary heraldry, the librarian turned back to me and said the words “Hey, aren’t you that guy who was questioning us last week why we only had two books of some Von-da-gut author? Because I don’t think we have any more of these books then we do of that guy.”

Angry, mentally disheveled and forlorn, it was at this point that I left swearing to never, ever, darken step across the threshold of that building again.