In truth, I'd read Alan Bennett on pretty much anything, but when the subject is libraries, who can resist?
There were other perils to reading, but it was only when I hit middle age that I became aware of them. Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf was a television play written in 1978 and though it doesn’t contain my usual scene of someone baffled at a bookcase the sense of being outfaced by books is a good description of what the play is about. ‘Hopkins,’ I wrote of the middle-aged lecturer who is the hero, ‘Hopkins was never without a book. It wasn’t that he was particularly fond of reading; he just liked to have somewhere to look. A book makes you safe. Shows you’re not out to pick anybody up. Try it on. With a book you’re harmless. Though Hopkins was harmless without a book.’ Books as badges, books as shields; one doesn’t think of libraries as perilous places where you can come to harm. Still, they do carry their own risks.
Thrilled to find this quote - thank you! I read the article by Alan Bennett in the London Review of Books while having coffee and cake in the cafe attached to the London Review Bookshop (in London) and never did get around to noting down the words... ah yes, "with a book you're harmless"...
Posted by: margaret | February 19, 2012 at 09:58 AM