The new $36 million Illinois State Library, paid for at taxpayers`
expense, has Italian marble floors, Indiana limestone facades, $180,000 in artwork, and designer red leather ergonomic reading chairs, but no Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins or even Jean Auel potboilers among its five floors, 163,000 square feet and 4 million items on file.
”We don`t do bestsellers, and frankly we tell people that`s why they have local public libraries,” said director Bridget L. Lamont.
This multimillion-dollar public library is not so much for the people as it is for their state government, said Lamont, a Wilmette native.
The state library`s primary purpose is to serve as one big reference room for state officials, their staffs and other bureaucrats, be they ICC, ISP, IDOT or IHOP, Lamont explained.
”By law, we are a reference and research library for state government. Somebody in the state government wants information, we provide it and work with their staffs to provide background material,” said Lamont, whose kingdom includes all state-printed documents, hundreds of maps, and U.S. patent records dating from the invention of fire, or close.
Lamont, a Democrat on high Republican ground, also oversees about $21 million in grant money dispensed to local library systems around the state.
But this is all beside the point. The real subject that we`re about to make startlingly candid revelations about is much weightier.
These disclosures will intrigue people who use the word obviate in everyday conversation; people who know the full name of e.e. cummings and the real sex of George Eliot; people who were born knowing the proper pronunciation of Goethe.
Back before the new Illinois State Library was completed and dedicated in June, a small and secretive coven of heavy readers got together and selected the names of 35 authors-”either Illinois natives or those whose work is closely identified with the Prairie State”-and voted to set them in stone around the upper exterior of our state building.
The surnames of these prairie writers are now etched for all the world to see. And, in many cases, to wonder: ”Who the heck are these guys?”
What famed names of Illinois authors grace our newest state building in Springfield?
Well, the fabulous Edna Ferber for one.
The famed Eliza Farnham for another.
The celebrated Hamlin Garland and George Ade for a couple more.
Pop quiz:
(1) Which of the above wrote ”Life in Prairie Land” in 1846?
(2) Which of the above won a Pultizer Prize for a 1924 novel even though it is set in truck-farming New Holland, Ill., and its title calls to mind a game you play with your infant?
(3) Which of the above wrote a novel that became a musical whose name became synonymous with overly demonstrative athletes?
Answers:
(1) Eliza Farnham.
(2) Edna Ferber, author of ”So Big.”
(3) Edna Ferber again. She wrote ”Show Boat” too.
And how about this name for striking a resonant literary chord: Chief Black Hawk?
”Now don`t start in on this, I just got everybody calmed down,” pleaded Lamont, who this week staged a small dedication of the Illinois Authors` Room, a warm haven dedicated to these same indigenous authors in the otherwise cool interior of the new library.
Lamont said she was inspired to chisel the names on the new state library upon viewing the state`s Centennial Building, which is heavily etched with famous names in Illinois history, among them Marquette, DuSable, Fermi, Logan, Grant and Douglas.
To collect literary lights for the library`s exterior, Lamont did the proper governmental thing. She formed a committee and solicited expert opinion, then thrashed out a consensus over flavor-enriched coffee and sugar cookies.
”It was a great intellectual discussion,” she said.
And it wasn`t easy pickings, said committee member Robert Bray, an English professor at Illinois Wesleyan University and an authority on Midwestern writers past and present.
”The interesting thing is that there were so many to choose from,” said Bray. ”I began studying Illinois literature 10 years ago, and I have been astounded by the richness of the literary heritage.”
Other members of the committee who braved academic assassination were Michael Anania, a poet and novelist and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Kristina Valaitis, senior editor of the Illinois Humanities Council.
The committee first handled the easy lobs, according to Bray.
”Sandburg, Masters and Lindsay were the first on the list, and then we went from there, each of us making a case for other authors.”
Richard Wright, Theodore Dreiser and James T. Farrell came along easily enough, and Abraham Lincoln was another shoo-in, though technically he was not an author. Then again, the ”Gettysburg Address” is not your standard Wednesday Kiwanis Club luncheon speech, Bray said.
Chief Black Hawk, too, may seem like a dark horse candidate for literary fame to those unfamiliar with his dictated autobiography of 1833, ”Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak,” but he was picked early in the first round, said Bray, who described the work as a ”classic of Midwestern literature and the first autobiography by a Native American.”
There were a few native sons who didn`t make the cut, however. Bray tossed in his personal favorite, the late Bloomington author Harold Sinclair, whose ”Journey Home,” ”Horse Soldiers” and ”American Years” were critically praised nationwide. But, Bray said, the others felt Sinclair`s works were ”not major enough.”
”I still have problems with that decision,” Bray said. ”I feel he should be on the state library.”
In consolation, Upton Sinclair, no relation, made the cut, and Bray can gaze at his surname in stone and attach whatever first name he wishes, he said.
The committee also had some difficulty defining just what constituted an Illinois author. Was it an author who was a native of the state? A onetime resident? A guy who passed through? Someone who wrote of Illinois?
Hemingway settled that problem.
The committee had decided to deal only with writers who wrote about Illinois, until someone raised the point that to exclude the Oak Park native, even though he never wrote about his home state, might be to invite a scholarly Armageddon.
”It got tricky, but we decided that we couldn`t do it without Hemingway,” Bray said.
The greatest controversy within the committee arose over whether living authors belonged in stone.
He called it a ”politically loaded issue,” seriously.
”I asked should there be living authors up there and the others said yes because we have living writers of such distinction today that they are already enshrined,” said Bray.
”I lost quickly, and now I`m glad I did.”
The six living authors etched on the library are Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ray Bradbury, Cyrus Colter, William Maxwell and Studs Terkel.
To avoid later second-guessing about its choices, the committee solicited nominees from about 18 other tweed-and-elbow-patch experts around the state, asking each to come up with 25 names.
And you might be surprised to learn that although the creator of Dorothy, Toto and the Wicked Witch of the West made the cut, Tarzan`s man got handed the greased grapevine.
L. Frank Baum, a Chicago newspaperman perhaps inspired by local politics, wrote ”The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900, and followed up with 13 more Oz- based tales.
He got the chisel, and his name now adorns the upper face of the new library. But Edgar Rice Burroughs, a Chicago native born in 1875, whose Tarzan stories were told in 25 books and sold more than 36 million copies, was not given serious consideration because his name hardly came up, Bray and Lamont confessed.
”Burroughs and (Lincoln biographer) Benjamin Thomas of Springfield are the two names that I continue to get beat up on,” said Lamont.
Other candidates who were considered but did not make the stone cut were John Dos Passos, Thornton Wilder, Eugene Field, Stanley Elkin, John Gardner, U.S. Grant, Fanny Butcher, Meyer Levin, David Mamet, Harry Mark Petrakis, Robert Coover, Peter Cartwright, Mary Cather Wood, Archibald MacLeish, Allan Nevins, Rebecca Caudill, Joan Walsh Anglund, William Moody, Thorstein Veblen, Floyd Dell, Frank Norris, MacKinlay Kantor, Harriet Monroe, Morris Birkbeck, Larry Heinemann, William Jennings Bryan, Phillip Jose Farmer, William Goldman, William Moody, George Will and Mike Royko (although not necessarily in that order, Mike, sir).
Though literary achievement and Illinois connections were the primary considerations for either enshrinement or rejection, there was at least one other big factor in the selection process, Bray said.
Space.
The architects said there would be room for only 225 letters or spaces on the building.
”We were under an artificial constraint,” said Bray. ”The architect gave us only a certain number of characters to work with.”
Bray claimed that this constraint did not in any way affect the selection process, although, he noted, ”with the choice of both Elia Peattie and her son Donald Culross Peattie, we did get two for the price of one.”
To the assorted media and academic critics who have been grumbling in their Great Books ever since the selections were announced, Bray offered an admission that ”by no means do we feel this was a perfect process.”
He and Lamont also put forth the tantalizing news that the east wing of the new library was built so an addition could easily be tacked on in the next few years.
”When we build the addition, we can add more names, so we`re still open to suggestions,” was Lamont`s literary promise.
