Little Twee Library

I don’t know about your city, but here in the tonier ‘hoods of DC, the Little Free Libraries are a big thing. Sounds really sweet and noble and grassrootsy mutual-aidy n’shit until you get a load of what’s actually in the goddamn things. It’s basically the kind of instantly-obsolete stuff you used to see stacked on the sidewalk in front of the fence in front of the house with a little post-it note reading “FREE” — old college textbooks, trendy disposable political tomes, pseudo-academic shartage by “public intellectuals”, cute trendy late ’00s millennial YA novels, trendy child-rearing stuff, trendy self-helpy shit, people unloading all the John Grisham and James Patterson novels they bought to read on the plane… Sure as hell didn’t see anyone giving away their copies of On The Road or To Have And Have Not or Sirens Of Titan or Ché Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries or anything, y’know…?

So, if you’re still expecting your neighborhood Little Free Library to be a little hotspot for the sharing of important, interesting ideas and literature, you’re in for a massive disappointment as it’s actually more of a solution for the heaps of used, outdated, past-trending books littering the sidewalk — and the perfect metaphor for the modern American “Marketplace Of Ideas”: a kitschy little fake house full of ragged-out, out-of-date, past-their-prime, beat-to-shit ideas that some poor sucker out there is trying to fob off on some other suckers in your neighborhood.

The real deal, though, is that in the current climate, the real “free libraries” are going to be serious, important places to meet and share important, vital literature, thought and ideas and contribute to the network of “people’s free libraries” and archives, and they’re going to be truly “underground”, not twee little toy houses in somebody’s front yard where you unload those old Tom Clancy piles you bought at the DCA bookshop.

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