I'll admit to being pretty heartbroken about the news of the closure of McNally Robinson bookstore; besides losing a wonderful resource and source of inspiration, it also hurts on a personal level, as this is where I held the launch for Correction Road, and few moments in my life have been happier or more rewarding. Sometime in the late summer, I'll go down there, perhaps with Janine, browse the prairie writers section, the magazines, the fiction and poetry, and go up to the restaurant and chose a table with a window overlooking Stephen Avenue. And I'll get very sentimental about it all. It really has been a perfect central space for the literary community in Calgary, and in addition to my own projects, I've enjoyed listening to many other authors there, as well as listening to and participating in the excellent Flywheel reading series.
But it certainly isn't the end of the world. Pages in Kensington is still an excellent bookstore, and while it doesn't have the spectacular event space that McNally Robinson has, they do book a lot of events are now more important than ever to the Calgary literary scene. Beyond that, there is the promise of something else in the distant future: the construction on a new central library. I felt that a letter to the committee behind this (who already have some very noble and ambitious goals for their structure) would be extremely cathartic way of looking forward. Always forward. Given a city hall that has difficulty making decisions about humanist policies as obvious as a public smoking ban or curb-side recycling, it's hard to say if the new library will ever get built. Somehow I can't help imagining that funding for the new library is pulled only after the existing library is pulled down, and things continue to spiral downward toward a Bradburyesque disutopia. Anyway, here is the letter I'm sending to the public library regarding the new building:
With news of the closure of the McNally Robinson bookstore on Stephen Avenue, the literary scene in Calgary is losing an important space and organization. And while as a novelist this pains me on a level more emotional than practical, I'm taking heart this week at remembering that sometime within the next decade, we may have a new central library. This is a wonderful thing to consider, especially given some of the other libraries I`ve had the joy of visiting. (A personal favorite is the main library in Boston, with its stunning John Singer Sargent murals on the ceilings.) I've often said that few things are more perfect than a novel that one hasn't started to write yet, and I imagine that right now you are at the same point in the planning of the library: full of the promise of everything that could be contained within, and only beginning to get a sense of the difficulty of finding a way of allowing all these ideas and ideals to coexist.
I would dearly love for the new library to be a central hub for the local literary community. You mention, on your website, of 'Creative Calgary', an incubator for writers and composers. Any space for writers designed for artists is welcome. (My mind runs wild some ideas of some urban equivelent of the Banff Centre's Leighton Studios, but even simple, modest spaces would be wonderful.)
One of the things that made McNally Robinson so perfect for literary events was that it was in such a public space, warm and inviting, a perfect meeting point for the community of writers and the community of readers. While the existing library does have an auditorium, it is in the back of the building, not somewhere that can be discovered by accident, and this is unfortunate. I have, upon occasion, stumbled entirely by chance upon a writer who`s work I come to appreciate by hearing a public reading at McNally Robinson. Such chance encounters are such a rewarding thing for both sides, and this is probably the element that I most hope is captured in a new library: a public space where readers can wander in, buy a coffee, sit with a book, and by chance hear a poet or writer who reaches them; a space where poets and writers can stand and perform in front of friends, peers, and chance listeners.
So my plea to you as you design what has the potential to become a vital part of the city, is to think about spaces that not only serve readers, that not only serve writers, but that also serve to bring the two together in a warm and welcoming atmosphere.
Thanks, and best of luck;
-glen dresser
