![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Susan Orlean’s The Library Book is ostensibly an investigative report on this catastrophic event and its cultural context. The fire, the cause of which is still inconclusive, destroyed half a million books and damaged another 700,000 more. Fast-forward nearly two millennia to April 29, 1986, the date of the destruction by fire of the Los Angeles Public Library (henceforth LAPL) main branch in the heart of downtown. The story of the Alexandrian fire still speaks loudly to the power of written words and their effect on the fate of humanity. Scrolls and codices that contained the memory of an entire civilization turned to ash, among them many works by the major Greek dramatists. The partly mythic destruction by fire of the Library of Alexandria - the greatest in the ancient world - was often said to mark the beginning of the so-called Dark Ages. FEW IMAGES CAN COMPETE in symbolic significance with that of a library on fire. ![]()
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