Listening to Harold Bloom’s Laugh and DeLillo’s Bronx Accent
On listening to the archival audio of the Writers at Work interviews in the Morgan Library.
The Morgan Library.
Every week for the past four months, I have made the multistage journey to the Sherman Fairchild Reading Room at , the home of the archives of , in the aim of gathering audio for . I approach the library obliquely, around the corner from the main entrance, through the glass staff doors. I can see the guards, wave to them even, but each time, I must state my business through a small intercom at about the height of my belly button. When I am let in and signed in, I pass through a glass door that leads immediately to another glass door, which can only be opened by another security guard. Often, I am stranded for a few minutes in this transparent, soundproof vestibule, trying to get the attention of the guard. I can see perfectly into the open, mellow, well-lit blond-wood cube lobby of the library, which looks like something out of a Scandinavian modern Lego set. Then the door opens, and sound pours in—spoons tinkling on porcelain saucers, voices faintly echoing under the system. The space changes. The sounds of footfalls or a cough or a machine whirr, I realize each time, constitute a room as much as the shape of a window, the sunlight slanting in, the style of a vase.
