[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: October 12,2007]
The "Merc" being what we initiates call The Mercantile Library Center For Fiction, on 47th Street between 5th and Mad.
Of course, when it was founded, a mere 187 years ago, by culturally-minded Manhattan merchants, it was just The Mercantile Library.
You have probably walked past on and wondered what it was all about: a narrow, modest facade, something about Proust in the window, a few books for sale displayed in bins outside. If you entered, up to a few days ago, you'd have found just a couple of couches under a large bookcase in the lobby; a check-out desk and card catalog to the rear. In a dishevelled back room, additions to the collection from the last few years were shelved for browsing. If you made it upstairs, there was a quiet, underused reading room, running the length of the building, offering newspapers, some literary magazines, and standard reference works.
It was, in fact, for the reading room that I joined. I needed no new source of books, but finding myself frequently with time on my hands in midtown, a couple of bucks a week for the use of an armchair or a desk in a peaceful oasis seemed a steal (individual membership is $100 a year).
Closer inspection revealed a good program of guest lecturers, and some reading groups too (Proust, Musil). Over the years, I have audited fine talks by Professor Christopher Ricks on Bob Dylan, Dan Wakefield on New York in the Fifties, and Ann Charters on the Beats, and attended a showing of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's film "Pull My Daisy".
The Merc, however, had one particular disadvantage over the larger and older New York Society Library on the Upper East Side. Of course, the collection was smaller; there was no shame in that. The Merc specialized in fiction, with one of the best collections of detective/mystery literature in the world, it had no significant range of non-fiction titles, and no pretense to any such thing. But it was also a "closed stack" library.
In other words, like the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue (or the Library of the British Museum and Bibliothèque Nationale, for that matter) the collection was not open for browsing - never had been. Other than the recent additions downstairs, and whatever was in the reading room, you had to know what you were looking for and dive into the card catalog to find it. Such a system presents no particular obstacle to experienced serious researchers, but to the casual bibliophile it's like trying to pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded, except you don't even know if there's a donkey in the collection.
Imagine my excitement, then, when it was announced last year that the stacks were finally to be opened. Some time passed, and volunteers were solicited to help with a re-shelving exercise. I raised my hand, but events intervened and I never got to help out. This re-shelving exercise seemed to go on for an awfully long time; and then I found out what the problem was.
It seems that in 1820 (long before even the Dewey Decimal system existed, as the Merc's Librarian reminded me at a reception this week), there was no irresistible precedent in the ordering of a book collection. Even the British Museum Library remained as yet a pipe dream; and thank god, as its unique cataloguing system is perhaps the most brilliant way to make the location of books cryptically indeterminable as anyone has yet devised).
So what did the worthy merchants do? Alphabetical order, of course. Of course. But - alphabetical order, by title. That's how they shelved their fiction collection, which grew as the decades past to some 75,000 volumes. The disadvantage is surely obvious: that the works of any one author will be found scattered throughout the collection, depending on the first word of the title.
The Merc bravely decided that if the stacks were to be opened, they should be opened in decent order, and that is what - quite understandably - took so long. In fact, give two cheers out of three, because the fourth floor holds only A through J (or is it K?), and work is still underway on the second half of the alphabet.
In any case, treasures abound. How very many books one might never have thought of searching for are now cheerfully on display. And another happy result of historical inactivity: the library didn't send books out to be rebound, so many of the old volumes have original dust-jackets. It's a feast. In moments I discovered books the New York Society Library doesn't have: the unfashionable French novelist Maurice Barres in English translation, for instance.
Browsing, one is immediately reminded of how novelists fade so readily from the public's mind. Row upon row of volumes testify to the former popularity and commercial success of such as Gertrude Atherton. Who? Even recent novelists of international reputation - the British writer of the forties, John Lodwick; Thomas Hinde, once compared with Kingsley Amis; the American George Mandel - where are they now? One can search even the internet and find scarcely a trace. Here are their works.
Who knew that the creator of Dr Kildare traded mainly in cowboy westerns? Max Brand: and you'll find Fightin' Fools and Singing Guns shelved here alongside the more famous medical saga. I was tempted by Denison Clift's Man About Town, featuring a heroine who pairs "tropical sensuality with an almost nun-like chastity." Jennifer Lopez meets Condaleezza Rice.
I mentioned the outstanding collection of mystery fiction, and indeed you'll find rare nineteenth works by Guy Boothby and Fergus Hume alongside the more familiar classics. I even found a copy of Ellis Parker Butler's Philo Gubb, Correspondence School Detective - a parody of the popular Philo Vance novels which I heard of years ago but have never seen. Around 10,000 volumes in the collection are nineteenth century.
To have a library of this age, size and interest conjured almost out of thin air (that's what it's like when stacks are opened) is a bibliophile's dream. It's members only, but what - it's dinner for two at a bad downtown fake tapas joint, it's much quieter, and it lasts all year.
The Merc displays its wares right here.
