John Waters has a piece in today's NY Times, titled The Kindness of a Stranger.
Here's how it starts:
Tennessee Williams saved my life. As a 12-year-old boy in suburban Baltimore, I would look up his name in the card catalog at the library and it would read "see Librarian." I wanted these "see Librarian" books -- and I wanted them now -- but in the late 1950s (and sadly even today), there was no way a warped adolescent like myself could get his hands on one. But I soon figured out that the "see Librarian" books were on a special shelf behind the counter. So when the kindly librarian was helping the "normal" kids with their book reports, I sneaked behind the checkout desk and stole the first book I ever wanted to possess on my own.
1 comment:
And all I did was read the biographies in the children's section, which were alphabetized by subject's name. It took me years to realize that it was highly unlikely that the biographer had taken dictation of Anne Bolyn's actual conversations.
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