Local writer Bill Eichenberger interviews Library of Congress chief James Hadley Billington (now doesn't that sound like the name of someone who's the head of the LOC?):
A passage in the novel Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe resonates with Billington:
The protagonist, Eugene Gant, reads books "insanely, by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands. . . . The thought that other books were waiting for him tore at his heart forever. He pictured himself as tearing the entrails from a book as from a fowl.''
"Well,'' Billington said, "when you are presiding over a library with more than 126 million items in it, you don't even have the illusion of covering even a small section of it.
"I did get a note of congratulations from a distinguished scholar when I got this job (in 1987), and he wrote: 'Avoid the stacks. That way madness lies.' ''
Billington hasn't entered the stacks in 10 years, because the library closed them to browsing. He denied the rumor that mad scholars have been roaming the library's 530 miles of shelves for a decade living off bookworms and condensation on the pipes.
Before Rome burned, Seneca, counselor to Nero, wrote, "It does not matter how many books you have, but how good they are.''
"Very true . . . up to a point,'' Billington said, "although, with a collection like ours, you don't want to apply too rigorous a standard to what's a good book and what isn't.''
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