QUIET AT THE LIBRARY?

Quiet at the library? Since I left my law practice and started writing fiction, at least twice each week, the public library is my office. I like getting away from the nose and distractions of my telephone, e-mail, and, oh yes… the dreaded refrigerator.

Most of the time, my hours at the library are quite productive. I crank out a first draft of a chapter, or meticulously polish the language of a few choice paragraphs. Sometimes I brainstorm and add to my short story idea log.

However, during my last trip to the library, I realized I have a skewed expectation that the quiet room in the library should be, well… quiet. One guy, with baggy jeans, sprawled in a chair in the corner. He had an open book in his lap, flipping through the pages. This was fine and appropriate. But then his cell phone blasted some hip hop tune. While he talked to his friend on the telephone with no regard to his volume, he pulled out from his bag, not one, but TWO huge boxes of Cap’n Crunch (I’m not kidding!). He munched on it by the handful. They call it Cap’n CRUNCH for a reason.

The librarian came over and asked him to get off the telephone. He politely obliged.
Ah…quiet, at last. I regained my concentration. I was in the zone. Words were flying from my brain to the laptop keyboard. My book was practically writing itself—until I heard the noise. It started at first as an occasions clack. Then it was followed by a clackety-clack, pause, clackety-clackety-clack, pause. There was no pattern to it. It was a noise I hadn’t heard often since college.

I surveyed the area, and to my surprise, glasses and grey flannel sat nearby using a portable, electric typewriter. Ugh! I’m pretty sure typewriters weren’t allowed in the quiet rooms of libraries even before computers… I think I saw a similar relic at an antique shop up in Maine a couple summers ago.

If she were a speed typist, whose fingers flew on the keys at an even, fast, rhythm, perhaps I might have tuned out the noise. But the hunt and peck, slow, uneven banging on the keys with an occasional bell signaling the end of the line, followed by the clatter and thunk of the carriage return were just too much for my silence-seeking-psyche.

At my request, the librarian asked the typist to move to another part of the library with her typewriter. Glasses and grey flannel refused, instead opting to pick up pen and paper. At that moment, Cap’n Crunch, over in the corner, who by now had put on his headphones and i-pod, started moaning out a song in a high-pitched falsetto that rivaled moose calls during mating season.

That’s when I called it quits for the day.