‘Like over-sized, socialist mailboxes, neighborhood ‘libraries’ have appeared along small-town American streets for decades, each with a sign that patronizingly details the honor system with which they lend out surplus paperbacks. Recognizing some potential in the idea, the town of Blocksberg dedicated a portion of taxpayer money to the construction of, what might only be called, a large-scale, free-standing library. It towers over the local park, a building in its own right, and is capable of housing thousands of books in carefully organized sections. City employees are paid to maintain the ‘library’ and to facilitate the lending policy at the scale to which it has grown. Asked about ‘The Blocksberg Public Library,’ residents become cagey, insisting, with cult-like zeal, that there is nothing strange at all about it.’
“What?” the librarian says, “No. No, that’s stupid. Why would anybody think that’s the order of how things happened?”
-traveler
