The university library was the last great bastion of absolute literacy on the school grounds, and it loomed over the edge of the campus like an expansive castle of Gothic design, a veritable fortress of books. While, in the manner of most university libraries, it forsook the many realms of fiction for the truths and hypotheses of the world at large, it, at the very least, served as a gateway, a door through which inspiration can enter, tormenting the seeker until the idea can wholly be expressed.
Kate Knight, having left the home of Oscar Bruges, stepped through the wide, overwrought doors of the main floor, where dozens of computers, each of them bearing the card catalog program of the entire library, flickered to life on fuzzy, outdated monitors. Well aware that what she sought could not be found in any conventional system devised by men, Kate walked past them, headed instead for the great stairway at the opposite wall, whose heavy metal doors shuddered loudly, pounding echoes up and down the four story corridor.
Arbitrarily deciding to begin her search at the third floor, the incidental home of the musty, disused collection on literary theory, she wandered through the stacks, seeking out titles, colors, and odd placements that caught her eye. Along the fifth row that she canvassed, there was a book that immediately caught her attention, sticking out several inches into the aisle as if pulled out by the hand of fate. It turned out to be a book on the themes of the New World in Shakespeare's The Tempest, a concept that held little interest for her. Nevertheless, she pulled it from its position, found the nearest reading table (which was of no difficulty since all the tables were vacant) and dutifully set about skimming its pages, stopping here and there to read a paragraph or two, but there was nothing within to invoke a creative idea, only rehashed thoughts that had been adapted time and time again.
Sliding this book back into its proper placement in the stacks, she thought again about exactly what she wanted to write--something meaningful, of course, but as far as what that entailed, she hadn't a clue. Perhaps she wanted to write something about the human condition, about man's ability to persevere when all else seems lost, quickly abandoning this notion once she realized it was the basis of almost every single sports movie ever made. She wanted something original, which is a difficult feat to accomplish no matter the circumstances.
She thought about something fitting Oscar's theme--an unheeded warning about the state of culture and the sudden decline of anything that required effort to understand or accomplish, but she couldn't think of a way to adequately portray such a thing. Suddenly, doubt crept upon her like a stealthy predator, stalking her behind the library rows. She began to wonder if she was up to this task in the first place. She'd written a smattering of short stories that clogged her high school notebooks and wound themselves in old books and keepsake boxes in her childhood bedroom, but never had she attempted something as big and as complex as the novel she had begged her advising professor for permission to write. Then she had the gall to ask Oscar Bruges, a former novelist whose work she absolutely adored, not just for help, but for his partnership.
She attempted to drown these pessimistic feelings out with other thoughts, including the notion that if she wasn't to be the one to write this novel, who was? It had to come from someone; it simply had to exist somewhere in the natural order of the universe, of that she was certain. Who better than her? It was a responsibility she was willing to shoulder, to be the Atlas with the crumbling world of literature perched on her back.
Ultimately, she decided that the story would take more than a day to come to her, so as she perused the stacks one final time, performing a half-hearted, cursory scan of the knowledge surrounding her, the last bits of doubt were wiped like crumbs from her sleeve.
She walked home then, crossing the darkened campus with a constant eye on the shadows that surrounded her, then stepped lightly across the railroad tracks, on the other side of which waited the apartment she had come to call home. She flipped the light switch as she walked inside, and the room sputtered to life, revealing a domicile suitably devoted to a literary life. The large screen television was coated with a fine layer of dust, suffering from a near lack of use, though the most basic news programs and satirical versions thereof could be seen playing in the later hours of the night. The coffee table was covered first with a fine layer of magazines, followed by stack after stack of worn paperback books, each with a distinct marker of either dog-eared pages or a loose card stuck somewhere within the mass. Additional stacks of books, including an impressively tall one made up of mostly hardcovers that rested on top of a short, already bulging bookshelf, littered the room, clinging to the walls and taking up half of the folded futon being used as a couch.
She adeptly maneuvered through the living room, making her way back to the bedroom, which was afflicted with the same problem of stray stacks of books huddled in the corners and atop any furniture unlucky enough to find itself in Kate Knight's apartment. There, she examined herself at great length in the tall mirror that hung from her closet door and, finding an acceptable person staring back at her with dark hair and emerald green eyes, changed clothes and climbed into bed, waiting to see, as her eyes trembled, sweeping back and forth behind closed lids, what dreams were in store for her tonight.
Kate Knight, having left the home of Oscar Bruges, stepped through the wide, overwrought doors of the main floor, where dozens of computers, each of them bearing the card catalog program of the entire library, flickered to life on fuzzy, outdated monitors. Well aware that what she sought could not be found in any conventional system devised by men, Kate walked past them, headed instead for the great stairway at the opposite wall, whose heavy metal doors shuddered loudly, pounding echoes up and down the four story corridor.
Arbitrarily deciding to begin her search at the third floor, the incidental home of the musty, disused collection on literary theory, she wandered through the stacks, seeking out titles, colors, and odd placements that caught her eye. Along the fifth row that she canvassed, there was a book that immediately caught her attention, sticking out several inches into the aisle as if pulled out by the hand of fate. It turned out to be a book on the themes of the New World in Shakespeare's The Tempest, a concept that held little interest for her. Nevertheless, she pulled it from its position, found the nearest reading table (which was of no difficulty since all the tables were vacant) and dutifully set about skimming its pages, stopping here and there to read a paragraph or two, but there was nothing within to invoke a creative idea, only rehashed thoughts that had been adapted time and time again.
Sliding this book back into its proper placement in the stacks, she thought again about exactly what she wanted to write--something meaningful, of course, but as far as what that entailed, she hadn't a clue. Perhaps she wanted to write something about the human condition, about man's ability to persevere when all else seems lost, quickly abandoning this notion once she realized it was the basis of almost every single sports movie ever made. She wanted something original, which is a difficult feat to accomplish no matter the circumstances.
She thought about something fitting Oscar's theme--an unheeded warning about the state of culture and the sudden decline of anything that required effort to understand or accomplish, but she couldn't think of a way to adequately portray such a thing. Suddenly, doubt crept upon her like a stealthy predator, stalking her behind the library rows. She began to wonder if she was up to this task in the first place. She'd written a smattering of short stories that clogged her high school notebooks and wound themselves in old books and keepsake boxes in her childhood bedroom, but never had she attempted something as big and as complex as the novel she had begged her advising professor for permission to write. Then she had the gall to ask Oscar Bruges, a former novelist whose work she absolutely adored, not just for help, but for his partnership.
She attempted to drown these pessimistic feelings out with other thoughts, including the notion that if she wasn't to be the one to write this novel, who was? It had to come from someone; it simply had to exist somewhere in the natural order of the universe, of that she was certain. Who better than her? It was a responsibility she was willing to shoulder, to be the Atlas with the crumbling world of literature perched on her back.
Ultimately, she decided that the story would take more than a day to come to her, so as she perused the stacks one final time, performing a half-hearted, cursory scan of the knowledge surrounding her, the last bits of doubt were wiped like crumbs from her sleeve.
She walked home then, crossing the darkened campus with a constant eye on the shadows that surrounded her, then stepped lightly across the railroad tracks, on the other side of which waited the apartment she had come to call home. She flipped the light switch as she walked inside, and the room sputtered to life, revealing a domicile suitably devoted to a literary life. The large screen television was coated with a fine layer of dust, suffering from a near lack of use, though the most basic news programs and satirical versions thereof could be seen playing in the later hours of the night. The coffee table was covered first with a fine layer of magazines, followed by stack after stack of worn paperback books, each with a distinct marker of either dog-eared pages or a loose card stuck somewhere within the mass. Additional stacks of books, including an impressively tall one made up of mostly hardcovers that rested on top of a short, already bulging bookshelf, littered the room, clinging to the walls and taking up half of the folded futon being used as a couch.
She adeptly maneuvered through the living room, making her way back to the bedroom, which was afflicted with the same problem of stray stacks of books huddled in the corners and atop any furniture unlucky enough to find itself in Kate Knight's apartment. There, she examined herself at great length in the tall mirror that hung from her closet door and, finding an acceptable person staring back at her with dark hair and emerald green eyes, changed clothes and climbed into bed, waiting to see, as her eyes trembled, sweeping back and forth behind closed lids, what dreams were in store for her tonight.
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