Trip to the Fales Library at New York University's Bobst

I saw something a few days ago that changed my life. On Wednesday in my Beat reporting class we visited the Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU’s accumulation of rare books, artifacts, and other unique literary objects at Bobst Library. I’ve never found libraries boring, and this field trip renewed my desire to work with books. Apparently there are at least 15,000 rare titles or editions!

The head librarian at Fales who talked with us about the library’s most interesting (I think) asset, the ”Downtown Collection,” has my dream job. His name is Marvin Taylor and he gets to wear Converse sneakers to work. Fifteen years ago he started this collection of art, music, and literary materials created during the '70s, '80s and '90s, all coming out of downtown New York. Apparently no one else was taking this scene seriously, as something important to preserve.

Marvin has collected Patti Smith’s diary, original photos of the Ramones, and this wooden orange box full of writer David Wojnarowicz’s oddities, including a monkey skull painted Klein blue. He made sure we knew punk rock was invented in New York, not England, and had a few of us read excerpts aloud from punk diaries and artists’ screenplays.

I haven’t seen someone recently so completely passionate about his job, and so tender with the materials that he works with. He quoted someone, I forget now who, saying, “A thing (as in an artifact) is just a really slow event.” I think that’s pretty amazing.



The many floors of NYU's Bobst Library