Last month, one of our all-time favorite authors, Willy Vlautin, delivered the Closing Luncheon speech at the Public Library Association conference in Portland, OR.
His speech, excerpted here, is full of warmth, insight, and a reverence for libraries that borders on the spiritual.
Willy Vlautin is a magician with words: written, spoken, or sung, he’ll touch your heart with his flawed, human characters. You’ll root for the underdogs, exalt in their successes, and cry when life gives them a raw deal.
But you’ll always carry them with you.
They’re too beautiful to let go.
-Virginia
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If I hit the lottery and came into millions of dollars, one of the first things I’d do would be to buy the downtown Reno library. And if they let me and I got it, I’d keep it exactly the same for as long as I lived. Because to me it’s the most beautiful library that’s ever been built. To me the idea of heaven is that library. In its own way the downtown Reno library is more magnificent than the Boston Central Library or the New York Public Library or the Los Angeles Central Library or even the George Peabody Library in Maryland. Now most of you, maybe all of you, think I’m nuts for saying that.
But love is a wild, unpredictable thing.
I grew up in Reno and had gone to the library occasionally as a kid but it was when I was older, maybe twelve or thirteen, that I began spending hours in the downtown library. There’s something about the promise of a library, even back then I felt it, the promise of…well…betterment. The idea that maybe there’s something more to you, something better about you and the library will help you find it, the library will help you get there. In that way libraries have always been my churches. Sanctuaries that, at least for a moment, take you from who you are to who you want to be.
The Reno library gave me My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, the first novel that really floored me. The first that showed me the true power of the novel. I wanted more than anything to be the kid in that book, a kid who runs away and lives in a hollowed-out tree and loves nature, has a pet falcon, doesn’t need a family, and wants to be a biologist. He’s tough and not damaged and not scared or depressed and he has a mission. To live at one with nature. I read that novel over and over and began looking up books on biology, nature, and birds. I wanted to be like him and disappear into the idea of science and nature. But always when I tried, when I had those books stacked on a table, my eyes would glaze over and I’d give up. Because underneath I had no interest in biology or science. The truth was I wasn’t a great student, a great reader, or a great thinker.
Next I stumbled upon the James Herriot novel All Creatures Great and Small, a book about a country veterinarian in Yorkshire, England before World War II. I got so caught up in that one that I began working at a vet hospital on weekends. And when I’d go to the library after that, I’d look up books on horse and dog anatomy, books on diseases and common horse ailments or dog psychology, but again my eyes would glaze over. I didn’t get it and it didn’t get me closer to the book, only farther away. Because deep down I had no real interest in how the stomachs of a cow work or how the nose of a dog worked. I barely got through high school math and I’m ashamed to say I had to cheat my way through high school chemistry. So no I wouldn’t be James Herriot, the beloved vet, living in Yorkshire with a loving makeshift family, and free of myself.
The next discovery was John Steinbeck. A man who often wrote about people like me, people who can’t quite stand up, who are barely good and never great. And it was reading Steinbeck in the library that got me closer to who I was: an unstable kid who seemed to only get comfort from movies, books and records, and sitting in libraries. Comfort from escape.
I began to grow up.
My first girlfriend and I would spend weekends at the library. She would write things on her belly and then walk to a different part of the library and wave her hands until I noticed and then pull up her shirt so I could see what she wrote. And I came up with one of my first stories in that downtown Reno library, the story of a kid who gets trapped with his girlfriend in the library. They have a huge bed and a food replicator so they can eat anything they want whenever they want. And on the bottom floor of the library, where there’s a water feature, I wrote in a hot tub. In the story they never leave and they’re always happy. They are trapped there forever, imprisoned in heaven!
I think it’s safe to say I wasn’t a young Einstein or Shakespeare. I was just a guy who was in love with escape and in that way in love with novels without knowing he was in love with novels.
When I went to college I spent five nights a week in a library. That didn’t mean I got good grades, though. Because I spent my time there, not studying but reading novels. I sat in there night after night because libraries gave me comfort and not much else at the time gave me comfort. And of course by then I knew I wouldn’t be a veterinarian or a biologist or a mountaineer or business tycoon. I wouldn’t be a jet set writer like John le Carré or an iconic nature writer like Barry Lopez. I wouldn’t be Willie Nelson or Tom Waits either.
What I started to see was that I was a bit of wreck. Because the novels I found in the library that brought me the most comfort night after night were about guys who were beat up and wrecked. It’s a hard discovery to make about oneself, but a discovery I figured out in the safety of the place that had always made me feel the safest, the place that had made me feel, at least while I was there, that I was being the best version of myself.
So it’s safe to say I believe in libraries and I want to thank you all for being librarians. If I was Oprah, this would now be the time that I’d give each of you a brand-new Cadillac, color of your choice, of course.
If there are saints drifting around Portland, and I think there are, one of them would be Ursula K. Le Guin. She was a brilliant writer, yes, but she was also a true advocate and champion of libraries. She said once, "Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom...and that freedom must not be compromised. It must be available to all who need it, when they need it, and that's always…" So wherever she may be, I want to thank her and all those who have made the Portland and Multnomah County library system one of the best in the country.
***
Willy Vlautin has been the recipient of three Oregon Book Awards, The Nevada Silver Pen Award, and was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. He was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was shortlisted for the Impac Award (International Dublin Literary Award). His novels include: The Night Always Comes, Don't Skip Out On Me, The Free, Lean on Pete, Northline, and The Motel Life. Two of his novels, The Motel Life and Lean on Pete, have been adapted as films.
Check out Willy's very cool website for more info.
Hear one of the songs from The Night Always Comes book soundtrack, titled "Lynette's Lament," which is performed by Willy's band The Delines and written by band member Cory Gray. Click below to listen!
