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LARRY’S PUBLIC LIBRARY LAMENT

July 6, 2008 --

LARRY McMurtry seems to be writing the obituary of America's public libraries in his new memoir, "Books," out this week. "Today the sight that discourages book people most is to walk into a public library and see computers where books used to be. In many cases not even librarians want books to be there," rants the Pulitzer-winning author of "Lonesome Dove," who also earned an Oscar for his "Brokeback Mountain" script. "[Computers] do many good things. But they don't really do what books do, and why should they usurp the chief function of a public library? . . . Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library." As far as audiobooks go, McMurtry, 72, says, "I don't like [them], but at least they preserve the human longing for narrative, and for a certain linkage between the author and the reader . . . In commerce extinctions happen often. It didn't take electricity long to kill off the kerosene lamp."