Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

Avi Steinberg

Language: English

Pages: 416

ISBN: 0767931319

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Avi Steinberg is stumped. After defecting from yeshiva to attend Harvard, he has nothing but a senior thesis on Bugs Bunny to show for himself. While his friends and classmates advance in the world, Steinberg remains stuck at a crossroads, his “romantic” existence as a freelance obituary writer no longer cutting it.
 
Seeking direction (and dental insurance) Steinberg takes a job running the library counter at a Boston prison. He is quickly drawn into the community of outcasts that forms among his bookshelves—an assortment of quirky regulars, including con men, pimps, minor prophets, even ghosts—all searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. Steinberg recounts their daily dramas with heartbreak and humor in this one-of-a-kind memoir—a piercing exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man’s earnest attempt to find his place in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

allow my eyes to widen before this delicious feast of a question. There were so many possibilities. Did they want to know that I read Cat Fancy magazine? That my feet are flat and duck-like? That my initials are A.S.S.? Were they angling at something specific? Were they asking if I’m gay? A Zionist? I decided not to chance a reply. Instead mustered up a “No, I think that just about covered everything.” This seemed to do the trick. I was told the position—which included working as a librarian and

that she hadn’t seen in years—Charlotte’s Web or Curious George. For many in prison, childhood memories were very difficult or nonexistent. Book lending was also a means of communication with another person. An argument over a political or religious issue often resulted in inmates, and sometimes staff, drawing up reading lists for each other—often on the spot and in a huff—as a means of setting the other straight. In my first week, an inmate named Robert Jordan, upset by something I had said,

me. He was right. He could reach those people who never came to the library and speak to them in a way that would be more persuasive than I, a fourteen-year-old-looking white boy. With his help, I could double (or more) the reach of this effort. After a week of watching the donations continue to trickle in, fewer every day, I decided to give him a shot. I approached his “office,” the back reference/computer room. Coolidge caught me hesitating at the entrance, wondering whether it was wise to

nineteenth-century type myself. We started talking. He asked if I knew anything about writing or publishing. I revealed that indeed I knew a thing or two. He looked both ways, leaned in, and whispered, “I got something hot here.” “Great,” I said. “Just what I need.” He had written the better part of a manuscript, a book. He said he’d received some positive letters from a publisher. I was intrigued. He had to get busy typing up this book, he said. He needed it formatted in accordance with

prediction made by these very people was surprisingly accurate. Avi will be a shepherd in the Negev. Here I was, seven years hence, out to pasture, living hand-to-mouth. Even more disturbing was the fear that this figurative sense of being out to pasture might, eventually, lead to the quite literal version. If a shepherding position had opened up, I probably would have sent in a résumé. To my great relief, these waves of anxiety were kept at bay by the simple comforts provided so generously, so

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