Chapter 5 February 1995 Marius Moreau—Collection Manager
Marius Moreau—collection manager
Parisian born and bred, I assure you that the best time to visit is August—inhabitants leave and the city becomes an oasis where you can traipse along empty boulevards.
The rest of the time, it’s a nightmare of jackhammers and honking horns, of narrow sidewalks overrun by people elbowing their way past. When you cross the street to escape them, taxis speed up to mow you down. My daily commute is an obstacle course.
Libraries are the only place I’ve ever felt safe.
Working in one is all I’ve ever wanted. I crave the quiet of books, their promise of calm.
In grade school, the other boys taunted me.
“Petit Marius, pale and frail!” When I stood up for myself, they chortled, “Listen to the baby wail.” During recess, they shouted and laughed as they played with marbles; I assisted the librarian, a serene man who seemed to hold the answers of the universe in his dappled hands. The silence was a refuge, a relief.
After graduating from lycée with mention très bien, I attended France’s prestigious école Nationale des Chartes for librarians and archivists.
I was the top of my class. The other students came to me for answers, that is, until the exit exam—an oral Q and A before a three-man jury.
My classmates and I learned about books—which to buy; how to catalog them; techniques to repair them—but never how to communicate or give presentations.
The whole reason I chose library work was to avoid people.
On that fated day, in a stately room with engraved paneling, I was alone with the trio of elderly archivists.
They remained quiet as they sized me up.
For the first time in my life, silence felt oppressive.
To stop myself from fidgeting, I laced my fingers together, hands folded as if in prayer.
Perhaps subconsciously, I was begging: like me, pick me, want me.
Finally, the one with the bushy white mustache asked a question.
Perspiration trickled down my sides. I blinked hard to keep my tears from falling.
I’d never felt so alone, so vulnerable. I couldn’t speak.
The words stuck in my brain and couldn’t be forced out.
Even today, I cannot remember how I got out of that room—did they dismiss me, did I leave of my own accord?
In those days, there were no second chances, no reprieves. Words failed me. Or I failed myself. Without this diploma, no Parisian bibliothèque would hire me. Though I don’t recall the questions, that feeling of helplessness, of having my fate in the hands of others is seared into my soul.
Needing to pay the rent, I accepted a job as a cashier.
I was pitiful, feeling my bookish knowledge was wasted as I rang up yogurt and toilet paper.
Beside me, my co-worker—a Slav with ivory skin, whose nobility was in her every gesture, from the way her slim fingers counted back change to how she disregarded smarmy customers who mocked her accent—ordered me to stop pouting.
No job is beneath us, she insisted. Later, I learned that Anna was a Russian countess who’d lost everything during the Revolution.
She’d started over in France without a centime to her name.
At an employee Christmas party, after hours in the superette, she introduced me to her husband, Boris, the head librarian at the ALP.
I inquired about a position. He admitted it wasn’t easy to work with Americans; however, the director there felt that ability was as important as diplomas.
When he hired me as the collection manager, I nearly wept in relief.
Ever since my inauguration, January 20, 1961, which I shared with John F.
Kennedy, I’ve selected the works that grace the ALP’s shelves.
To find the latest, I attend book fairs in Frankfurt, London, and Bologna.
To find the best, I look no further than our reading room, where I help local authors with research.
Their biggest fan, I cheer them on from the sidelines of the stacks.
For years, they write and edit before sending their ideas into the world—that is to say, to editors in New York and London.
Together, the budding authors and I count the days until the responses come.
My favorite part of my job is seeing the hope in their eyes.
I’m as excited as they are; I want their books on my shelves.
Unfortunately, much of the time, the response is a form rejection letter.
Some writers persevere, sending to the next editor on the list; others become too demoralized to continue.
There’s a certain sadness when a writer gives up, when a dream dies.
I remember too well the stain of failure, that crippling helplessness when others decide you, or your work, is not good enough.
I wanted to shield writers from that feeling.
Six months into my job, I knew I needed to act—to honor the writers, pay tribute to their talent.
Frankly, some manuscripts can be more intense, more raw than published books, which may have had their rough edges sanded off.
My collection started thirty-five years ago, with a library patron’s cracking account of Bricktop.
Have you by chance heard of the Black nightclub owner and chanteuse who sang her way from saloons in Chicago to Prohibition Harlem to Café Society in Paris?
Born Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith, she was called Bricktop because of her flaming red hair.
F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalized her nightclub in his short story “Babylon Revisited”: “He passed a lighted door from which issued music, and stopped with the sense of familiarity; it was Bricktop’s, where he had parted with so many hours and so much money. ”
She was a darling of Cole Porter, the renowned composer, who tested his songs in her club.
When World War II broke out, she volunteered in soup kitchens organized by Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (credited as the first interior designer in America) and Wallis, the Duchess of Windsor (credited with inspiring a king to abdicate for love).
Later, these friends used their clout to procure a ticket on one of the last ships leaving France, helping Bricktop to escape the Nazis.
After thirty rejections, the biographer chucked the manuscript into the reading room bin.
I scooped the chapters out—Bricktop’s story deserved to be saved.
I bound the pages and laid them in a blue box tied with a white ribbon—a gift for discerning readers.
In the Afterlife, I cleared a wall for the manuscript and added photos of the chanteuse as well as a vintage dress by Edward Molyneux, who dressed Bricktop along with Vivien Leigh and Marlene Dietrich.
One day, I found the biographer beaming at the exhibit. By then, we’d become friends.
“I can’t believe it,” Jim said. “You made my dream come true.”
I never intended to create a collection—my initial aim was to support locals.
I helped several finish their novels. Jim persisted and got the biography published.
He even borrowed my exhibit for his book tour.
He insisted he couldn’t have continued without my encouragement.
Buoyed by his appreciation, I asked a few patrons to consider writing their own stories.
Don’t we all have secret depths? And different reasons for living in Paris?
The Afterlife contains a shelf of memoirs.
Now, a more ambitious goal—to help writers all over the world, and to acquire a manuscript from every country for the Afterlife.
I recently ran an ad in the London Review of Books asking writers to send their best work.
Each unpublished story is fascinating, whether it describes farming in 1910 Nebraska or raising thirteen children in Naples in the 1950s.
Naturally, my favorite is the war journal of Margaret Bauer.