In New York: Reading Between the Lions

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It is high noon. On the 42nd Street sidewalk outside Bryant Park two street musicians, both senior citizens, are plonking out "golden oldies" on electric guitar and zither. A few steps farther on a middle-aged black man sits on a wire wastepaper basket clutching a tattered Reader's Digest. He greets all passers-by with a cheery "Auf Wiedersehen!" But as Bryant Park comes to an end voices begin to hiss. "Wanna smoke, wanna smoke?" —twice, three, four times before a resolute reader reaches the top of the library steps and walks the hundred or so yards toward the marble lions guarding the columned portico.

Along the way stands Tyrone, nine-teenish, from uptown, calmly rolling his $1-apiece joints on a stone bench that he shares with a sleeping derelict. At least five pushers are holding up their plastic bags with marijuana and hashish for sale, and some customers light up on the spot. "The police used to raid early in the summer," explains Tyrone, "but you can get out in a couple of hours." He means be back on the terrace making sales, or in Bryant Park behind the building, where the pushers are so thick on the ground it takes a certain patience to refuse solicitations politely. Don't bother calling the police, either. Chances are the pusher will just plea-bargain the charge down to a $25 fine and a slight scratch on his record.

It is an average sunny lunchtime in fall at the New York Public Library. The great Central Building occupies two entire blocks of Fifth Avenue below 42nd Street. Its marble lions gaze out with dignity over trash and traffic alike, and the lofty portico proclaims the institution's origins in the heady days of 19th century hope and public benefice. "For the advancement of useful knowledge . . . dedicated to history, literature and the fine arts," the letters carved in stone declare. Inside, on 88 miles of shelves, is the greatest free collection of knowledge anywhere, and on any terms one of the five outstanding libraries in the world.

Just to walk through the marble corridors and briefly visit the different specialized divisions takes an hour. The Jewish collection contains the oldest known Hebrew printed book in the world, the Arba Turim (four columns) from Italy. Its librarians also possess a humdinger recipe for bagels that they gladly supplied by phone to a New York baker a few years ago when he called to ask. The Main Reading Room will produce, often in less than ten minutes, the most obscure tome requested, from Milton's Areopagitica to Sir Richard Burton's travels in Zanzibar.

For sheer accessibility nothing like it exists in any major library in the world. The service is completely free. It requires no card, no previous reference and no identification of any kind. That means, in America these days, that many rooms are plagued by the idle, the vicious, the criminal—and the literally unwashed.