Philosophy, Hypocrisy, and Public Libraries

A delightful week spent in the company of Swiss philosopher and political theorist Monika Maria Trost, with wide-ranging discussions on such diverse matters as Post-Modernism (Does it have a Future?) and the novels and plays of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, interrupted only occasionally by a tallish English baritone demanding the return of "his" kleine Philosophin.

But some tantalising questions remain. Why, for instance, does the catalogue of Lancashire County Library admit to the possession of certain books by the political theorist Hannah Arendt and then, almost in the same breath, deny it? It all looks decidedly fishy to me, and upon this matter I have two theories. First, that librarians at LCC, in their role (self-appointed) as guardians of the public morality (remember librarians and Enid Blyton? While librarians in the US were fiercely defending the right to free speech, often in court, specky do-gooders in the Uk were banning non-PC books such as the Famous Five and Noddy, aided and abetted by their colleagues-in-arms, half-educated teachers) have collectively decided that some subjects are to be kept from the eyes of the general reader lest the general reader be a pervert, and the Holocaust is top of the list. Or Second, that the new library assistant, Dulciedora, is to be given the job of weeding out the stuff that nobody reads so as to make room for pop CDs and DVDs and all the exciting books about TV shows like Big Brother, DIY welly maintenance and chick-lit novels for the lonely one-hander. And if you think Dulciedora doesn't exist, believe me, she does, and she and her tribe of clones are employed in every public library in the land, exercising their uncritical and uninformed judgment to extirpate books for which the public purse has paid probably millions of pounds, and if this is not a national scandal I don't know what is. My bookshelves are stuffed with irreplaceable and priceless books that Dulcie in one public library or another has decided are no longer needed - catalogues raisonnés of the works of Henry Moore and of Barbara Hepworth (this one printed on a selection of very fine rag papers), for example, and the long-OP first novel (1949) by Antony Burgess, A Vision of Battlements.

So it's either conspiracy theory or Dulcie "chuck it out, 'cos it's old an' borin' " Dora, and this time the application of Occam's Razor doesn't deliver the goods.

I fully expect Monika Maria Trost to invite me to be interviewed on her Sunday morning philosophy programme on Swiss TV so that I can blow the whistle on post-modernists and English public libraries. After all, she loves my cherry scones. I mean, anyone can render the Iliad into idiomatic Deutsch, but can they cook the perfect cherry scone? Hm?

It is only a matter of time...