Fabio Reveals the Truth about Libraries
Last week, prominent Fox News personality Tucker Carlson decided to get to the root of California politics by interviewing noted supermodel Fabio Lanzoni, pictured here on the cover of Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey. Fabio and his glorious hair are not happy at all.
An outraged Fabio declared, "You go downtown to like the library, it's like Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean it's like sex – sex, drugs and rock and roll – it's… it's a library."
A horrified Carlson responded that "only Californian librarians would put up with that".
Fabio did not clarify exactly what he meant but I've been to the downtown Los Angeles library and it seemed like, well, a library. In my opinion, however, any good library will have a wide range of material including books about sex, drugs and rock and roll.
As it says in Toronto Public Library's Mission statement: "The Library preserves and promotes universal access to a broad range of human knowledge, experience, information and ideas in a welcoming and supportive environment."
Sex
This is a small sample of some recent books in the Toronto Public Library collection that deal with sex. I thought the titles sounded interesting.
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Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus by Vanessa Grigoriadis
Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy by Hallie Lieberman
Real Sex: Why Everything You Learned about Sex is Wrong by Mike Lousada and Louise Mazanti
The Sex Effect: Baring our Complicated Relationship with Sex by Ross Benes
Drugs
Drug use by authors is not unheard of. Toronto Public Library has many books written by authors who were under the influence of a variety of substances.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Barrett Browning began battling chronic illness as an adolescent. Her severe head and back pain baffled doctors who prescribed laudanum and morphine. She remained dependent on opiates until her death at 55.
William S. Burroughs
It should come as no surprise that the author of Junky and Naked Lunch was addicted to heroin for much of his life. One night while drinking heavily, Burroughs shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer as the pair reenacted William Tell shooting an apple off his son's head.
(Photo by Re-cropped derivative work: Burn t (talk) Burroughs1983_cropped.jpg: Chuck Patch (Burroughs1983_cropped.jpg) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Charles Dickens
Dickens drew upon his own experience as an opium user for his unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Stephen King
In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, King admitted that he can't remember writing the best-selling novel Cujo as he spent much of the 1980s under the influence of alcohol and drugs including cocaine, Xanax, NyQuil, Valium and marijuana. He gave up drugs and alcohol after family and friends staged an intervention.
(Photo By bunkosquad / Michael Femia (https://www.flickr.com/photos/bunkosquad/17915541/) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson credited cocaine for the speed of his writing. The drug also makes an appearance in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
In all seriousness, the opioid crisis has touched every part of the community and is a very real concern for many libraries – including those in Toronto where staff have been given training to recognize overdose symptoms and react quickly to these situations.
Rock and Roll
Try these recent autobiographies of musicians with mostly black and white covers. Seriously, would a little colour damage your reputations?
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Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine
Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
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I am Brian Wilson by Brian Wilson
Life by Keith Richards
Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol by Steve Jones
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My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman with Alan Light
Reckless: My Life as a Pretender by Chrissie Hynde
Set the Boy Free: The Autobiography by Johnny Marr
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace with Dan Ozzi
A huge collection of CDs is available at the library. Hoopla is another way to access music with your library card. Digital music can be borrowed, streamed or downloaded and played offline. It's a fantastic way to listen to the latest releases without having to place a hold.
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One thought on “Fabio Reveals the Truth about Libraries”
This is an awesome post. I hope that Fabio reads this and is reassured.