by Elaine Ratner?

"Dear Librarian, Are you really in there — inside a library where you stay 24 hours each day?"

The question arrives in the morning mail at the Presidio Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. It is from two inmates at the Washington State penitentiary who have just read The Abortion: An Historical Romance by Richard Brautigan.

Since Brautigan wrote his book in 1966 "about the romantic possibilities of a public library in California" and included in it the address of the Presidio Branch complete with zip code the letters haven't stopped. And people have been arriving in person to see the setting now well known to Brautigan fans.

"They're easy to recognize," says librarian Kay Roberts who is enjoying the new popularity of her branch. "They wander around with their mouths half open. They never look at the card catalog, so you know they aren't on regular library business. One even asked if I was Vida, but he was obviously just trying to flatter me for some special privilege."

You see Vida, (pronounced V-[eye]-da), heroine of Abortion, is without doubt the most beautiful woman ever seen inside a library:


Not your ordinary librarian, even in San Francisco.

Brautigan's gorgeous heroine isn't really a librarian anyway. Until her unwanted pregnancy and subsequent abortion, she lives with the librarian the author's fictional characterization of himself in a back room of his extraordinary library, modelled in physical detail on the Presidio Branch. It is a haven to which anyone can bring any book he has written at any hour of the day or night. The library never closes and the librarian never leaves the building. Each book is registered in the official ledger and then is placed by its author on any shelf, never to be read, eventually to be transferred to eternal storage in hermetically sealed caves somewhere in Northern California. The books have titles like Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms and The Culinary Dostoevski.

The narrator observes early in Abortion:


Apparently Brautigan has a point. His idea has struck a responsive note in many of his readers, closet authors who want the imaginary library to be real. They come to 3150 Sacramento Street to see for themselves or write hopeful letters which land eventually on Mrs. Roberts' desk to be answered.

Many of the letters are of the Are-you-really-there-doing-what-he-says-you-do variety. Some are fan letters, like the one from Patti A. at the University of Wyoming:


Jeri J., in Bridgeport, Connecticut is among the hopeful believers in Brautigan's library idea who try to arrange by letter to bring in their books:


Then there are those, like David W. from Portland, Oregon. who choose to ignore the novel's injunction against sending books by mail. He writes in bold red letters on his envelope: "Attention: This is my book. It is called You Can Get There from Here. It is about growing up."

Kay Roberts answers every letter, trying to break the news gently that, alas, the Presidio Branch library is just an ordinary library and always has been. Some would-be contributors write again to say that's OK.

"They don't seem too disappointed to find out that we're just an ordinary library." Mrs. Roberts says. "Actually, we're the ones that find it hard to accept. Every morning I have to wrench myself out of Brautigan's fantasy in order to get some work done in my real work-a-day library. By taking the setting out from under me and making it into something else, he left me in a library I keep thinking of in make-believe terms. I find myself looking at everything through Brautigan's eyes. I walk up to the building and I can't stop marvelling at the 'asparagus stalk lamps'; I could have worked here 20 years without hitting on a happy expression like that. That's exactly what they are."

Mrs. Roberts glances around the yellow-brick building, so perfectly mirrored in the a novel. "And another thing," she says, "we now have something of a reputation to live up to. My assistant, Mrs. Landon, was worrying just last week that our daisies are not quite up to standard this year."

It is obvious that the real-life librarian of the Presidio Branch library doesn't mind the added responsibility at all. She looks forward to Brautigan's occasional, always unannounced visits. She saves all of the letters for him to see, and she's been trying for months to convince him, as a long-time patron and the architect of its fame, to participate in a program at the branch. So far she's been unsuccessful and has had to content herself with an Abortion exhibit of letters.

She's even been thinking of initiating a Richard Brautigan Abortion Memorial Collection non to accommodate the many unpublished books that have been offered and the few that have already been sneaked onto the shelves. One, a leather bound travel diary containing a trip from New York to California, was found1 in the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. section. Scrawled inside is an explanation from the author, Bill T. of Chappaqua, New York.


Whatever Kay Roberts decides to do with her still growing Abortion collection, it will have to wait. Mrs. Roberts is now on maternity leave.

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California Living
May 14, 1972



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