The Librarianist

“In truth, though, he was moved by Maria’s assessment of his character. The functional purpose he’d known in his professional life had been put away when he’d retired, but now that cold piece of his person came back to life.”

Bob’s unique traits of being disciplined and fastidious are not often valued by others and come across as eccentric and anti-social. That Maria values them is a sign to Bob that he can achieve some sort of meaning from volunteering at the senior center, speaking to Work and the Discovery of Life’s Purpose. In the first few chapters, Bob begins a journey toward understanding what he needs to feel fulfilled and happy without his career.

“Bob waited through the remainder of that day and evening for the multitude of independent emotions inspired by the news of Ethan’s death to form a whole, but it wasn’t until the next morning that they coalesced and he understood he was experiencing a righteousness. He didn’t believe in God or fate or karma or luck, even, but he couldn’t help feeling Ethan’s death was in reply to his, Ethan’s betrayal; and he couldn’t pretend that he wished Ethan was still alive.”

Though Ethan’s betrayal of Bob occurred decades ago, the hurt that Ethan caused Bob is still present. When Ethan dies unexpectedly via an accident, Bob cannot help but feel that this act is punishment for Ethan’s actions and therefore warranted. This quote reveals the complicated feelings Bob has for his former beset friend.

“From an early age [Bob] had a gift for invisibility; he was not tormented by his peers because his peers did not see him, his school teachers prone to forgetting and reforgetting his name. He would have been a highly successful bank robber; he could have stood in a hundred line-ups and walked free from every one.”

Bob goes through life unseen—he is so ordinary and uninteresting, according to the narrator—that he blends into the background. Bob is aware of the way he is unnoticed by people, and for this reason, it is life changing when he makes both a best friend, in Ethan, and begins dating Connie.

“As a child and teenager, Bob had been afraid of becoming an adult, this in response to an idea his mother had unwittingly instilled in him, which was that life and work both were states of unhappiness and compromise. But Bob’s mother had never understood the pleasures of efficiency, the potential for grace in the achievement of creature comforts. She cooked but hated cooking. She cleaned and felt cheated. Bob didn’t feel this way; the actions he performed each morning were needed, and each one fit into the next.”

Bob’s life is simple, but he learns to derive pleasure from ordinary things. This quiet contentment is one of the strengths of his character. Here, he is presented as a foil to his mother, who craves a more dynamic and event-filled life.

“‘My aspiration is to become a completely normal human being,’ Connie said. ‘That’s my aspiration as well,’ said Bob.”

Bob is surprised when an attraction and bond develops between he and Connie, primarily because he has had great difficulty forging friendships in the past. Others regard Bob as eccentric and different in a way that is off-putting. Connie’s words suggest, however, that she too is socially awkward and this similarity lays the groundwork for their relationship.

“After Connie was gone Bob walked to the restroom and locked himself in a stall to stand relive his meeting with this new person, this young woman. He was confused and giddy and scared. At one point he wondered if he was charming. Was he? He had never been before. Or was it that he’d simply never had the chance to indulge?”

Bob is taken aback when he meets Connie, who values his eccentricities and finds them inviting, rather than off-putting. He can scarcely believe that there is another person in the world who is like him in this manner. Bob’s delight at this attention reflects The Impact of Relationships and Human Connection.

“In other words, I’ve come around to the idea that this subservience to my father is my career. I might have to work another year, or five years, but sooner or later, and not too much later, he’s going to go.”

Connie desires freedom from the responsibility of being her father’s caretaker, which further requires her to comply with his demands about the kind of person she should be. As with Bob, Work and the Discovery of Life’s Purpose is a key factor in Connie’s life. Connie’s “work” will soon end with the death of her father, and then she can truly begin to discover her purpose.

“She said, ‘You like being alone.’

‘Being alone is normal.’

‘Is it?’

‘It’s normal for me.’

‘Don’t you like people?”

‘I don’t know any people.’

‘Clever,’ she said, pointing.

‘I like the idea of people,’ Bob said.”

As they get to know one another, Connie probes Bob’s introverted nature, questioning how far it extends. Bob is largely unapologetic for his dislike of social settings, content with a quiet life of books and reading. He understands the appeal of social connection for others but finds it to be outside of his comfort zone.

“Ethan bowed in his seat. He took another bite of his pastry. ‘As time goes by, I think of my visits with Pearl, and the Pearls of the world, as practice. Because someday, buddy, I’m going to fall in love, too, just like you.’”

At the time Ethan speaks these words, they are less meaningful to Bob than they are in retrospect. Knowing that Bob’s wife Connie will be the one with whom Ethan falls in love makes Ethan’s prediction painfully ironic. Ethan suggests that his own life purpose is to obtain a romantic mate, and it is through doing so that he achieves a sense of fulfillment.

“[Bob] hadn’t yet introduced Connie to Ethan, but it was only now that he admitted to himself that he’d been intentionally keeping them apart. It wasn’t that he believed Connie would, against her own free will and faithfulness, swoon over Ethan for his profile and charisma; and neither did Bob think Ethan would utilize his tools to woo Connie away from him. His fear, or fearful belief, was that Connie and Ethan would both, upon meeting each other, come to learn and understand that they were true mates, truer than Connie and Bob could ever be.”

From the start, Bob is certain that not only is he at risk of losing Connie’s affections, but also that she will be wooed by his best friend. Because the narrative is presented in a non-linear fashion, it has already been revealed that Bob’s fear will come to fruition. Here, Bob suggests there is no way to prevent the manner in which Connie’s and Ethan’s relationship will develop, highlighting Bob’s perceived lack of agency in his own life.

“I leaned over and said to her, ‘You’re Connie, and I’m Ethan, and I think we need to have a discussion, because we’re both in love with the same man, and I can’t go on sharing him like this.’

The pair resumed laughing, and here Bob wished to vanish, or for Ethan to vanish, or Connie, or all three of them.”

Bob has tried as hard as possible to keep Connie and Ethan from meeting one another, for fear that they will find each other more interesting than him. When the two meet by accident, Bob is certain that his worst fears are coming true: Connie will leave him for Ethan.

“Twice through the course of the month Connie asked after Ethan, and both times she was playing toward a casualness, but Bob disliked that she was considering him at all. He told himself he was willing to forgo the friendship with Ethan if it meant he didn’t have to feel so badly as before; but really, it was more complicated than that. At some point in this lull he missed Ethan terribly, and he thought of the pair of them walking up the sidewalk at night. […] For the rest of his life, whenever Bob thought of his former alliance with Ethan, this was the scenario that came to mind: the two of them [Connie and Ethan] hurrying along, talking over one another and laughing, cigarette smoke pooling in their wake.”

Bob fears that in order to prevent Connie from developing romantic feelings for Ethan, he must keep Ethan at a distance. This saddens him, however, because Ethan’s friendship is a valuable aspect of Bob’s life. He feels he must choose between Connie and Ethan or risk losing both of them.

“The suicide note still was taped up, an eerie document that Bob did not read fully through. It struck him as levelheaded when he considered its proximity to the author’s act of self-murder by hanging. Friends of my community, it began. There followed a sort of curriculum vitae: where he was born, schooled, which church he attended, and how he came to work in his field. He wrote, I found many answers and comforts in my profession, but not every answer and not every comfort. In particular I could never find the answer to the question of why; and if man cannot answer this question, there shall be no lasting comfort available to him.”

In keeping with the theme of Work and the Discovery of Life’s Purpose, the printer never fully achieves the kind of meaning he is looking for and opts to die by suicide. This is ironic given that the entire town praises the work he does and mourns the loss of the town’s best printer. It is significant that the printer’s words resonate with Bob, even though he is a child—Bob, even at this young age, understands the importance of discovering one’s purpose and the aimlessness that accompanies not having a purpose.

“‘To tell the truth I’ve entered into a period of my life where I actually enjoy doing the dishes, and by myself. Which is odd when I consider to what degree I always loathed the practice before; but recently it feels like time well spent. What does it mean?’ Bob was nearly asleep in his chair; Mr. More gently crushed his foot under the table and said, ‘Someday, Bob, when you’re an aged specimen like me, and you find yourself suddenly enamored of folding the laundry or edging the lawn, remember your long-gone friend Leslie More telling you to accept whatever happiness passes your way, and in whatever form.’”

Bob will later adopt the mindset of enjoying simple, routine tasks, just as Mr. More urged him when he was a small child. Though Bob does not attribute this appreciation to Mr. More, this reference echoes in retrospect. Mr. More contrasts Bob’s mother, who frustrates Bob by her inability to take pleasure in small tasks.

“For the first time since his departure he found himself thinking of his home in Portland, in particular the cosmos of his bedroom. He turned off the radio and shut off the lights and lay down in bed. It was a long time before he fell asleep.”

As Bob begins to connect with the people who have taken him in, he feels acceptance and belonging. Therefore, it is significant that he finds himself missing Portland during this time, and even more notable that he doesn’t mention the people he misses. Bob mostly just misses the familiarity of his bedroom, as he loves routines.

“Something of the moment had upset [Bob’s] heart. He wished he could have said goodbye to June and Ida, but the idea of an official parting also made him feel shy, and that it might have overwhelmed him. But still, there was this feeling, and Bob didn’t know where to put it.”

Because he rarely is able to connect with people on an emotional level, when this does happen, Bob finds the feelings it brings strange and unfamiliar. By the end of the novel, late in his life, he will finally have learned to accept and be comfortable with the feelings that relationships bring about.

“‘I’m not quitting,’ Bob promised. And he wasn’t quitting, but he couldn’t face Chip knowing she was Connie and had made the decision to avoid the center until she had gone. Perhaps it was a failure of mettle, some fundamental human test he was not rugged enough to master; and yet the task was so outsize to what he felt he was capable of that he experienced not a twinge of remorse at his turning away from it.”

Upon learning about Connie and her condition, Bob is fearful of facing her. This is evidence that the hurt he feels by her betrayal is still present. Yet, he still cares for Connie and has never truly stopped loving her. His feelings are complex and, for the moment, the thought of sorting them out is overwhelming.

“Bob settled in to his temporary hospital existence. After decades of rejecting the television medium he experienced a period of not just watching TV but watching with enthusiastic interest. All his life he had believed the real world was the world of books; it was here that mankind’s finest inclinations were represented. And this must have been true at some point in history, but now he understood the species had devolved and that this shrill, base, banal potpourri of humanity’s worst and weakest and laziest desires and behaviors was the document of the time.”

As Bob ages, his personality shifts and changes. He becomes more open to new experiences and aspects of life—such as watching television—that he previously denounced. The ability to grow and develop, Bob learns, is a vital component of living a full and meaningful life, speaking to Work and the Discovery of Life’s Purpose.

“Less frequent, but no less vivid, were Bob’s dreams of the library. There had been whole eras of Bob’s working life where he knew a lamentation at the smallness of his existence, but now he understood how lucky he had been to have inhibited his position. Across the span of nearly fifty years he had done a service in his community and also been a part of it; he had seen the people of the neighborhood coming and going, growing up, growing old, and dying. He had known some of them too, hadn’t he? It was a comfort to him, to dream of the place.”

It is only after his career as a librarian has ended that Bob comes to realize that though he always considered himself antisocial and largely outside of the social dynamics of other people, this is not truly accurate. His work at the library connected him to other people in a meaningful and long-lasting way—something that Bob seeks to replicate as he enters the new phase of life as a resident of the Gambell-Reed Senior Center.

“Bob learned Connie’s Portland home had been less than five miles from his own. This prompted Bob to think of the years after Ethan’s death, the years of wondering when he would see her again. There were some mornings, as he was shaving, or making his bed, when he would intuit Connie’s approach, that that would be the day she would walk through the door of the library to see him, and he recalled how distracted he would be, all through his shift, looking up at each person coming in.”

Bob never gives up hope that Connie will return to him in some capacity. He spends the bulk of his adult life missing her and the connection that they had forged. When Connie does indeed return to him late in their lives, it is not in the manner Bob had anticipated.

“[Bob] gave the transcripts back to Maria and thanked her. She could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t wish to speak of what he’d learned. Most of her patients had areas of their lives that were too painful to be discussed, and she never pried, respectful of the boundary. Maria understood that part of aging, at least for many of us, was to see how misshapen and imperfect our stories had to be. The passage of time bends us, it folds us up, and eventually, it tucks us right into the ground.”

Maria’s insights speak directly to the theme of The Struggles of Aging. She recognizes that Connie’s mental decline deeply saddens Bob and Connie’s condition has resulted in Connie no longer being her true self. Maria respects Bob’s wishes not to share these feelings with her, however.

“‘Are you asking me what your father was like?’ asked Bob, and Sam said that he guessed so. Bob held up the picture of Ethan and gave himself time to formulate the true words. He said, ‘Your father had no guile. He wasn’t crass or avaricious. He was never dull. He was physically graceful, and fun to look at. He was funny, and he encouraged and abetted funniness in others. He was a little bit seduced by himself, a little reckless in the wielding of his powers, but maybe that’s understandable, and so we forgive him for it. I don’t know how I should put it to you, Sam, except to say that some people, when they enter a room, the room changes. And your father was a natural-born room-changer.”

Despite Ethan’s betrayal, Bob continues to respect and admire him, conveying to Ethan’s son what a remarkable person Ethan was. This shows the integrity and kind spirit Bob possesses and suggests that he has forgiven Ethan and continues to value the friendship they once shared.

“In a sense, this was just what [Bob] had hoped to hear, but he wasn’t prepared for it, and for him to learn of these tiny moments was at once the most merciful evidence, but there was also a second sense, which was a quick or flashing outrage. That Connie should invoke an old pet name when they were separated by mere city blocks was outrageous to him, and he sat for a half minute chocking against the clash of feelings.”

Sam reveals to Bob that Connie, after leaving Bob, continued an inside joke that she and Bob had shared. This both hurts Bob—as he regards it as a violation of the intimacy between them—and pleases him as it indicates Connie never forgot about him. Once again, his feelings are complicated and contradictory.