Tuesday, April 16, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
IT'S BEEN a couple of weeks since I visited the library, and my forearms are starting to itch as though I were a heroin addict standing in a methadone line.
But I have to wait until payday before I return.
That's because I still owe the library $32 in fines for the 47 pounds of overdue books I carried into the West Charleston branch during my last visit.
I remember the look on the librarian's face when she blew the dust off the jacket of one of the books I had borrowed in 1988.
"'The Naked and the Dead,'" she said, pronouncing each word carefully and deliberately as if she were referring to my fate rather than the title of Norman Mailer's war epic.
Then she held up the library's only copy of "The Magic Lantern" by Robert Carson, which had sat on the bottom shelf of my bookcase, hidden under a pile of New Yorker magazines, for 2 1/2 years.
"I've never even heard of this writer," the librarian said.
"Oh, he's great," I said, trying to keep the conversation light. "Did you know that he won the Academy Award for the original version of 'A Star Is Born'?"
But the librarian was not amused.
This little scenario had been played out too many times, and we both knew it was just a matter of time before my library card would be shredded and wanted posters with my smiling picture displayed in every branch in the district.
I guess I've always been a bibliophile. It's such a wonderful feeling when you walk along the isles of a library knowing you can reach out to every corner of man's imagination -- and for free.
Week after week, I carry out arm loads of books. I read some of them, and the ones I don't like so much end up under piles of clothes in the laundry room or buried under tools in the trunk of my car.
But I can see the patience of librarians is wearing thin. They have master's degrees now, and I swear they minored in criminology.
Instead of sending me one of those computerized letters that fold out with pages and pages of overdue books, the library has taken to a more aggressive approach.
Just last week, I got a call from a library representative about a long-overdue copy of "Burr" by Gore Vidal.
"How overdue is the book?" I asked.
"Let's put it this way," the representative said. "It was classified as current fiction when you borrowed it."
At least the local librarians haven't lost their senses of humor.
And speaking of which, did you hear about Stephen Womack, the world's most infamous bibliomaniac?
The former library worker at Harvard University, arrested for stealing and destroying more than 600 scholarly books, was convicted and last month was sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison.
Before he was sentenced, Womack asked an investigator, "If I go to jail, do you think they'll let me use the library there?"
archive
