A book returned to Athenry Library

In Athenry Library yesterday, a copy of John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent was returned as part of a routine library transaction.

This copy in question was published by Heinemann in 1961 and printed in a lovely typeface and on good paper by the Windmill Press in Surrey in England.

Galway County Library purchased the book in March 1972. Although there probably were previous date labels on the book which would have indicated the book being loaned throughout 1972 and 1973, it is possible to see evidence from old date labels located at the front of the book showing the book being borrowed in 1974. There is evidence from the date labels of the book then being continually borrowed over the years right down to the present fresh date stamp showing the book due for return on June 8th 2006.

Galway County Council paid IR£1.50 for the book when it was purchased 34 years ago.

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) is a novel which indicts society for its focus on materialism and individual's disregard for the family of man.

Steinbeck was a man who wrote from the depths of his heart. His most enduring themes were: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.

The book is dog-eared, some of the pages are torn, there are stained pages here and there. Some of the binding has been sealed with book tape. But anyone picking it up will get a sense that they are sharing an experience with all the other readers who have taken this book from the library before. Holding the book in one’s hand, there is such a sense of thought and of philosophy and of thinking and of reflection and of questioning. The book is about loss and the attempts to regain some sort of equilibrium in life. In some ways the ups and downs of lives of all the people who read the book seem inextricably linked.

There is also a sense of community: this is the community’s copy. And there is the sense that the book, like the community, has survived many tribulations and joys over the past 34 years.

When the South African writer, John Maxwell Coetzee, won the Nobel Prize for literature two years ago, he went off to Stockholm to receive the award, where it is traditional for the winner to make a speech. Coetzee puzzled his audience by speaking about Robinson Crusoe. But what Coetzee wanted to do was to equate all human adventure with the destiny of Robinson, alone on his island.

Yes, there are many poor Robinsons, “enduring shipwreck, hunger, loneliness and near-death. Everyone comes to find communication a problem and ends yelling and gesticulating like a madman, with no one listening.”

We can think of the many people living in the various housing estates all around our various libraries. Many are enduring loneliness, even, in a certain way, some are enduring “shipwreck.”


"What are they calling (these afflicted men and women) across the waters and across the years, out of their private fire?" as Coetzee put it.

Perhaps our libraries might have what they are calling for, be it the example of Robinson Crusoe, or this book by Steinbeck. Our libraries and our books, and the reading experiences we provide, enable people to cope with some of the “shipwrecked” moments which we all experience from time to time.

In spite of all the changes, the new technology and the development of the cultural role of the library, perhaps the most important thing we do is putting good books into people’s hands.

And think of the education and the enlightenment provided for an investment of IR£1.50 back in 1972.