Cool Guy
Actually, he wasn’t just a cool guy. He was a cool guy who was the CEO of the multinational conglomerate I joined in 1993. He bought books for the library that the company had at the head office for its employees. For a time, the library was one of my job responsibilities, as I oversaw its running and worked with the librarian (yes, we actually employed a full-time librarian just to run the library).
It was one of my responsibilities to look through book catalogs and make recommendations on books to buy. But I wasn’t the only one doing it. Occasionally, we would get a call from the CEO’s office to go and collect a package the CEO had brought back for the library from his recent overseas travels. After the first time it happened, I was soon looking forward to such calls as I knew it meant new additions to the company library.
He didn’t buy just books, and definitely not corporate books. He bought FICTION. The most memorable package he gave us happened just after Toni Morrison was announced winner of the 1993 Nobel Literature Prize. He gave us the entire Toni Morrison collection up to the time of the Prize – The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, and Beloved – all of them hardcovers. Through his influence, we later added Jazz to the library when it was published. No, wait, his gift might have included Jazz, since that book was published the year Morrison won. In fact, I remember it was listed in her bibliography at the time of the Prize. But I digress.
The company library held a motley collection of books, both fiction and non-fiction. It was an initiative started by the employees’ sports club, and initially included book donations from its members, and later embraced by the company.
The fiction included a good selection of good writers, including Margaret Atwood and John Steinbeck. I remember Atwood especially – it was from the library that I borrowed Cat’s Eye (a book that still haunts me even to today) and The Robber Bride.
But perhaps the most unusual writer to feature in the company library was Jeanette Winterson. I remember borrowing Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. There was even a Winterson book purchased during my tenure as executive-in-charge of the library that I even wrote a review for the staff newsletter. I think it was Written on the Body, which was published in 1992. Well, in any case, it was the one which had this author’s photo.
Unfortunately, a few years later, the company decided to close the library (the reason, I think, was lack of space). All the while, the library had been managed by the department I was in, but because of the impending closure, the head of another department (the one related to employees) decided it came under his department, and gave permission for employees to choose books from the library for themselves. His staff had first dips. I managed to get Atwood’s Surfacing. I hope the ones who took the other Atwood, as well as Morrison, Steinbeck and Winterson, books are cherishing them.
The employees with children had the best picks – the library had a very good children’s section. At one point, we even had a monthly children’s story-telling Saturday and brought in a kindergarten teacher to read to the employees’ children invited for the occasion.
I have fond memories of the company library, especially of the cool guy who added books to it. I hope, through his generosity, some of the employees got to read more than just the pulp fiction they were usually used to.
Thank you, sir.
