Text #5: More Than Reading in the Stacks?
(i) Source:
The following was taken from parts of an interview between Jonathan Rewe and Kathy Lewis in 1993
Contributor: Jackie Faine
Informant(s): Jonathan Rewe, Kathy Lewis
Semester/Year: Spring, 1993
IU Bloomington
Archival: Folklore of Student Life: Legends
f351jmcd.sitehost.iu.edu/legends.html.
(ii) Text:
JR: … I was sitting in class yesterday when I heard another guy talking about what his friend had done last night. I couldn’t believe this guy was talking so loud!
KL: {Curious smile across her face} What did he say?
JR: This guy said his friend had bragged about having sex with his girlfriend in the library. {smiling}
KL: Where did it happen in the library?
JR: I can’t believe this guy was boasting so loudly. He said this guy and his girlfriend went up to the 9th floor since hardly anyone ever goes up that high, and it just happened. I guess they weren’t planning on it, but it seems like they did. Seriously though, who walks into the stacks thinking, “This would be a perfect spot.”
KL: {Astonished} How did he get away with that?
JR: I don’t know, apparently they were sneaky. They checked out the floor first and then had sex. They didn’t do it to be romantic, but obviously because it was something to brag about.
KL: What else did he say?
JR: He didn’t get into details, just talked about some of the things his buddy had told him. I guess they just wanted to be able to say they did it, and to prove that it wasn’t just some urban legend. I don’t know how many kids do it; they’ve got to be incredibly sneaky to pull that deal off without a hitch.
KL: {Laughing} Well, it apparently actually happens on campus! {Suddenly startled} I wonder if any of my friends have!
(iii) Texture:
This interview is certainly entertaining and is so informal as to appear to be a simple conversation between friends (perhaps it was that too). In addition to the obvious illicitness of the act described in the interview, the actual sharing of that information almost takes on an illicit nature itself. One can imagine the two students’ eyes darting around the room to ascertain whether others were listening, as if expecting to be caught themselves. There is much laughter and smiling, indicating that Jonathan and Kathy find the sacrilegious, forbidden, quasi-unbelievable nature of carnal acts in the library to be the very finest fodder for legends (gossip?). The transcription of the interview itself is wonderful in that the transcriber made the decision to mention the facial expressions of both the interviewer and the interviewee, as well as denoting laughter. The entire telling is lively and is so well recorded that it’s almost possible to see the shock and mirth on Jonathan and Kathy’s faces as they converse.
(iv) Context:
Who created/performed the text- senior Jonathan Rewe and sophomore Kathy Lewis
Members of the audience- Just Rewe and Lewis, Rewe recorded the conversation
Location/timing- Wright food court, spring semester 1993
From the information given, we know that interviewer (?) Jonathan Rewe is a senior, and that his interviewee, Kathy Lewis, is a sophomore. I’m making the assumption that Jonathan was the interviewer because he recorded the conversation, but it seems that both he and Kathy switch roles throughout, making both informants. Their conversation occurred in Wright food court, the perfect place to engage in campus gossip. If this interview about such scandalous acts had been carried out in a quiet, formal setting with nonparticipating students or where professors were present, I would have been surprised. As a general rule, such places aren’t appropriate for discussing that particular subject, so Wright food court was a good choice.
(v) Interpretation:
Sex is a tale as old as time, found in countless lineages of living things, our own ancestors included. Therefore it is a deeply primitive thing, a most basic act in which the vast majority of humanity desires to engage in. It’s only natural that some humans will carry out such actions in inappropriate places, and to do so in a library is often viewed as a distasteful transgression. As places of knowledge, libraries carry with them (I think) a sense of sanctity, of humanity’s “higher” nature, and therefore to engage in such a “primitive” act is to somehow violate this. This transgression is therefore made even more appealing to students as a legend because it flaunts the library’s understood, unspoken rules. The thought that they could walk in on such an illicit act seems to liven up bored students,’ well, boredom. It adds an element of wildness to what is for many an otherwise mundane place, some intrigue, and humor and amusement. Is this again an indirect way of handling a complex (or bewilderingly simple?) act through the art of legend telling? I’m unsure. It’s probably more entertaining than anything, and it fosters a sense of community by allowing student storytellers and their audiences to bond through shared mirth.
Overview:
Within the core concept “community,” individuals within a folk group must share something in common, and the library is certainly one of these somethings. Nowadays, it’s quite possible that some students have never set foot in their campus library, but I don’t believe this is commonplace in the least. Nearly every student must make the academic “pilgrimage” to the campus library in order to do research, meet up with their fellows to work on group projects, socialize, find a quiet place to work, or simply to visit a cozy spot to which they habitually return to get lost in a good book. As a building that unofficially binds the student body together, it’s no great surprise that there is a great deal of legends native to them. In addition to the library, academic stress is also a big “something” that the student folk group shares in common. Libraries are places rife with academic stress, ranging from minor to debilitating for the students (and faculty) enduring it, so the two overlap. This taints many library legends with negative emotions, crushing anxiety foremost among them.
What do all five of these items share? The three ghost stories seem to be easiest to link to one another, leaving the “sinking library” and “sex in the library” legends seemingly disconnected from them. While they may appear different on the surface, and they truly are different in some ways, I think they are ultimately all expressions of the “college experience,” and the shared stresses and humanity of students and faculty. Humans have an innate need to connect with one another, even to inanimate things like places, objects, and abstract concepts, and legends are a very powerful way to do this. They can foster a sense of community by having ghosts and legends that “belong” to those students inhabiting a particular campus, creating a sense of distinctiveness from other similar institutions. It doesn’t seem to matter that many of these legends are often found in other universities because they are told within the university to which those students belong specifically. Students can bond through the anxieties, desires, humor, and other emotions they share via these stories. When a good ghost or funny story is told, students can laugh or experience a sense of thrill with one another, or even to connect to their university’s rich history. All of these legends encourage people to express themselves, and no matter what the exact reason(s) they tell and continue to tell them for, they have very important roles to play in the lives of college students.