And I can remember this: wandering over to the El Paso Public Library on one of those scorching West Texas days, and stumbling down into the dusty basement of that building, and finding — most unexpectedly — that my life meant a lot more than I thought it did. This was the late 80s and I was in my early 20s, working as a reporter for a daily paper dedicated to the USA Today model. Lots of graphics, not so many words, almost no real human context. I didn’t mind that, though. I was enjoying being a big-shot reporter with my name in the paper. I didn’t read much, and it hadn’t occurred to me that reading was especially important unless I was taking a class or something.

The only reason I set foot inside the El Paso Library, in fact, was because I was writing a story about a local writer, Rick DeMarinis. I’d never heard of DeMarinis, of course. But apparently, the folks out in Hollywood were going to make a movie out of one of his novels, “The Year of the Zinc Penny,” and anytime anyone in Hollywood took an interest in one of the locals (however fleeting), that was considered news.

So anyway, I headed downstairs to the dusty shelves where they kept fiction, and tried to find “The Year of the Zinc Penny.” They didn’t have it, and this was a problem because I was actually on my way to interview DeMarinis — due to arrive in about twenty minutes. This will give you some sense of how seriously I took my reportorial mission, and specifically the importance of research.

Anyway, they did have another one of his books, a story collection called “The Voice of America.” I sat down and opened the book, more or less at random, to a story called “Insulation.” The first line read:

“I am haunted by lightning.”

I’m still not exactly sure why this line so arrested me, why it made my heart thump. It wasn’t because I have any fear of lightning. I think it had to do, more generally, with the radical candor this sentence expressed. Because, truth be told, I was scared all the time at that age, and even more scared of admitting to my fear. Whatever the reason, I simply sank into the story, which was (and is) about a man who believes he has inherited a genetic disposition for getting struck by lightning and therefore spends his life in a state of terror that is something like purgatory. It was funny and terrifying and told so simply, without a trace of the glib cleverness that I’ve taken to signify good writing. I read the entire story straight through and when I looked up 20 minutes had past and I realized that DeMarinis had completely kidnapped my consciousness — that he had taken me away from the musty air, the hot drag of summer, the anxious reverberations of my insides — and that, as a result, I was going to be late for my interview with him, and, most importantly, that I had made some pretty shabby decisions about how to use my time on earth.

This is what our public libraries can do. They are places where literary art lives, rather than simply renting shelf space. They are here to remind us what it means to be human, that we are part of something larger, a community of hearts, a history of possible mercies. If we allow them to perish, we not just depriving our children of spiritual awakenings, such as the one I had, all those years ago, in El Paso. We are telling our children that reading, as an act of moral imagination, doesn’t matter, that awakening our hearts to the great human project of mercy, doesn’t matter. We are telling them, in essence, that they need not trouble themselves about anything too much — the mystery of their own hearts, their anguish and rage, and finally the suffering of others.

That’s how much this all matters. Our lives depend on it.

-Steve Almond, Author

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