Class War, Part 3: And the Winner Is...

The auditorium was filled with the sound of people murmuring about Mr. Phillips' "perfect" classification system. I had always known Mr. Phillips was nuts. But I had never, until now, realized exactly how nuts he was.

"The man is insane," I said, scarcely able to speak. "The man is literally in...sane!"

"I have to admit, I really don't get this," said Ivan Large, puzzling over the photocopied handout of the Greater Perfect System. "Am I crazy, or does this make absolutely no sense?"

"No!" I said, no doubt sounding slightly delirious. "You're not crazy!"

There were a few more presenters after Mr. Phillips, but I didn't pay much attention, as my mind was reeling from the unsettling realization that I had been the apprentice to a mad librarian for the last four months.

My classification system was the last one to be presented. When Ivan and I had discussed the contest earlier, he had casually mentioned that I would be required to present my idea before the conference. Sensing my alarm at the prospect of speaking in front of a large audience, he had willingly offered to present it for me, "because," he said, "I really believe in your idea and I think it needs to be heard." However, after the revelation of the true nature of the GPS (and of Mr. Phillips' mental state), I no longer cared so much. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because, after initially thinking of Mr. Phillips as a great genius, the realization that he was actually crazy made me feel more confidence in my own ideas. I hadn't even been completely serious when I thought up my system, and even now I wasn't sure that I meant it completely seriously, at least not for use as an actual library classification system (everything is shelved under "X"?... come on!). But I did feel that there was an important and valid idea behind it, and that beneath its absurdist and seemingly nihilistic surface, there was a deeply significant truth about human knowledge and its limitations, and that truth was what I, and Ivan, believed in.

I told Ivan I wanted to present the system myself, though I would still like for him to introduce me, an unknown non-librarian. "It would be my honor," he said.

We proceeded to the stage. I felt a little nervous but surprisingly calm. Ivan Large took the podium first. "Our final classification system was created by a good friend of mine, Curtis ----. Curtis does not have an MLS, but in my view that should not dissuade us from considering his ideas, for it is, in my opinion, the ideas themselves that we should consider, and not the official credentials of the person who has conceived those ideas. For credentials, though they may mean something in our world, are not in themselves what give thought and originality to a human mind. Curtis has much experience working in libraries and has been developing his own ideas about classification while being assigned to help develop another classification system, which for everyone's benefit shall remain unnamed. His idea may seem shocking at first--though I don't think it will appear as shocking as certain other systems that have been presented here today--but I ask you to look beyond the surface and see what it is that Curtis is really trying to express. I think that if you keep an open mind, you will agree with me that his system--let's call it more a theory or a philosophy of classification--embodies great insight into the very nature of what it is that your noble profession strives to do: namely, to attempt to comprehend and organize human knowledge. I will tell you offhand that this system--Curtis has dubbed it "System X"--is not meant to provide a practical framework for an actual library classification. It attempts to do something else, and that is to make us think about classification itself, indeed human knowledge itself, and the limits of both. Take it, if you will, as a bit of perspective. I've said enough. Now, to speak for himself, I present to you Curtis ----."

I had to admit that was the most comprehensible utterance I had ever heard from Ivan Large. I stood behind the podium and looked out at the hundreds of librarians who stared back at me, waiting. I'm sure that I didn't speak as eloquently as Ivan had, but I think I spoke well enough. I remained calm and presented my thoughts in a logical way. The exact words aren't important, and there would be little point in reproducing here ideas which I have already told you elsewhere in this blog. Suffice it to say that I presented my realization about the infinite complexity of the universe, and how classification is based on perceiving relationships among various entities, and that ultimately all classifications are incomplete. I assured them that this did not mean that there was no value to classifying things--that classifying was, in fact, a necessary and essential part of human life, both in and out of libraries. We have to have a system of understanding the world and what things are and how different things relate to each other. My point, I said, was simply that we realize that all such systems, devised as they are by human beings with incomplete knowledge, are bound to be themselves incomplete, and that this knowledge--about the limits of our knowledge--should keep us humble. I had come to the conclusion, I told them, that classification systems can serve either of two purposes (not mutually exclusive): they can be practical, or they can be works of art. (That was one point on which I had come to agree with Mr. Phillips, though his own work of art was evidently no more than the scribblings of a madman.)

"And so," I said, "I am here to present to you my work of art. As Ivan told you, it is not meant to be a practical system. It is simply an expression. At first glance, it may appear nihilistic, but I can assure you that it is not. Somewhat tragic, perhaps, but not nihilistic. But to me, more than anything else, it expresses the vastness and richness of the universe in which we live, that we can never completely know because we can never get to the bottom of it. Anyway, I won't explain it any further. Here it is."

There was a laptop at the podium for the presenters to use, and I typed something quickly before having it projected. The audience saw a blank white screen with one short line of text in the center:

EVERYTHING=X

The audience was silent. I couldn't tell what they were thinking. I didn't really have anything more to say about it, or at least I didn't want to say anything more about it (that is, I didn't want to overexplain it), so I thanked them and walked off the stage. The audience applauded, with something less than standing-ovation enthusiasm yet something more than mere politeness. It didn't matter, though, what the professionals thought, or if I won one of the top three prizes. I had presented my idea, and that was enough.

"That was absolutely brilliant!" said Ivan as I left the stage. "You really floored them!"

"Well, I don't know if I would say floored, exactly."

"Trust me, you floored them."

"If you say so."

Sometime later, they announced the winners. Third place went to something called the White-Edwards Characteristic Ontology. Second place went to the Automated Referential Metadata Schema (or ARMS). These were a couple of the ones that I hadn't paid much attention to when I was still in shock over the depth of Mr. Phillips' dementia. Was he honestly delusional enough to hope, at this moment, that he would win first prize? Yes, I nodded to myself, he probably was.

"And the winner of Class War III is..." said the presenter, opening the envelope and taking a moment to make sure he had read it right. "System X, by Curtis ----!"

I just sat there, stunned. "Go, go!" said Ivan, pushing me. I stood up, half-dazed, and walked up to the stage. The audience applauded, much more enthusiastically this time. I didn't notice, but I can be sure that Mr. Phillips was none too pleased.

So there you have it. I, the librarian's apprentice, won Class War III. Not that I had much in the way of formidable competition, least of all from my mentor and his "perfect" (perfectly demented, that is) classification system. Ivan, Monica, and I celebrated by going out for drinks that night. The next day we flew back to St. Louis. On Monday Mr. Phillips called me into his office and told me my apprenticeship was complete. I think this was his polite way of saying "you're fired" (not from my job as a shelver, but from my apprenticeship). That was fine with me. And so this blog must come to an end, since it is, after all, my blog about that apprenticeship. I have decided I'm going to go to library school and get my MLS. I've learned all I can learn from Mr. Phillips and at any rate if I want to work as a professional librarian for anyone other than him (which I most certainly do), I need the credential. But I have a feeling that the most important part of my education in librarianship will always be what I learned this summer while I was the apprentice to the great librarian Walter J. Phillips.

THE END

Thursday

I returned home yesterday from Lib Con 08. It may take me a few days to tell about everything that happened. The flight was uneventful (always a good thing) and we arrived at our hotel in Orlando on Thursday afternoon. That evening we (meaning Mr. Phillips, Vivian, Monica, and myself) attended the opening meeting of the conference, which entailed sitting through some rather pointless speeches, followed by an informal meet-and-greet. Monica and I spotted Ivan Large among the crowd and, after waiting a few minutes while he was occupied talking to other people, we introduced ourselves. He's a really friendly guy, not standoffish at all, and he was surprisingly easy and fun to talk to. He didn't act the least bit like a self-worshiping celebrity, but just like an ordinary person. Strangely enough, we hit it off so well with Ivan that the three of us went out for coffee afterward. During the course of our conversation, the topic of the classification contest came up, and at one point I mentioned that I had thought about entering my own idea into the contest. Monica and Ivan were both very curious as to what my idea was, so I told them.

"It's silly," I said.

"Tell us!" they said.

"All right. You have to understand, I'm half-joking. But only half."

"Are you gonna tell us, or not?"

"Okay. My system is exceedingly simple, but it's based on a lot of thought. Here it is: Everything... is unclassifiable."

Ivan regarded me with a frown of deep perplexity.

"I told you it's silly," I said.

"No, not at all!" said Ivan. "This is very intriguing! Please, tell me more... Why is everything unclassifiable?"

"Because everything exists with many different relations to many different things, making a specific classification impossible. So you can only classify things in the most superficial way. When you go deeper, you encounter this incredibly tangled web of relationships that prevents you from ever being able to fully describe how any two things, let alone everything in the world, is related to each other. Therefore, everything in my system can only be classified as X."

Ivan stared at me as though he were in shock. "Curtis!" he said at last. "You... are a genius!"

I snickered. "A genius? Come on."

"I'm serious! That is the most brilliant thing I have ever heard!"

"You really think so?"

"Absolutely! And you say you're not even a librarian?"

"No, just an apprentice, supposedly."

"Well, guess what, kid, I'm getting you into that contest."

"I don't know... I'd feel like I was betraying Mr. Phillips."

"Well, if his system really is as perfect as he thinks it is, then he has no reason to worry. Your idea deserves to be heard."

And so Ivan Large decided that he would persuade the judges to allow my crazy idea into the contest. When I went to bed in my hotel room that evening I felt a mixture of nervousness about what Mr. Phillips would think and excitement.

A Man With No Class

This will be a short week at work since we're traveling to the conference on Thursday. I submitted my work on the GPS to Mr. Phillips last Friday. He said he would study it over the weekend. I had no idea what he would think of it, or how exactly he planned to integrate it (assuming he approved of what I had come up with) with his own work on the project. I'm telling you, the man is nuts. At any rate, I'm way beyond caring about his classification system. As far as the conference goes, it'll just be nice to have a change of scenery for a few days, and I have to admit I'm incredibly curious to see both Ivan Large and the classification contest.

Speaking of our favorite avant-garde author, I found another book of his this past weekend. It's called 26 Persons. It features a cast of characters numbering... you guessed it... 26. And, in true Ivan Large style, the characters are known as (in order of appearance) Person A, Person B, Person C, and so on, all the way through Person Z. I only skimmed through the book at a bookstore (I'm still busy burrowing my way through Harmless Banter, so I'm not quite ready to launch into another Large novel at this point), so I can't say much more about it, but the entire novel appears to consist of dialogue among these 26 persons. Because it's apparently all talk, it seems at first glance that it could just as well have been written as a play. In a play, however, one would not get the author's highly informative commentary, such as this typical non-description:

"Where are my trousers?" said Person D, a man of uncertain height, indeterminate weight, unascertainable occupation, unknown creed, indistinct race, and vague motives.

You just wouldn't get that if you were watching an actor, who would at least be of a certain height and weight and racial makeup. Though any of these features could be modified to make him appear otherwise, the point is he would still have an appearance. You could never translate Ivan Large to the stage or the screen because he delights in making his characters and settings seem as nondescript--no, as non-specific--as possible, and that's part of his point. It's as though he refuses to... you know, I don't know why I never thought of it this way before... he refuses to classify things.

Wow. It's all become clear now. Suddenly I know why I must meet Ivan Large.

Taking a Break

I guess one thing I've realized about classification systems is that they can be of two basic types: philosophical and practical. It's not that they are mutually exclusive--philosophy can have an effect on practice, and practice can reflect philosophy--but they represent different emphases and purposes. What I call a philosophical classification is the kind I have been striving for--an attempt to chart the grand structure of reality, with practical application in an actual library being of secondary importance. The other type of system, the practical kind, is what most library classification systems are, I think (librarians being, on the whole, a supremely practical lot). It exists for the primary purpose of putting the books in order on the shelves so that they may be found as easily and quickly as possible, with the aid, of course, of a library catalog. Perhaps because I am of a more philosophical bent (I majored in a field of the humanities, after all, which isn't very practical), I am more intrigued by the philosophical sort of classification. And that's why Mr. Phillips' scheme appealed to me at first, with its aim of "perfection". But after spending weeks obsessively thinking about it and working on it only to run into seemingly insurmountable difficulties, I have to admit I'm a little burned out on the whole thing. Lib Con 08 (the library conference) is only two weeks away and I've lost all enthusiasm for the GPS. I'm thinking that maybe library classifications should just be practical after all, that there is no such thing as a perfect classification system, and that when you're creating a system to classify things, the nature of the system will depend on the nature of whatever it is you're classifying, as well as on your own practical needs. Or perhaps on your own aesthetic preferences. Which is what Mr. Phillips is doing, I suppose, in attempting to create a work of art. But that's his work of art. Sure, I'm just the lowly apprentice, like an apprentice painter, but somehow I'm not content in this role. Am I too sure of myself, thinking that I no longer need a master to teach me, eager to strike out on my own? No, I don't think that's it, because I don't feel sure of myself at all. If anything, I feel disoriented, disillusioned, completely unsure how to approach the problem or even if there is any point to approaching it. I feel that I've come face to face with the limits of human knowledge, and it's enough to make me wonder why we seek knowledge.

You can tell by my posts this week that I've been more interested in the "literature" of Ivan Large than in Mr. Phillips' (or my own) classification project. I guess my mind needed a break. And there's nothing better for sending your brain on vacation than reading a little Harmless Banter.