That Urban Legend about the Bacon Bookmark …

Ever felt that when you enter a public library you cross an imaginative threshold between interior and exterior? In Ray Bradbury’s (1962) Something Wicked This Way Comes, the library is where young Will's father, Charles Halloway, seeks refuge against the town, half of which has succumbed to Mr. Dark and his malevolent carnival. The library feels like it should be a sanctuary … except it is an urban space, and therefore a window for defilement and contagion. Maybe that’s why most librarians seem to remember the strip of bacon they discovered in a book once … or was that a friend of a colleague? … and, come to think of it, wasn’t that book the holy Qur’an?