America in Paris

When Gertrude Stein went on a mystery-reading kick, the American Library in Paris fed her doses of 18 whodunits a week; Poet Stephen Vincent Benet researched John Brown's Body within its walls, and Molotov once checked out an almanac. Since its start in 1920, the American Library--a nonprofit, privately operated institution now located on the Champs-Elysees--has been an outpost of U.S. culture that has soothed homesick tourists, stimulated bored expatriates, and provided facts--good or bad--about the U.S. to anyone who dropped by.

Last week the biggest English-language library in any non-English-speaking country was aswarm with Parisians back in town from their annual August exodus. Started with the collection set up by the American Library Association for the doughboys of World War I, the library now has some 100,000 books, is largely supported by a paying membership of 3,000 (60% Frenchmen). The library managed to stay open during the German occupation of World War II, is now so efficient that many French graduate students prefer its accessible shelves to the musty stacks of Paris libraries. It recently provided the material for a doctoral thesis on Playwright Tennessee Williams.

About the only visitors who have received a less than hearty welcome were Junketers Cohn & Schine, who showed up in 1953 on a tour for the late Senator McCarthy, to sniff the stacks for anti-Americanism. Politely, Director Dr. Ian Forbes Fraser explained that his library was private, showed the pair the door. On Fraser's shelves are volumes to turn any McCarthyite red. When the State Department nervously banned the fictional biography Citizen Tom Paine, by the then Redolent Howard Fast, from its overseas informational libraries, Fraser ordered six extra copies to handle the requests of curious Frenchmen. Summarizes Librarian Harry Goldberg: "Our aim is to present all aspects of American literature and civilization."

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