Sontag beholds the wonder of libraries

What began as a collective whisper -- it was a library, after all -- became an all-out roar as supporters of the Los Angeles Public Library gathered at a reception in the marble-paved rotunda, with its muted ceiling frescoes of early California.

Celebrating at the Richard J. Riordan Central Library’s ninth annual awards dinner sponsored by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, guests buzzed about everything from the evening’s honoree, writer Susan Sontag -- “An original thinker,” rhapsodized foundation Executive Director Evelyn Hoffman -- to the library itself: “We have over 6 million books and serve 3.8 million people,” observed City Librarian Susan Kent.

Taking a break from the din in a teen reading lab, Sontag spoke of her reverence for the nation’s libraries. “They hold a treasure of amazing experiences that people can have again and again -- a whole magical kingdom,” said Sontag, 71, who would join past honorees John Updike, August Wilson, Carlos Fuentes and E.L. Doctorow when she received the library’s Literary Award. “Reading offers you a different model of how to feel and think than is offered by the ‘televisual’ world. Reading is a producer of inwardness, personal discovery.”

Her new book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” was inspired by her own inward journey of “thinking about how people understand something they haven’t directly experienced,” she said at the April 7 event that also recognized library activist Caroline W. Singleton and the Boeing Co. Having lived and worked in besieged Sarajevo during the mid-’90s, she experienced firsthand the disconnect between those who actually witness war and those who only see the images on television. “When I would leave the city periodically, I realized that the people I was talking to, even though they were watching it on the news every night, hadn’t a clue to what it was like. So I’m very big on direct experience, trying to understand the relationship between our acts of imagination and what we learn through images and words and what’s really out there.”

Returning to the rotunda, her dark eyes scanning the crowd, she added, “We are not likely to be blown to pieces this evening or go to bed hungry. But that is the situation of most people in the world. So how do we understand our own privileges? And what is the role of sympathy? Compassion?”