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LibeCast features audio and video recordings about Cornell University Library and its exhibitions, events, lectures and services, offering the world a glimpse of life inside one of the nation’s best research libraries.

Shelf Life: The PodcastRon Moore


Columbia, Lolita and Beyond

Columbia, Lolita and beyond
A.D. White-Professor-at-Large Laura Restrepo knows all about silence. As a journalist, political activist and fiction writer, her refusal to be silenced has allowed her to expose some tough realities.

Restrepo, however, does understand the power of silence, too, especially in places, such as Cornell University Library, where one find seek sanctuary from the outside world.

“You do need a place of silence where you can think, stop, and sort of leave the outside world there … outside.  This silence is [also] full of books so it’s full of voices too, but the voices whisper to you in a very kind way,” Restrepo said.  “It is protected from the outside world, but at the same time it contains the outside world.  You can take it at your own rhythm and your own pace.  It won’t step over you.”

Cornell University Library, she said, is world-famous for its collections on Dante and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the latter being of special interest to her.  Listen to Restrepo discuss her work in the new Shelf Life podcast.

 

    

 

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