Inside the City's Last Silent Place

"The city," being New York City. "The Last Silent Place" being the New York Public Library's Writers Room.

From the piece in the Observer...

Despite the room's privileged aura, gaining entrance is a fairly simple operation. Although there are only nine cubicles, Allen Room liaison Jay Barksdale told the Transom that 40 to 50 people hold key cards at any one time, and if a term of access officially ends after one year, many people request (and receive) extensions. "We don't want to create obstructions," he explained. When the Transom stopped by last week for a tour, any remaining visions of shifty-eyed cronyism evaporated upon our admittance into the modest, sunny room. Susan Jacoby, an emeritus who has written six books in the Allen Room over the past 30 years, describes the room as a place whose primary virtue isn't its roster of literary celebrities (including Robert Hughes and Mike Wallace, both of whom still drop by), but rather its lack of Wi-Fi. "Going on the Internet when you're stuck is about as valuable as eating ice cream from the fridge when you're stuck," she told the Transom. "Which I also do-eat ice cream. But anyway, here I'm not tempted to go online and watch Sarah Palin cut the head off a turkey." Although the rules ban food, water and cell phones, Ms. Jacoby doesn't blink when a calypso ring tone punctures the silence. She does allow that the original Allen Room, a gloomy first-floor den, was "looser." "None of the usual rules applied," she said, refusing to elaborate.

The contemporary Allen Room is a startlingly bland space, with a few shelves of reference material (1999 World Almanac; Notable American Women: The Modern Period) and a north-facing view of the Jamba Juice storefront on 42nd. But the blandness shouldn't come as a surprise. Writers need neutral rooms in which to work, not spaces that burden inhabitants with the pressure to generate anecdotes. "You hardly ever see anyone else's face-quite literally," said Megan Hustad, author of How to Be Useful. "That sensory deprivation trains the imagination."

Novelist Jennifer Vanderbes notes, "An exciting week at the Allen Room is when a non-member rattles the door handle trying to get in."