Deg detested the new Bobst Library building at New York University from the moment he entered it on 16 December 1972 at 16: 00 hours for a reception to celebrate its opening. The old central library had been in the basements of the Main Building. It was rumored that one could draw a book from there, and he did so from time to time. But now they had obstructed the view of Washington Square from his apartment to put up a casbah-red structure that from the outside seemed transported from the Near East while inside there was a giant space towering to twelve tall stories up, a roofed atrium around which wound narrow bands of shelving areas, obviously inadequate save for a few years of collecting, and already requisitioned on its top floor for the administrative officers of the University. The sensation was vertiginous; the building floated with its books tucked around its waist; how could a scholar study with his ideas precarious on the edge of exposed space? A dance band was playing and he promptly envisioned how the design would permit its use by a Las Vegas concessionaire to bail out the near bankrupt school: a pavilion for dancing on the marble main floor, baths and massage parlors below, a bar on the second floor, social rooms on the third, a bordello for men on the fourth, one for women on the fifth, one for homosexuals on the sixth, then levels of gambling and a sky restaurant. One of the most expensive pieces of land in Manhattan had been used to roof empty space. The spectacle was dazzling. He rarely used the library. When he was there he would ask himself whether it was hyper-critical of him to have such feelings, part of his basic envy of a world that rushed along without his consent, getting things done nevertheless; or was he simply observant of facts and aesthetics that most people, those in power as well as their subjects, could not see or think of. This happened often, that he would no sooner denounce something, privately or aloud, than he would reprimand himself for thinking that he could see truth and value and contradictions thereof that groups of intelligent people working in financial, architectural, legislative, and other task forces could not see. He did not wish to believe only in himself; he would rather enjoy the warmth of consensus, the applause of the crowd, but it would rarely work out so. Everything he did, everything he got, it seemed to him, even under the conditions when he was boss, gave him not a whole loaf, nor even half a loaf, but a thin slice. (I am not speaking of material goods, but of the quality of the product.) The situation regarding money alone was bad enough; the incompetency of the rich society to obtain value with its money was much worse to suffer. Alfred de Grazia 83