Jeanette Winterson, in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (which is, in some ways, a retelling of her 1990 novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit) remembers a librarian she was fond of while coming of age in the south of the north of England in the 1970s:
The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior – benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one’s own chaos was also brought under control.
“Whenever I am troubled,” said the librarian, “I think about the Dewey decimal system.”
“Then what happens?” asked the junior, rather overawed.
“Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place.”
And later:
“Who was Gertrude Stein?”
“A modernist. She wrote without regard to meaning.”
“Is that why she is under Humour, like Spike Milligan?”
“Within the Dewey decimal system there is a certain amount of discretion.”
From Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (published 2011).
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