A Q & A WITH THE MAYOR : The 40,000 Books of Richard Riordan

The mayor of the movie capital of the world likes his entertainment between covers.

Hard covers.

Books. Forty thousand of them.

In virtually every room and hallway of his Brentwood mansion, from the shelves in the cellar to the topmost cases in the two-story library, are Richard Riordan’s books.

These are not some decorator’s conceit, not restaurant-ornament volumes, not tidy by-the-yard books with matching bindings. Riordan’s books are stacked lavishly in heaps. Piles of them nestle in corners the way dust bunnies do in other people’s houses. They are within arm’s reach of almost every chair and sofa.

He is sitting in an easy chair in his library, with a dog in his lap and another on his shoulder and, on the table, a book about the fin de siecle French aristocrats who inspired Proust’s characters, and a monograph on G. K. Chesterton.

He seems as proud of his collection as he is of his dogs, and he takes pleasure in his visitors’ delight.

If you have ever walked through any great museum, you know the shock of recognizing art you have seen in reproduction all your life. You turn a corner and--look! There’s the Raft of the Medusa. You turn another and--my God, that’s the Mona Lisa, or the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Exploring Riordan’s collection feels a bit like that. At every turn--on shelves built on the herringbone-brick floors of the cellar, at the top of the circular staircase, in the chess room and the breakfast room--there’s something marvelous: Miguel de Unamuno . . . Edith Wharton . . . Paul Verlaine . . . Harper’s magazines back to Lincoln’s first term.

Riordan bought 90% of this collection in one fell swoop, when Immaculate Heart College closed more than 10 years ago (the card catalogue is in a niche in the basement). That still means he began with something like 4,000 books of his own, and he admits abashedly that even with this vast collection at home, he still finds bookstores irresistible, especially used bookstores, and can’t bring himself to leave them empty-handed.

He quotes Evelyn Waugh--his all-time favorite--and Mark Twain; gets excited when someone recommends a book of his that he hasn’t yet read; and regrets that mayoring leaves little time for reading.

All right, if we were to look on your bedside table right now, what would we find? we asked.

“I’ll bet I’d be embarrassed,” he said, looking embarrassed. But go ahead.

We did. “The White Nile,” by Alan Moorhead; “Privatization and Educational Choice,” “Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches of History,” “The Dream and the Nightmare,” about the 1960s and America’s poor; and something by G. K. Chesterton.

Riordan has donated millions to literacy, computer and reading programs over the years, and as the remade downtown Central Library reopens, the ruminations of a bibliophile mayor are worth knowing.

Since this interview, the City Council twice emphatically rejected Riordan’s proposal to sell part of the landmark Central Library to a subsidiary of the tobacco giant Philip Morris in a lease-back arrangement. The library system took a major blow under Riordan’s budget adjustment, which would cut 25% from its purchasing budget for materials such as new books. Library hours have already been scaled back by earlier budgets.

New library commissioners with entertainment industry ties are expected to help replenish the deep cuts in the purchasing budget, Riordan aides said. And the mayor told The Times that he believes service can be maintained by volunteers and philanthropists, so “we don’t have to reduce services and, in fact, can increase them.”

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How old were you when you began to read?

Six months. (He laughs). No, it’s sort of interesting, somewhere around 6, I was a voracious reader and I remember just enjoying books and Greek mythology for a year or two and all of a sudden it stopped and I never really read (for pleasure) again until, what? College and law school.

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People buy books in different fashions. Do you buy them on friends’ recommendations . . . or do you even buy them, you have so many?

I’m a bookaholic. I can’t walk out (of a store) without buying five or 10 books. And I always think I’m gonna read them all and. . . . (He gestures at the towering shelves and laughs.)

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How do you progress through this? Is there any method? Do you sort of wander and go, “There’s one I haven’t seen before, gee, I’d like to read that”?

That’s sort of what I do . . . in sort of a wandering way I’ve lucked out and read books that years later people think are significant--not by any logic or study of it but just having somehow or another run across the book.

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Is there anything you want to read that you don’t have time to?

I’ve wanted to read all of Proust, “Remembrance of Things Past.” What I’ve read I loved but I’ve never really gotten very far into it.

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How do you tell people what’s good about books? Movies are so distracting, TV is so distracting--how do you sell a book in this day and age?

I’ve never thought of it but I guess somehow or another a book is something you can become one with, step into totally, take your mind off everything else. Like a form of meditation--more than that. We were talking to people last night about old radio. Unlike TV, with radio you could become one with the stories being told, and with TV you can’t, you’re sort of separated.

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With the new (rebuilt) library opening up, the role of public libraries is up for discussion. (Do) you have a vision of the public library in civic life?

The old Central Library, I loved. About three or four times a month, when I had a free lunch, I’d go there for an hour or two and just disappear into the old library, and it was funky. I’m afraid the new one’s not going to be like that. . . . What it (is) for me is just a wonderful place to get into a time warp, totally immersed and lost, and I would hope that (it) is for other people. But I think maybe realistically what we could hope for--and we’re going to try to experiment with this--is to have it like a center of the community, which is a little bit different from what it is for me. We’ve had some discussion lately about putting computer labs in and getting kids after school. They can have access to data bases or be taught word processing.

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More multimedia than the kind of library you grew up with.

Yes, right. (And) We’re talking about trying to dramatically increase the number of volunteers in the city and the libraries are an obvious (place for them). The libraries have made good use of volunteers up until now but I think we can do a lot better job. I’m going to come up with a program hopefully in the next month, picking a person who will be in charge of trying to get a giant volunteerism program throughout the city, then you’ve got to delegate that down to niches like the library.

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The idea of the mayor as role model--we talked about the bicycle helmet (when Riordan was chastised for being photographed mountain-biking without a helmet)--how do you think you can set an example for kids in the city, for adults in the city, when it comes to literacy and to books?

I’ve never thought of this; it’s a scary thing. Here I go up in the mountains--I wear a helmet in the city. In fact, it saved my life in December, having a helmet on, when I flipped my bike. But in the mountains I don’t, but now I will. I never realized the extent to which I’ve become a role model or a symbol. It’s a little scary! . . . On reading, I think just showing myself reading, (and) if I get (library commissioner) Gary Ross, people like that, to come up with ideas of showing celebrities reading, athletes reading.

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This is a movie-obsessed town, though. It’s very hard to draw back from movies and get to books. . . .

I’m just wondering how you turn people around on books. I thought if I taught in high school I’d love to teach a class every semester on reading for the fun of it, and rate people on whether they enjoyed the books--somehow to find out whether they enjoyed the book, not how much they got out it. . . . It’d be fun to teach a class like that.

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Do you have any special collections in your library?

I had all the first editions of Proust, which my wife took with her (when the couple separated) because she loves Proust. I’ve got some of James Joyce, like “Ulysses,” but more, I’ve tried to collect first editions of unimportant ones (or) authors that I liked as opposed to “important” books--like, I have Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Wodehouse, Chesterton.

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Do you read any current stuff, like John Grisham?

Yeah . . . I couldn’t finish the last book, “The Client,” it was so bad . . . His first book was OK, which interestingly enough didn’t sell well; it sold like 5,000 copies and now . . . “The Firm,” the first 50 or 100 pages, I thought this could be the most fun book I’ve ever read. Then it just slipped away.

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Do you have a favorite book or a favorite author, or does it just change as you go along?

Through the years my favorite author’s been Evelyn Waugh, and I’d say the favorite book . . . it’s called “The Sword of Honor,” but it’s a trilogy of three books. . . . Did you see “Brideshead” on TV? I thought the first two hours of that was the best I’ve ever seen. In fact I went back and reread the book, and I was amazed that most of the dialogue on TV was verbatim from the book, which I could never have imagined.

I guess it’s what got me to read “Remembering Denny” (by Calvin Trillin), because I mentioned to somebody (that) in “Brideshead”--remember this effeminate guy who stuttered? He was describing Sebastian to Charles Ryder, and said Sebastian has one terminal disease he’ll never get rid of: charm. And that’s what this guy Denny had in a sense--charm. . . . We had discussions (that) a lot of Rhodes Scholars don’t do well, and my theory is (that) because they’re good salesman or they’re charming at a young age and they can sell themselves at a young age, it doesn’t sustain them. . . .

I like autobiography--almost anybody, like Greene, Waugh, Churchill, of course. (But also) way-out ones . . . I just like the feeling of someone baring their soul.