Tales from the (Firestone) Crypt

Firestone Library stacks are equipped with cranks so that you can open and close adjacent bookshelves as necessary. Perhaps you have already associated these mechanisms with medieval torture devices; if not, this chilling tale should make the connection a little more explicit.Deep in the belly of Firestone, Dan Feinberg '13 was lurking betwixt the stacks, seeking new sources for his Writing Seminar paper. Although to many that class is a special brand of torture in itself, this was way more literal.His topic was fairly obscure, so he ended up in the area of "reject books that don't get much attention, so the stacks are much closer together and you could really only have one open at a time." Feinberg found a promising shelf -- thinking he'd only be there for a second, he didn't bother to lock the crank -- and dove in. He kneeled and discovered a whole wealth of books, then experienced one of those brief bursts of that academic adrenaline when it's like wow these are all vaguely relevant to my research topic what up bibliography and found himself lingering there longer than he'd anticipated. Caught up in the thrill of deep scholarship, he suddenly became aware of a pressure at his rump.That was the shelf behind him closing in. It kept going, and he was forced upright, and squished more and more until he desperately assumed the most compact configuration possible in this quickly shrinking space: "one foot in the second shelf of each side, so I had as much of my legs [as possible] tucked into the shelves."And yes, he was thinking what you're thinking.

"It was like, 'Oh my god, this is the trash chute scene from Star Wars,' which I have nightmares about all the time," said Feinberg. Pretty much the same deal, only 1) there was no tentacled monster and 2) in lieu of a big metal pipe to stave off his impending doom, he had to use his own shoulders. Soon enough he found himself wedged painfully and pretty securely, with no hope of resistance.And so he called for help, although perhaps not in the most emphatic fashion. "I couldn't even talk loudly because I was pinned, and I had my iPod in, so I had no idea how loudly I was yelling ... Even though it was a life or death situation, my first thought was, it's a library, I have to be very quiet. So I was just yelling 'excuse me, excuse me,'" he said. Dilemma!Apparently this is how it went down: some guy had tried to open a stack a couple rows away, and because the space was so constrained and only one stack could be open at a time, this ended up being a horrific zero-sum game where one stack would close for another to open, and one dude would perish (or at least be very uncomfortable) for another dude to find a book. And since the guy met resistance, he probably assumed the mechanism was jammed, because he started twisting harder, unknowingly compressing our poor Dan further. Eventually he tried to get more leverage and moved to another gear -- now, finally close enough to hear the victim's wails, he uncranked it and set him free.You might expect some kind of apology at this point, but no ... he just got chastised for not locking the gear. And Feinberg had no idea how to react to that. "I just put my head down, did not get any books from that shelf," and left, presumably never to return.Oh, and the kicker: "I was writing my paper on 'the grotesque as an art form' -- how horrific, uncomfortable images can be beautiful. In all the books I was reading the pictures were of horrible mangled people."