“As an outsider,” he asks, “how have you found the LGBT community?” Charles, whose nametag indicates that he’s been a volunteer since 1991, chats with me for a bit about the history of the library, and a little bit of my own history in Minneapolis. The weekday hours are 7 to 9 p.m., making it easier in fact than most libraries to visit, at least for people who work during the day.
“ Quatrefoil is one of the earliest novels that could have produced a glow of gay pride.” And of course, tucked away behind glass in the non-circulating portion of the library, with hundreds of other older, out-of-print and rare books, are several editions of “Quatrefoil.” A double outsiderĪ few volunteers greet me at the front desk the night I visit. Barr’s novel is a sort of roman a clef love story between two men who meet in the Navy in World War II, and one of the first mainstream novels to portray openly gay men in a positive light – “Its two thoughtful, masculine heroes provided a corrective to the many mindless, pathetic or flighty gay characters of the forties,” wrote critic Roger Austen in the 1970s. The library is named for a 1950 novel by James Barr, a pseudonym for the American writer James Fugaté. Quatrefoil is entirely volunteer-run, and open seven days a week. The majority of materials are available for lending with a yearly membership. It’s a modest, neatly furnished space with rows of bookshelves, spaces for reading, and coffee served at the desk up front. Inside, though, it’s a dizzyingly comprehensive collection of more than 14,000 books and thousands of videos, audio recordings, periodicals, artworks, and archival materials.
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