'But What Does a Tycoon Like You Want With Something As Common as a Book?': Books, Text, and Knowledge in Don Rosa’s Guardians of the Lost Library (1993)

WHEN NORWAY PROCLAIMED 1993 as the National Year of the Book, the editor-in-chief of Disney Comics in Norway asked comic book writer Don Rosa (1951) to make a special Duck comic book story commemorating this year.1 Rosa chose to write a story about a quest for the most famous gathering place for books in history: the Library of Alexandria. But the quest did not stop in Alexandria. As Rosa formulated it:

“Through a complex plot that would trace the Library through centuries of intrigue, I could show the evolution of books from papyrus scrolls through parchment tomes and the first Gutenberg volumes on up to the present day. […] In the process, it was easy to show how books have recorded and even inspired the advancements of science and art through the ages”.2

In this article, I will discuss how Rosa presents text carriers as concepts in the story he wrote in 1993, titled ‘The Guardians of the Lost Library’, and how text carriers relate to facts and knowledge in Rosa’s Duck universe. 

Don Rosa and his Duck-Universe

Don Rosa made his debut as a Duck comic book writer in 1987, when the story ‘The Son of the Sun’ was published. Apart from his detailed drawings, one of the most characteristic elements of Rosa’s comic style is the continuity between the different stories. As Kontturi already pointed out, Rosa’s characters know their own history. This is in quite big contrast to the stories of most Duck writers, not in the least of Rosa’s biggest example, Carl Barks (1901-2000). In the latter’s stories, history and continuity are nearly absent: “What happens in one comic is disregarded in the following.”3 Rosa on the other hand often refers to previous stories, both written by himself and written by Barks. His stories are even fixed in time. The ‘modern’ stories, such as ‘Lost Library’, take place in the early 1950s, the decade in which Barks wrote most of his stories.4 By doing so, Rosa links himself of course very closely to Barks. At the same time there is also an in-universe reason: Barks refers a number of times to various events in Scrooge’s younger years, most importantly him striking it rich in the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th century. To keep continuity with these anecdotal background stories of Scrooge Rosa has to place his ‘modern’ stories in the 1950s.

Doing so, Rosa creates one big continuity in which both his own and Barks’ stories take place. This has taken the most concrete form in the series with which Rosa became best known: ‘The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck’, published between 1991 and 1993 in twelve parts. For this series Rosa used the various little, sometimes contradictory, anecdotes about Scrooge’s past that can be found in Barks’ stories, to create one canonical timeline.5

History in general is very present in Rosa’s stories. In many cases historical events occur or are referred to and Rosa frequently mixes (historical) facts with fiction. The result is that in Rosa’s stories different layers come together. First, there are the two fictional ‘in-universe’ layers: the history of the Ducks according to Barks and Rosa’s own interpretation and supplements on this history. Then, there is a factual layer with which Rosa places his stories in the context of historical events.6 About one of the places in ‘Lost Library’ in which these layers come together, Rosa wrote: “[T]he scene where I have [Sir Francis Drake] establishing a lost British fort on the west coast of North America is also a fact; and though most historians think that fort was near present-day San Francisco, I moved it north a bit and decided it was on the site of Duckburg.7 This was a “fact” I established in an earlier story “His Majesty McDuck”, but Carl Barks laid the groundwork first! In “The Money Well”, Barks revealed that Fort Duckburg, a pioneer fort, had once stood atop Killmotor Hill, the location of Scrooge’s Money Bin today. That Fort Duckburg should have evolved from Drake’s lost fort, seemed as natural to me as a corner on a square egg.”8

As is already somewhat apparent from the previous quotes, Rosa does not only refer to historical and in-universe facts, but he also makes great effort to make his stories as historically correct as possible, both in relation to the real world as to his Duck-universe. It goes without saying that this means that quite a lot of background research goes into Rosa’s stories, an aspect of the work Rosa himself is quite proud of:

“The most enjoyable part of constructing a Scrooge treasure hunt is the challenge of making sure that every bit of history in my story is absolutely authentic. With weeks of research (using books!), I made certain that every name, date, place and event I utilised in “Lost Library” was true. It may be frustrating to know that many readers think I make all this stuff up out of my imagination, but at least I know that when the story claims that, for example, Sir Francis Drake plundered a certain Spanish treasure ship sailing from a certain port on a certain date, it’s all absolutely authentic. That makes it fun for me!”9

The Guardians of the Lost Library

The story starts in the just-opened Woodchuck Museum in Duckburg, where Scrooge unsuccessfully tries to buy a copy of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, the almost inexhaustible source of data in the Duck-universe. When explaining to a surprised Donald, Scrooge states: “Books are knowledge, and knowledge equals power and money! If I had all the data that seems to be buried in that little guidebook, there’s no end to the riches I could uncover.”10 Just one institute might have had more information (and thus value) than the Guidebook: the Library of Alexandria.

It is the starting point for the quest for the fabled lost library by Scrooge and Huey, Dewey, and Louie. With the help of Scrooge’s money and the information in Huey, Dewey and Louie’s copy of the guidebook, the library building itself is quickly found, but as it turns out the papyrus scrolls have been turned into dust in the intervening centuries. Luckily the Ducks discover that the collection has been condensed and copied by Byzantine scribes and send to the ‘the new capital of civilization’,11 Constantinople. This is the main theme of the story. The Ducks travel to various historical centers of culture and knowledge in Europe (from Istanbul via Venice to Seville and the Americas (Santo Domingo, Lima and Duckburg itself) in search of the library. At almost every stop several ‘things’ have happened to the library: it has been enriched with new information, it has been copied, during which it changed its physical form and in a number of cases was condensed. While the copies were transferred to a new location, the original has since disappeared. 

Let me elaborate on these points. Whereas initially the Ducks are looking for the Library of Alexandria for it’s (now lost) histories of ancient Mediterranean civilizations “and all their secrets too, like the locations of treasure troves and gold mines”,12 throughout the story “the pot grows”13: it turns out that in Constantinople the “books of the great libraries of Islam”14 were added, in Venice “copies of the great books of Kublai Khan’s empire”15 (with Marco Polo as intermediary) and in Lima “the knowledge of the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Olmecs”.16 

Not only the content of the library was enlarged and updated throughout the ages, also the form of the library was modernised at every step. Starting as a library with papyrus scrolls in Alexandria, the texts were copied on successively parchment scrolls, manuscript books and printed books. This change of form also influenced the size of the library. The collection ‘shrinks’ from a million parchment scrolls in Alexandria, to ten thousand manuscript books in Constantinople, to a thousand printed books in Venice. This has partly to do with the medium (‘Ten scrolls fit in each book!’17), but while copying, the library has also been condensed. Most notably between Alexandria and Constantinople (‘Sounds like they condensed the Library of Alexandria! Perhaps they left out the plays and poetry!’18) and in the Americas (‘We searched out the most valuable facts of ancient history and science… Only those facts contained in no other books…’19).

Rosa also comprehensively shows why copying those books was so important for the preservation of the text. In all cases the original library has since disappeared, while the copy moved on. Rosa has included the biggest threats for books and libraries throughout the ages into his story: fire (Constantinople), water (Venice), vermin (Duckburg), threat of war and looting (Alexandria and Constantinople), theft (Lima and Venice) and simply the destructing power of time itself (Alexandria).

Text and facts

The quest for the Lost Library ends back in Duckburg. As discussed earlier, Sir Francis Drake provides the transition from the real world to the Duck-world. After hijacking the collection from a Spanish ship, Drake stores the books in a newly built fort, which once stood on the exact same spot as Scrooge’s Money Bin. Once again, time was cruel to the collection, and all the pages have been eaten by rats in the intervening centuries. Luckily the collection was again copied by the crew Drake left to defend his fort before the content was lost, now condensed into one volume: “The single, fabulous volume that contains the essence of the great library! The world’s most valuable book!!”20 As the good reader might expect, at this point the story completes the circle: “[Scrooge:] You don’t mean… You’re not saying… The book that held the distilled essence of all the “lost libraries” is now… [Nephew:] The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook! After all this, the trail has ended at the one book you can’t buy!”21 As it turns out, Rosa made ‘Lost Library’ into the origin tale of the Guidebook. 

Bergenholtz and Agerbo have used the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook as an example of the perfect information tool, as it does not only contain a lot of data, but it also gives exactly the right information that is needed for the user/reader. They make the comparison with Google, which also provides access to a lot of data, but you have to look for the right information between the millions of hits.22 For instance, when the Ducks find an inscription in Alexandria, with help of the Guidebook they can immediately determine the language and periodization of the inscription, just as it gives a right translation without any interpretation problems.

The main reason the Guidebook is portrayed as such is that there is simply no room in the story to elaborate on any interpretation doubts. It is more or less a plot device that is very similar to ‘the expert’ you find in many adventure and mystery books and films, such as Indiana Jones movies or the books of Dan Brown, in which ‘the expert’ also gives the right interpretation of text or symbol without second thought.  Apart from the Guidebook, Rosa also makes plenty of use of these experts, but often they are complemented or even overruled by information in the Guidebook. For instance, when the head librarian of the modern library of Alexandria claims that the library building was destroyed in 640 AD, the nephews respond with “He must be wrong! Check the Guidebook under ‘bath water: hot’!”23 As Kotro explains, this does not so much mean that history and knowledge are debatable, but rather that the Guidebook “presents history as given facts, i.e. the truth which does not need to be questioned (…) as if it were something that does not need to be studied or analysed, and leaves no room for interpretation.”24

In a broader sense, this idea that history is just a set of given facts, does not only apply to the Guidebook itself, but also to the way in which Rosa treats the preservation of knowledge. Rosa puts a lot of emphasis on the way in which knowledge was preserved and handed over throughout the ages and the importance of this preservation. As Rosa shows, the physical objects are threatened by various dangers and if those objects are not preserved or copied, the information in them might be lost. At the same time Rosa approaches that knowledge in those books as either black or white: the knowledge still exists or it does not exist anymore. Copying errors, misreadings, fake news (either intentionally or accidentally) or even mistakes by the author are non-existent in Rosa’s Duck-universe. History only consists of facts. The moment someone says something that turns out not to be true, it is simply because he did not yet have all the information. 

Interestingly this also means that while the books as physical objects seem to be the main topic of the story, they are not really of interest for the Ducks. At various moments it seems that the library has been lost, the Ducks are disappointed, but this has not so much to do with the loss of the physical objects, only with the loss of information in them. As soon as it turns out the information has been copied on new text carriers, the Ducks cheerfully continue their quest. It is as if Rosa wants to say that books, even in the form of two-thousand-year-old papyrus scrolls, are replaceable, knowledge is not. The fact that the physicality of the text carriers also carries meaning itself, maybe even has value by itself, plays no significant role for Rosa. 

There is of course an interesting parallel between the copyists, compilers and maybe even the Junior Woodchucks in ‘Lost Library’ and Rosa himself as writer of the story. As we have seen, Rosa does its utmost to make the story as authentic as possible, bringing together ‘facts’ from both the real world as from the Duck-universe: “[A]t least I know that when the story claims that, for example, Sir Francis Drake plundered a certain Spanish treasure ship sailing from a certain port on a certain date, it’s all absolutely authentic.”25 Just as the Junior Woodchucks and their Guidebook, Rosa also “presents history as given facts” as found in books. In his research, Rosa leaves little room for conflicting interpretations or new insights. In contrast, the facts he finds have a fixed and almost eternal value.

Conclusion

With ‘The Guardians of the Lost Library’ Rosa wanted to show the evolution of books and the role books played in the advancements of science and art. At first glance, he succeeded very well in doing that. Not only does Rosa show how text carriers have changed from papyrus rolls to printed books throughout the ages, while at the same time focusing on the dangers that threaten books and the importance of conservation. However, when we focus on how Rosa presents the connection between text carriers, texts, and knowledge, it turns out that for Rosa text carriers are just that: carriers of text, which do not have intrinsic value on their own. The real value is the texts, the knowledge that those books contain. This idea is reinforced because Rosa treats knowledge as a set of fixed, unchangeable facts, which makes it possible to completely extract the valuable knowledge out of an old text carrier and put it, uncorrupted, in a new one. 

When reading again Scrooge’s one-line “Books are knowledge, and knowledge equals power and money!”,26 there is a somewhat sour aftertaste. For Scrooge, and maybe also for Rosa himself, books are only interesting for their knowledge, the fixed facts, that can be found in them. The moment that that knowledge has been extracted, nothing of interest stays behind and it would be know problem at all if the vessel is lost. For a story celebrating the book, it gives in fact quite a disappointing answer to the question: what does anyone want with something as common as a book?

Bibliography

Andrae, Thomas, Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book. Unmasking the Myth of Modernity (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006).

Bergenholtz, H., and H. Agerbok, ‘Types of Lexicographical Information Needs and their Relevance for Information Science’, Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice 5:3 (2017), pp. 15-30.

Kontturi, Katja, ‘Donald Duck – A Fantasy comic? Fantasy in Don Rosa’s The Quest for Kalevala’, in M. Carayol ed., Le Fantastique et la science-fiction en Finlande et en Estonie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012), pp. 107-137. 

Kontturi, Katja, ‘Science fiction parody in Don Rosa’s “Attack of the Hideous Space-Varmints”’, Fafnir. Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 3:4 (2016), pp. 52-64. 

Kotru, Petra, Unca Don and Unca Scrooge’s Guide to History. Representations of the Past in the Disney Comics of Don Rosa (Unpublished Master Thesis: University of Turku: 2011).

Rosa, Don, ‘Behind the Scenes’, in: David Gerstein ed., The Don Rosa Library. Volume Four: The Last of the Clan McDuck (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2015), pp. 146-174.

--- , ‘Behind the Scenes’, in: David Gerstein ed., The Don Rosa Library. Volume Five: The Richest Duck in the World (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2016), pp. 151-182.

---, ‘The Guardians of the Lost Library’, in David Gerstein ed., The Don Rosa Library. Volume Five: The Richest Duck in the World (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2016), pp. 33-60.

Erik-Jan Dros studied Book and Digital Media Studies between 2017 and 2020, focusing on book history. He is currently employed as a project manager at the Leiden University Library.