no relation to either h. rap brown or grandmaster flash , not this fellow , this fellow wore plain white shirts and fade-into-the-woodwork j. c. penney slacks , and he sat in a library carrell at the university of maine , writing papers on the origin of footnotes and the possible advantages of isbn numbers in book cataloguing while the marchers marched outside and phil ochs sang `` richard nixon find yourself another country to be part of and men died with their stomachs blown out for villages whose names they could not pronounce ; he sat there studiously bent over his work ( bill saw him ) , which lay in a slant of crisp white winterlight , his face sober and absorbed , knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity 's engine .