Just think what courtly lovers [of books] miss by believing the only thing they are permitted to do with books is read them! What do they use for shims, doorstops, glueing weights, and rug-flatteners? When my friend the art historian was a teenager, his cherished copy of D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths served as a drum pad on which he practiced percussion riffs from Led Zeppelin. A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on a great thinker. Menelik II, the emperor of Ethiopia at the turn of the century, liked to chew pages from his Bible. Unfortunately, he died after consuming the complete Book of Kings. I do not consider Menelik's fate an argument for keeping our hands and teeth off our books; the lesson to be drawn, clearly, is that he, too, should have laminated the pages in plastic.
-Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris, 41-42.
6 comments:
My book-love is more carnal than courtly...I always have a pile of books next to my bed, several lying face-down and open. My books collect smears of whatever I happen to be eating when I'm reading, and the library books that journey with me to the Cape usually come home full of sand (I'm sure this only enhances the literary experience for the next reader). On the other hand...I don't write much in my books, and I'm not a promiscuous highlighter (unlike my dad). And I'm pretty picky about the bindings of my books (I hate cheap paperbacks with ugly covers).
How about you, dear blog-reader? Is your book-love courtly or carnal?
In tenth grade I had to get a lot of obscure philosophy-ish books from the library for school, and I would write all over them. And return then that way. Which is probably blatant defacement of public property and illegal and very very wrong, but I did it in PENCIL. And these were the sort of books that before me hadn't been taken out for about fifty years. And I know that I at least really love reading a book that someone's written in...I like seeing what they underlined and commented on and how they responded to what they read and then joining in the conversation myself.
And there was a little responsibility there too, I think. That I can't stomach this pagan book without writing somewhere on it: "This isn't true!"
But don't worry, this was only with school books, never like Nancy Drew :)
Ooh, we should check a bunch of Nancy Drews and Babysitters Club books out of the library, and write sophisticated comments in the margins...
I have to admit my book-love is more courtly. I don't like writing in books, and I'm a stickler about keeping the pages and binding fresh and pretty.
So this is how the essay that this quote comes from starts...
"When I was eleven and my brother was thirteen, our parents took us to Europe. At the Hotel d'Angleterre in Copenhagen, as he had done virtually every night of his literate life, Kim left a book facedown on the bedside table. The next afternoon, he returned to find the book closed, a piece of paper inserted to mark the page, and the following note, signed by the chambermaid, resting on its cover: SIR, YOU MUST NEVER DO THAT TO A BOOK."
Sounds like a kindred spirit, Lydia. :)
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