Ink on Ink

[tmcg]

Of Two Minds pointed at one of Steve Leveen's essays on the Levenger site recently. Here's the email I sent him in reply to another of his essays, "Writing in Books":

Of course I write in books. I've written parts of my own books in the back pages and endpapers of other people's books. I've engaged in brief dialogues with authors through handwritten marginalia. The image of the marked-up page spread illustrating your essay looked delicious to me, aesthetic evidence of a mind's interaction with those pages. I also leave boarding passes and stubs of travel, movie, play, ballgame tickets in my books after I've finished and no longer need to mark places; years later they spring out as mementos, making each book a miniature time capsule. And I *touch* my books. I get my finger oils in them, sometimes my tears. Their shape changes as I carry them and hold them in positions very different from the shelved default. My books are extensions of my mind and parts of my body. And the many book collectors among my friends are appalled by every bit of this.

Comments

Ink on Ink

[(Anonymous)]

One of my friends writes lightly on the inside covers of all his books those new words he ran across for the first time, and the page number. When he comes upon old book, he remembers not only the story, but words it taught him, as well.

I've only gotten up the nerve to write in cookbooks and dictionaries. Somehow I'm shy about writing in books I may lend to others, not because of being ashamed of scribbling, but because I'm can be guarded about my private experience with that book.

I've written on little Post-its, kept them in the book, and ripped them out in embarrassment when someone asks to borrow that title.

Don't know why I'm self-conscious about that. I should look into it.

Great e-mail, by the way.


--Eliani Torres

Re: Ink on Ink

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

Hi, Eli!

I used to do that, with the vocabulary words. From The City 2000 A.D.: Urban Life Through Science Fiction (ed. Clem/Greenberg/Olander, actually assigned to me to read in ninth grade) I learned, according to my scrawls in the inside back cover, the words "megalomania," "volatile," "microcosm," "acolyte," and "olfactory."

I should have known those words by ninth grade...oh, well. Busted.

I'm chuckling over your Post-its. :)