Writing in Books: Inscriptions and Marginalia

In our house books were sacred objects and our parents taught us to not ever, not ever, write in them.  We didn’t have a lot of books in the house, but we went to the library often and our grandmother, a children’s librarian, brought us a steady flow of “discards,” book that the library had given up on, often, indeed, because they had been written in.

 

In undergrad and grad school this dictum became much relaxed.  These were, after all, our own personal property.  Nonetheless, I tended toward bookmarks, notecards and eventually, sticky notes.  Sometimes I fold a page corner, an imprecise method often leaving me to later wonder why I had done so.

 

I buy a lot of used books now. (Supposedly I am operating under the requirement that for every book I bring into the house, one must exit.)  One of my little pleasures is reading the inscriptions or marginalia of previous owners.

 

I recently reacquired a copy of John D’Agata’s essay collection, The Next American Essay (2003). I don’t know at what point in my various moves I lost my first copy of it; loaned out and never returned probably.  But now I have acquired another, used and very inexpensive.  An obviously unread edition.  And yet it had been inscribed, as a gift, as follows:

 

Dear x, Please write “The Next American Essay”!  I need to read it. Merry Christmas 2017, Love always, y

 

Yet, at sometime during the next six years x had let the book go, without having read it.  Perhaps x and y were in a relationship that ended. Perhaps, it was lost in a move, donated in error, stolen.  Perhaps, x, like myself, wonders for years where that book went and finally rep[aces it with fond memories of y.

 

Interlude: back when I had the best job in the world one of my duties was bringing writers to town.  I had the practice of going to the used bookstores and buying up any used copies of their books, often inscribed, so that the writers would not see them and feel sad.

 

Last week I found an antiquated mountaineering book in a used bookstore in Pasadena. I had not known of the book and passed on acquiring it. George Yeld, Scrambles in Eastern Graians 1878-1897 (published 1900). A couple days later I had been thinking about the book and when my wife called from the same store to ask if I need anything, well, I did. She uncharacteristically bargained with the clerk and we got it for two-thirds the asking price.  The book as an object is beautiful: gilt edges, deckled pages, a tad yellowed and the photographs and maps were printed on a different paper than then text; these pages are in pristine condition. Yeld was an early president of the Alpine Club, which almost guarantees that he writes well, if not with a lot of formality and . . . words.

 

I am very glad to have it.

 

But I didn’t at first realize it was “inscribed by the author,” as follows: “Mifs[?] L.M. Nicholls, with the author’s best wishes. July 1924.” I thought it odd that he did not sign his name. After spending more time with the book, it became evident that the author had made little notations throughout, on the order of “correcting” requiescatto resquiescant.  Which seems really odd as resquiescant is more archaic and far less common, even in 1900.

 

In grad school I was lucky enough to spend a couple days with James Salter, who had written a fictional book, Solo Faces, based somewhat on the life of the climber Gary Hemming, an international legend based on his role on a famous rescue in the Alps.  When I presented my copy of the book for Salter to inscribe, he turned immediately to page 132 and made an emendation: the word “here” abutted the left margin.  He added a t, so that the heinous misprint “here” was restored to the author’s intention: there.”

 

This is how the sentence is supposed to read: “There is something greater that the life of the cities, greater than money and possessions; there is a manhood that can never be taken away.”

 

He then handwrote the sentence in his inscription to me.

 

My friend and mentor, the writer David Kranes wrote about a relationship based on handwritten margin notes in his book Margins from 1972. A premise I am greatly sympathetic to!  His first novel, I think, and a very good one.

 

My favorite marginalia in a used book is in my copy of Fernando Pessoa & Co., Selected Poems.  All the notes are printed in a youthful hand, occasionally embellished with a hand-drawn flower or  shining sun. In this way it is similar to  the little hand-drawn heart and shining sun in the inscription in The Next American Essays. So . . . endearing. At the end of a long excerpt from one of Pessoa’s favorite heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro. “Consciousness,” the marginalia reads, “is a problem.”  

 

Yeah, it is.  And it was so nice to see evidence of the moment a young mind awakens to the fact.