I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash. You can read the rest of Colin Nassin's piece featured on McSweeneys here.
Is defacing a book bad manners? A book collector's nightmare? Or an art form? And what do you do? Dog ear the corners? Make marginal notes? Open the book only at a 45 degree angle as to not tear the binding?
Last year, a library patron at the Maury County Public Library in Columbia, TN blacked-out language they found offensive in fiction books, mostly mystery novels. The staff counted 100 books in all "copy edited, illegally." Most commonly Fuck. Library Director Elizabeth Pott said, "This self-made censor is binding the mouth of an author." According to News Channel 5 WTVF-TV, "The person behind the book-marking could face vandalism charges, and more serious charges if the damages exceed $500."
Don Share, staff writer for harriet: a blog from The Poetry Foundation in, “The Things People Write in Books!,” entertain the idea that defacing books or, “literary marginalia” is a “real treasure.” Marginalia are notes, scribbles, and comments made by readers in the margin of a book. And is very similar to annotating. Share goes on to cite famous poets/writers who’ve made assorted editorial comments in books. Samuel T. Coleridge for example, Share says, “is the most copious of literary marginalia-writers; he even invented the word ‘marginalia.’ Anybody who let him borrow a book would later find reams of cramped, scribbled commentary.” The pages of these defaced books, what Share calls “essay-like annotations” were collected in a set of 6 volumes containing roughly 8,000 notes.
If you ever come to my duplex and look through my book collection, you would quickly discern between books I read and books I don't, books I value for xy reason and books still on the reading list. There is a phrase I truly believe in; a shirt needs dirt to matter. Why do you gravitate to that tattered worn sweater? Is it because the sleeves smell like your lover? Why do you keep an object from childhood, say a toy GI. Is it because you've bathed with it, slept with it, told it all your secrets? Its grown with you because it has a piece of your character, a piece of your dirt. That is how I feel about my favorite books. You give them hell. You give them praise. But most of all, you use them.
Credits: Bottom Photograph courtesy of Harry Ranson Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
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