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04/03/2004: "Writing In Books"

When I was a child I would take my pencil, or crayon, and scribble on the flyleaf of a book, and maybe go on to add my editorial marks to the rest of it pages. Soon I was scolded, and I didn't do it any more -- and I continued to leave the pages of my books unmarked for many years. Even books of my own, with which I could do as I pleased, I couldn't bear to deface. Then, in my later student years, the felony of writing in books was decriminalized; in many quaters the authorities encouraged it. I took to it, underlining, highlighting, making marginal comments; my Bible had multicolored coding. Even as I accepted the permission, I felt the regret of the sinner. After graduation, the need to underline was gone, and I stopped -- but as I got involved with charities I noticed that books had lost their mystic preciousness. I can throw them out. I can tear them up. There is an endless supply of more. The books I get, these days, are often marred by a previous owner's hand, and sometimes the previous use has made them useless to me. But often it adds to the mystique of the book; the history of the reader's engagement with the text is bound in it, and bound to it. This volume has lived a life, before it was put up on the shelf, to slumber, to wait the day of its resurrection.