Cherished Objects

One of my more constant activities in my life is weeding through the stacks of books I own, and getting rid of non-essentials. You may be surprised at how difficult this is. I have to get into a very cold-hearted mood. Turn a deaf ear to all of the instincts rising up in me, shrieking: “You might read this book someday! So-and-so LOVED this book!” Sometimes it feels like the book itself is screaming at me. “Nooooo! Don’t throw me away! I’m really good!!”

But there are the tried-and-true favorites, books I will never discard. I’m talking about them as OBJECTS now … not just books I love. I mean, if you lose your copy of Alice in Wonderland, just go buy a new one, right? Well – if any of you have had the same books around you for many many years – you know that some books have irreplaceable value. Buying a brand spanking new copy wouldn’t be right at all.

I’m one of those people who loves to underline passages that catch my fancy, (not just philosophical passages, but descriptive passages, humorous passages – I take notes for myself, if necessary – I underline sentences I love and want to remember – or at least be able to locate quickly should the occasion arise) – so my copy of Catcher in the Rye is literally falling apart at the seams, held together with tape, with little underlines and asterisks in the margins throughout. It’s like a code to decipher. I can’t tell WHY I underlined certain things … so it’s fun to try to imagine myself back in time, to all of the different seasons in my life that I have read this book. Hmmm – why did I outline THAT passage? How funny …. A lot of times the outlines or underlines are just my way of communicating to Salinger: “I. LOve. This. Part.” or “This part is just perfect.” There is no other reason for most of those markings. So I can’t get rid of that dog-eared copy! It means the world to me!

Other cherished books:

— my hard-bound ancient copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Red leather cover, with a gold stamp of the white rabbit checking his watch on the front. The pages are smooth, almost shiny, and thick – obviously a quality book, made a long time ago. Buying a new copy of it would feel sacrilegious. This particular edition was released in 1911. They just don’t make books like that anymore. I’m talking about it as an object.

— my dog-eared taped-together copy of Mating: A Novelby Norman Rush – so written on and worked over that I could never lend it to someone. I have read that book 3 times through – and each time was a totally different experience. For a while, I felt that that book explained my own life to me. Not so much now – but then. The notes I have scribbled in the margins or in the blank pages in the back are like stepping-stones through time.

— my falling-apart copy of Catch-22. Only read that awesome book once, and I think it’s time I took it up again. One of the best books ever written, in my opinion. What an achievement. My copy is just a crappy paper-back … with the cover fallen off … but for some reason, having THIS edition – which obviously is from 30 years ago – as opposed to a shiny new copy – just seems good and right.

— my taped-together copy of Hopeful Monstersby Nicholas Mosley, another all-time fave. I just don’t want to go and get a spanking new copy … That book, with coffee stains on some of the pages, underlines, notes to myself … is precious. Also – the front cover actually caught fire by lying too close to one of my candles … so the top corner is actually singed black. No WAY could I ever get rid of this book. It’s a marvelous book, one of my all-time favorites – I poured my LIFE into that book … so I think it’s just so appropriate that the object itself is so BATTERED and BRUISED. I love that copy of that book.

— my 5 Nancy Lemann books: Ritz of the Bayou, Lives of the Saints, Sportsman’s Paradise, The Fiery Pantheon: A Novel, and Malaise. She is a wonderful writer, a madcap quirtkyk Southern writer, so funny, so terrific – and her books are very hard to find, even though she’s contemporary. I got half of those for half-price at The Strand, and I fear that if I lose them I will never track them down again. I guard those books with my life. They have given me such joy.

— all my Lucy Maud Montgomery novels. I probably have 40 of them. From the entirety of the Anne of Green Gables series all the way down to her recently-unearthed TERRIBLE short stories. Cannot get rid of one of those little books. It would hurt too much. Also – some of them are now kind of hard to find. Like Rilla of Ingleside – which she always thought was her best book. Hard to find now. The Blue Castle – which is MY favorite of her books – hard to find. Jane of Lantern Hill – you can’t just walk into a Barnes and Noble and find that book now. You could about 10 years ago, when Montgomery was having her heyday – but not so much now. I have every single paperback … all lined up in a row … Irreplaceable, again.

— all my Madeleine L’Engle books. I have every single one the woman ever wrote. From her phenomenal fiction: A Wrinkle in Time, plus the many many many others – to her non-fiction memoir-style books (total favorites of mine), down to her theological writing … her Christian books are also kind of hard to find in mainstream stores. I ordered them online. Her Genesis trilogy is phenomenal … sniff, sniff … Those books, again, have gotten me through some rocky points. I have her poetry. I have her illustrated children’s books. Etc. You get the point. If Madeleine L’Engle wrote it, I want it.

— my massive Collected Works of Jane Austen – all her novels in one volume. A huge tome. It has a paper cover – which is ripping – and on it is an old-fashioned line drawing of a mansion with pillars. All her books in this one volume, so you can imagine – it’s a big fat book. I’ve considered getting rid of it, and then buying new volumes of all of her individual books … but I just can’t. It’s too beautiful an object.

— my copy of Moby Dick, another one of my all-time favorite reading experiences. The book was almost TOO dense, TOO rich, TOO good. I could barely deal with it. Every sentence coming at me was so brilliant, so unbelievable … I felt like I needed a break, a break to just deal with the brilliance. It’s like how my cat Sammy used to eat sometimes: he would get so overwhelmed at all the goodies put before him, so discombobbled, that he would sink into a state of paralysis – staring at his bowl of food with intense anxiety. Reading Moby Dick was like that for me. The copy I have is no big deal – I think it’s Vintage? I mean, they make good-looking books – and this is a good-looking book – but it’s really about my first time reading that book – and all the notes I took in the margin. All the exclamation points – the feverish underlining … Every time I flip through the pages I am transported back to when I first read it (well – I read it in high school but that doesn’t count – I mean, first CHOSE to read it). I’m telling you. Most exciting reading experience ever. I love my copy of that book because of the memories it holds in its pages.

— my exquisite copy of Riders to the Sea by John Millington Synge – given to me by an old family friend, a book collector and dealer – who knew that such a thing would mean the world to me. It is a precious object. You can tell when you pick it up. The dark green cover … cloth … the slightly embossed lettering of the title – subtle, elegant, not flashy … and the beautiful spareness of the language on the pages. It is one of the nicest objects that I actually own.

— my The Collected Poems. Had the volume (edited by Ted Hughes – very controversially) since I was in high school, when the Plath mania began. The Plath mania has calmed down, thank the good Lord, but I still love her poems, and love to read through them from time to time. I know a couple by heart. That book, again filled with my high-school-age jottings, is a piece of my own personal history. I have pages of looseleaf stuck in the book – with my own ramblings on it. I have also annotated some of the poems – as to how they correspond with real-life events in her journals, or in her letters to her mother. I don’t care so much about real-life events now, and can love Plath’s poems just as they are – poems – but it is amazing to me to flip through, and see how much STUFF I have crowded on the page. Getting a spanking new copy just wouldn’t seem right.

These books are not just books to me. They have become part of my own biography.