I found the perfect table outside at the Bagelry. The sun was shining, the coffee hot, the bagel shmerred. I had brought along a new book, My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk -- new in the unopened, paid full price sense. Actually, it was a gift from a good friend, one of those no-occasion presents that came at the exact right time and made me feel loved and princess-like. I ran my hand over the cover -- Stunning! -- slowly opened without breaking the spine. At page 6, I gently placed the book on the table while I took a sip of coffee.
Shit! The page got wet. I swear I checked and the table was dry, but ....Why am I such a pig with books? I break the spines; I somehow manage to get ink, cream cheese, mustard, fill in your favorite food group on the pages. Long ago, I stopped borrowing books from anyone who doesn't owe me big time because I know -- I know! -- I'll never return it without some kind of stain or rip or smear. Library books are pretty much out of the question.
I once had a friend who was utterly appalled at the way I kept my books--tossed here and there, some covered with dust, dust jackets ringed with a coffee cup stain, spines broken, blotches of ink bleeding through a page. My friend had grown up very poor in Mexico and thought of books as privileges and luxuries, objects to be treated with respect. She was so disgusted with me. One day when I wasn't home, she appeared like the Book Fairy to dust, order and line up my books by size and color until the shelf looked like a movie set bookcase.
Are my piggish ways really a sign of disrespect? Or maybe, it's the biggest testimony to a book to take it into the bathtub with you, to jam it into your purse leaky pen and all, to fall asleep with it and crush its pages, to need to underline some sentence because if you don't you'll forget something that you desperately need to remember.
So, this is your official warning. Do NOT lend me a book, unless you don't mind having it returned with some remnant of me. Oink.
2 comments:
I love your blog.
I love the pig with the book.
I am a book pig too. I met a woman in my first year of college who was from Vietnam, where they never put books on the ground, much less step on them or eat over them or roll them up so that you can hold them with one hand and a cup of coffee with the other. She was horrified that I treated my books like I treated my clothes: tugging and stretching and ripping and folding back and staining them. Wearing them until i wore them out, until they became as soft and familiar as my skin.
Thanks for making me feel better about my own book treatment. There is simply no good way to read a book while eating spaghetti-take it from me.
I rarely read a brand new book. Even when I get a crisp clean copy, I let it limp-up in my car where it sits for days, or weeks, overheating in the sun, absorbing tropical moisture by night. Eventually, it feels right and then I read it.
Shameful.
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