A Book's Second Story

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the richness and importance of books –not only for their words, but simply for their tangible existence.  Andy Goldsworthy has a poem called “Library.”  In it the author is describing a collection of books.  He writes:

This book saved my life…
This book I tried to carry balanced on my head with seven others.
This book I actually licked.
This book — remember? I carved a large hole in its pages, a "how-to
magazine for boys" said this would be a foolproof place to hide my
secret treasures. Then I remembered I didn't have any secret treasures
worth hiding. Plus, I was down one book…
This book, from when I was five, its fuzzy ducklings, and my mother's
 voice in the living room of the second-story apartment over the butcher
shop on Division Street.... I'm fifty now. I've sought out, and I own 
now, one near-mint and two loose, yellowing copies that mean to me as
much as the decorated gold masks and the torsos of marble meant to the
excavators of Troy…

I have books like that. I have a book that ruined my life and also saved it in ways I can’t explain to anyone.  I have a copy of Streams in The Desert that was owned by my great grandfather McCleary, a Presbyterian minister, which contains a pressed carnation from my great grandmother’s funeral.  My Bible contains an interesting assortment of mementos that anyone else might find random and meaningless. 

Each has a distinct story that goes beyond the words contained in their pages.  Anne Fadiman also talks about this in her essay “Never Do That to a Book.”  She explains that there are two types of readers:  courtly book lovers who gently care for their books to keep them in pristine condition, and carnal lovers who love their books to pieces. To the Fadiman family “…a book’s words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated.  Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.”

She goes on to recount stories of reading experiences –a book critic who read The Collected Poems of Edgar Allen Poe on a backpacking trip through the Yucatan and closed an interesting bug in-between the pages, an avid bird-watcher who left a note from the first time he saw his first trumpeter swan, a mother who cherishes the stain of an egg yolk on a cookbook from her child’s first batch of blueberry muffins…

There is a certain intimacy to be gained in the experience of defaming a book. Handling it allows you to connect with it in an extra special way.  Anne Fadiman says “Just think what courtly lovers miss by believing that the only thing they are permitted to do with books is read them!” Books can be used as decorations, doorstops, paperweights, mementos… anything.

Recently I discovered an art form that takes this idea a step further: Literary Art.  On a recent visit to 2nd April Art Gallerie I browsed a gallery full of intricate and innovative sculptures, posters, and jewelry made out of old books.  The artist was wearing a sunburst necklace out of book pages.  I was thrilled.  I signed up for a class to learn how to create a piece of book art. I’m excited to interact with a work of literature in a tangible way, in an act of courtly love.

The class will be at 2^nd April on November 15^th at 6:00 P.M.  The cost is $20.00 and includes all supplies.  Anyone interested can contact Pam Neff at 

330-685-2276 or piecesofapril@neo.rr.com