the art of pressed flowers.
I've just finished reading an article from the November issue of The Believer, a magazine I overzealously believed would enter me into the fascinating world of literary fads, social criticism, and intelligent humor that I have decided is the McSweeney's Universe. In fact, the magazine's articles all sound incredible, but I have previously done little more than read Nick Hornby's recurring column "Stuff I've Been Reading" (although not the one in the issue being discussed at the moment).
Strangely enough, I actually think I will one day read all the back issues that are now standing together wedged by our make-shift bookend (two books with the same title, "A History of Art," stacked one on the other, because they are huge and we couldn't find anything else of any weight in our entire apartment) and John's reference books (including, but not limited to, at least six books with titles starting with the words "the art of..."), a new member being added to their ranks each month. I've been floating around in the craptastic world of Retail During the Holidays, while perfectly wonderful books (such as Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw and Denison, Iowa, both of which I am at least halfway through and thoroughly enjoy, but have been collecting dust on my bedside table) have been sitting around my apartment slowly rotting away from the shame of never being read. This is the battle I fight with myself.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have been very depressed lately. And I received some bad news at work back in October...and I really haven't read much since then. (I did read Shopgirl, but it's a novella barely bigger than a pamphlet, really, and I wanted to read it before seeing the movie. Which, by the way, I still haven't seen.) I talked to Anna about this a couple of weeks ago and she said she hadn't read much since getting "the news" either. We work with books. Reading at home now reminds me of something sad. It's wearing off though. I'm getting used to the idea, I guess.
But when the November The Believer came, I saw the title of this article and kept thinking, I have to read that one. It's called "Other People's Bookmarks: Fellow Wanderers of a Forgotten Republic," and you can read it, in full, here.
I won't lie: I mainly wanted to read it because I was jealous that an already-established writer beat me to it. Wasn't this really my idea? Obviously, not really. It was just an idea that I happened to share.
And the article is good. Well-written. Interesting. Etc. But there's something missing, for me. Michael Atkinson doesn't include the circumstances which led up to these books coming into his possession. Sure, he mentions that he loves used-book stores and eventually comes to shop in them based on what slips of strangers' lives are peeking out from in between the pages, but it isn't until the article was almost over that I even realized he was in New York. That changed things, for me. The repeated presence of Pennsylvania and the inclusion of New Jersey seemed almost obvious then. Of course people in those neighboring states could have somehow let their books slip away into the used-book stores of New York--it's not that far away.
I've been collecting bookmarks at work for months now. And the prize of my collection is from Anchorage, Alaska. Did someone visit Alaska buy a book on shore and read it on the ferry on the Alaska Marine Highway, and then come back to their home in the Hollywood hills and forget about it for ten years until their bookshelves were so full they weeded out the stuff they'd never read again and took them down to a little store in the valley to see if they could trade them in? Unfortunately, I found this treasure, as I've found most of the bookmarks in my collection, on the floor. I have no idea what book it came out of. I found it in the room where we keep travel books, so it could easily have fallen from the pages of a book about it's origin, but I'll never know that.
I once found a thirty-year-old baptism certificate, written in Spanish, on the shelves of our science section. What was it doing there?
Also, Mr. Atkinson, being an established writer and a person who probably finishes reading books, has the luxury of clearly being employed outside of the bookselling industry. Not me! I can say with some level of modesty that in this one instance I have an insight a real writer-reader person was unable to reach:
There are some items that you cannot remove.
I have no problem collecting lost bookmarks off the floor or that lay hiding behind books, but I have difficulty removing certain items from books still on the shelves. For example, a newspaper obit that has yellowed the pages that hold it--a biography of the same person. Or, more commonly, pressed flowers and four-leaf clovers. I can't take dead plantlife out of a book that isn't mine. I just can't. For one thing, these items seem to have become disconnected from any former life they may have had and have become, all of them, one thing: book ephemera. They're not really even flowers anymore. They've become part of the book in a way even the authors themselves could not.
The sadness of pressed plantlife is that I know, really know, that that book was never read. It's not enough that, in actuality, used books can be seen (although cynically and pessimistically) as cast offs, but to know they were never read and remain unsold is just sad. Imagine your excitement when some bright young girl with braids throws open your pages, letting in sunlight for the first time in five years, and feeling your spine crack and stretch, like stiff bones or aching muscles, only to be greeted by a piece of greenery shoved inside of you and then to be slammed shut, forcing you to take in this foreign object without so much as one of your words (and you know how interesting they all are--you're a reference book--she could learn so much) ever being read. It's heartbreaking. Book and flower, forever wed in their loneliness, forgotten by both the book's owner and the flower's finder. Now they live together in musty disharmony, without the other books in the set, which may be keeping a table level somewhere in Van Nuys for all I know. The point is, to press a plant, you have to put it in a huge book that will easily go undisturbed. And when you do this, do you think you'll ever retrieve it again? Why do we press flowers anyway? What are we going to do with them? They're flat now. They'd make horrible bouquets...
I've gotten sidetracked. I have an immense guilt complex. I love books. I tend to buy them new. At first, that sounds like I don't want to be a part of the greater readership. At first, that sounds like my desire to "save" books from being unread exists only for those I've purchased--in short, that my love is conditional. But I cannot bear the weight any other way.
And let's face it... I probably wouldn't get around to reading them either.
Strangely enough, I actually think I will one day read all the back issues that are now standing together wedged by our make-shift bookend (two books with the same title, "A History of Art," stacked one on the other, because they are huge and we couldn't find anything else of any weight in our entire apartment) and John's reference books (including, but not limited to, at least six books with titles starting with the words "the art of..."), a new member being added to their ranks each month. I've been floating around in the craptastic world of Retail During the Holidays, while perfectly wonderful books (such as Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw and Denison, Iowa, both of which I am at least halfway through and thoroughly enjoy, but have been collecting dust on my bedside table) have been sitting around my apartment slowly rotting away from the shame of never being read. This is the battle I fight with myself.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have been very depressed lately. And I received some bad news at work back in October...and I really haven't read much since then. (I did read Shopgirl, but it's a novella barely bigger than a pamphlet, really, and I wanted to read it before seeing the movie. Which, by the way, I still haven't seen.) I talked to Anna about this a couple of weeks ago and she said she hadn't read much since getting "the news" either. We work with books. Reading at home now reminds me of something sad. It's wearing off though. I'm getting used to the idea, I guess.
But when the November The Believer came, I saw the title of this article and kept thinking, I have to read that one. It's called "Other People's Bookmarks: Fellow Wanderers of a Forgotten Republic," and you can read it, in full, here.
I won't lie: I mainly wanted to read it because I was jealous that an already-established writer beat me to it. Wasn't this really my idea? Obviously, not really. It was just an idea that I happened to share.
And the article is good. Well-written. Interesting. Etc. But there's something missing, for me. Michael Atkinson doesn't include the circumstances which led up to these books coming into his possession. Sure, he mentions that he loves used-book stores and eventually comes to shop in them based on what slips of strangers' lives are peeking out from in between the pages, but it isn't until the article was almost over that I even realized he was in New York. That changed things, for me. The repeated presence of Pennsylvania and the inclusion of New Jersey seemed almost obvious then. Of course people in those neighboring states could have somehow let their books slip away into the used-book stores of New York--it's not that far away.
I've been collecting bookmarks at work for months now. And the prize of my collection is from Anchorage, Alaska. Did someone visit Alaska buy a book on shore and read it on the ferry on the Alaska Marine Highway, and then come back to their home in the Hollywood hills and forget about it for ten years until their bookshelves were so full they weeded out the stuff they'd never read again and took them down to a little store in the valley to see if they could trade them in? Unfortunately, I found this treasure, as I've found most of the bookmarks in my collection, on the floor. I have no idea what book it came out of. I found it in the room where we keep travel books, so it could easily have fallen from the pages of a book about it's origin, but I'll never know that.
I once found a thirty-year-old baptism certificate, written in Spanish, on the shelves of our science section. What was it doing there?
Also, Mr. Atkinson, being an established writer and a person who probably finishes reading books, has the luxury of clearly being employed outside of the bookselling industry. Not me! I can say with some level of modesty that in this one instance I have an insight a real writer-reader person was unable to reach:
There are some items that you cannot remove.
I have no problem collecting lost bookmarks off the floor or that lay hiding behind books, but I have difficulty removing certain items from books still on the shelves. For example, a newspaper obit that has yellowed the pages that hold it--a biography of the same person. Or, more commonly, pressed flowers and four-leaf clovers. I can't take dead plantlife out of a book that isn't mine. I just can't. For one thing, these items seem to have become disconnected from any former life they may have had and have become, all of them, one thing: book ephemera. They're not really even flowers anymore. They've become part of the book in a way even the authors themselves could not.
The sadness of pressed plantlife is that I know, really know, that that book was never read. It's not enough that, in actuality, used books can be seen (although cynically and pessimistically) as cast offs, but to know they were never read and remain unsold is just sad. Imagine your excitement when some bright young girl with braids throws open your pages, letting in sunlight for the first time in five years, and feeling your spine crack and stretch, like stiff bones or aching muscles, only to be greeted by a piece of greenery shoved inside of you and then to be slammed shut, forcing you to take in this foreign object without so much as one of your words (and you know how interesting they all are--you're a reference book--she could learn so much) ever being read. It's heartbreaking. Book and flower, forever wed in their loneliness, forgotten by both the book's owner and the flower's finder. Now they live together in musty disharmony, without the other books in the set, which may be keeping a table level somewhere in Van Nuys for all I know. The point is, to press a plant, you have to put it in a huge book that will easily go undisturbed. And when you do this, do you think you'll ever retrieve it again? Why do we press flowers anyway? What are we going to do with them? They're flat now. They'd make horrible bouquets...
I've gotten sidetracked. I have an immense guilt complex. I love books. I tend to buy them new. At first, that sounds like I don't want to be a part of the greater readership. At first, that sounds like my desire to "save" books from being unread exists only for those I've purchased--in short, that my love is conditional. But I cannot bear the weight any other way.
And let's face it... I probably wouldn't get around to reading them either.
Labels: books.
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