It is rare to come across someone who is both charming and fastidious. Perhaps that's the wrong word. But if 'charm' connects you to the world and other people then does a certain kind of austerity or "purity" isolate?
Prompted by Bob's comments about whether marking books-even if in pencil-isn't really a kind of barbarism I feel compelled to reply (Gosh, you can see how far this blog/life has slipped if these are your compulsions nowadays!).
At eleven, with everyone else finally asleep I sat down with a bowl of Honey Bunches and cold milk (If you haven't, you haven't). Reading A.B.'s delightful uncommon reader. Also curled up in bed with me: Alice Munro (no, not like that, silly). Earlier in the day I'd picked up two of her collections (though not Dear Life). On the way back, after my Turkey sandwich on brown-for which I had to pay an extra 30 Rs just for it to be put on a plate..would have been better off eating it in the car like a loser or someone stalking his wife-and get caught in a terrible traffic jam. The electricity has gone and so it's a free-for-all. Which is saying a lot for a place that is chaotic on a daily, routine basis. And there at the traffic lights I notice there's no traffic warden; only a small boy wearing a red cape and a Santa Claus beard. I look closely and notice it's actually someone with breasts. Not that that matters. Just saying.
But yes, to my utter surprise, on page 67 who does AB start talking about? Yes, Alice Munro! Well, anyway, there's a wonderful sense of generosity in the book, the names of other writers slipped in with a nod of approval. Perhaps that's what the whole book is about: how reading creates other spaces, extends a hand to other people, grants other views a good hearing...and that means it has to go hand in hand with democracy (without the "D", thank you).
A faint pencil mark on a book. Now, there's a mark of civilisation for you. Not the heavily underlined passages, of course. There really is something quite paranoid about people who do that. But a gentle system of markers-dashes, underscores in the margin, square brackets, a rare cross and even rarer asterisk. There's always the temptation not to mark but, no, marking means pausing, catching one's breath, reflecting for a moment, sighing, connecting a thought to something else, remembering..all the distances that are required for an experience to be an experience..the groundwork for our thinking; more: the hand and eye, grey lead and black ink, the faint lines on a white wall like the first tentative strokes in the first cave paintings. Not to mark your own presence, but to gasp at the insight that is made available to you. !
And you always love to go over a book the swami has read and see what she has marked or noted. It's like a window into them.
There is no such thing as a work of art that is whole, that doesn't invite the individual to get into its angles. The eye, the hand selects, filters, relates, conflates. Memory of a book is not the book, but it is something of it. Your trusty lead pencil, a way of fishing out choice and tender phrases; to break up a pattern is to connect it with your own. A text is just a text without the human scale of things, just abstract notes, scribbles, a 'negative' which has to be held, and held up to the light. No book is sacred. To think otherwise would mean betraying your ideas of austerity, purity. When all is said and done you close the book and return to life. Get some sleep. And wake, thinking of French scrambled eggs, baked beans, sausages and hash browns. Which is why this post has to come to an abrupt end, dear reader!
Prompted by Bob's comments about whether marking books-even if in pencil-isn't really a kind of barbarism I feel compelled to reply (Gosh, you can see how far this blog/life has slipped if these are your compulsions nowadays!).
At eleven, with everyone else finally asleep I sat down with a bowl of Honey Bunches and cold milk (If you haven't, you haven't). Reading A.B.'s delightful uncommon reader. Also curled up in bed with me: Alice Munro (no, not like that, silly). Earlier in the day I'd picked up two of her collections (though not Dear Life). On the way back, after my Turkey sandwich on brown-for which I had to pay an extra 30 Rs just for it to be put on a plate..would have been better off eating it in the car like a loser or someone stalking his wife-and get caught in a terrible traffic jam. The electricity has gone and so it's a free-for-all. Which is saying a lot for a place that is chaotic on a daily, routine basis. And there at the traffic lights I notice there's no traffic warden; only a small boy wearing a red cape and a Santa Claus beard. I look closely and notice it's actually someone with breasts. Not that that matters. Just saying.
But yes, to my utter surprise, on page 67 who does AB start talking about? Yes, Alice Munro! Well, anyway, there's a wonderful sense of generosity in the book, the names of other writers slipped in with a nod of approval. Perhaps that's what the whole book is about: how reading creates other spaces, extends a hand to other people, grants other views a good hearing...and that means it has to go hand in hand with democracy (without the "D", thank you).
A faint pencil mark on a book. Now, there's a mark of civilisation for you. Not the heavily underlined passages, of course. There really is something quite paranoid about people who do that. But a gentle system of markers-dashes, underscores in the margin, square brackets, a rare cross and even rarer asterisk. There's always the temptation not to mark but, no, marking means pausing, catching one's breath, reflecting for a moment, sighing, connecting a thought to something else, remembering..all the distances that are required for an experience to be an experience..the groundwork for our thinking; more: the hand and eye, grey lead and black ink, the faint lines on a white wall like the first tentative strokes in the first cave paintings. Not to mark your own presence, but to gasp at the insight that is made available to you. !
And you always love to go over a book the swami has read and see what she has marked or noted. It's like a window into them.
There is no such thing as a work of art that is whole, that doesn't invite the individual to get into its angles. The eye, the hand selects, filters, relates, conflates. Memory of a book is not the book, but it is something of it. Your trusty lead pencil, a way of fishing out choice and tender phrases; to break up a pattern is to connect it with your own. A text is just a text without the human scale of things, just abstract notes, scribbles, a 'negative' which has to be held, and held up to the light. No book is sacred. To think otherwise would mean betraying your ideas of austerity, purity. When all is said and done you close the book and return to life. Get some sleep. And wake, thinking of French scrambled eggs, baked beans, sausages and hash browns. Which is why this post has to come to an abrupt end, dear reader!
1 comment:
hmm i confess, i'm a pencil-marking barbarian. i do feel guilty about that (every once in a while) but won't give it up, because, indeed marking means pausing, catching one's breath, reflecting for a moment, sighing, connecting a thought to something else, remembering.."
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