Li'l Andy's country singer anecdotes in the big city.
Exposed Marginalia
As everyone knows, going through someone else's bookshelf is like rummaging around in their intellectual panty drawer. That's why when it comes to literature, I was always one to prefer buying my books used rather than new. The benefits aren't just economic. A big part of the reason I like to buy my books broken in is because other people's inscriptions, underlining, doodles, and marginalia all afford one the sicko pleasure of finding a steamy window onto the private lives of others.
A few years ago, I picked up a copy of W.H. Auden's Collected Shorter Poems: 1927-1957 with this suggestive lovers' inscription on the title page:
To Molly Ann
For "us"-with tuna fish?
Love
John
January '87
Call me a novice, but when trying to seduce a woman with poetry, I think your chances are best when you keep the references to tuna fish to a minimum. And while it's true that I haven't read all of Auden's shorter poems, and could be missing a witty allusion John is making here, the fact remains that Molly Ann hocked off that book for considerably less than the five dollars I paid for it.
One time, when I was a lowly sixteen year-old, I jumped for joy upon discovering a real, honest-to-God copy of ol' Lenny Cohen's The Spice-Box of Earth at The Word bookstore. I don't think the Canada Council kept records on this, but I'd bet money that volume is responsible for getting more guys laid than any other in Canadian literature. I opened it to the first page. Just below the pencilled in price at the upper right-hand corner, the previous owner had made a note to himself for posterity:
Christmas gift from
Sharyn, 1967
Paris, France.
It already had a woman's stamp of approval! A "Sharyn" had slipped this anonymous guy Cohen's horniest book, which, in my eyes, was tantamount to a woman saying "Take me!" in gift terms. And in the sexy city of Paris! After that hot lovin' summer of Expo 67! What other signals did Sharyn need to send out? But clearly, she'd given up on her oblivious lover, and he sold the book once he got back to Montreal, all the while wondering what he'd done wrong.
Conversely, I always wondered where my own copy of The Oxford Companion to the Bible had found a home after I pawned it off to an Ottawa bibliopole. My aunt had wisely given my sister, my brother and I our own separate copies, having no doubt foreseen my mother's headaches in hearing her children fight over who was going to get to look up "Ephesians" first. Who's reading that book's inscription now, speculating that "Andrew" is an ungrateful little shithead for selling a gift from his auntie?
To Andrew
Happy Birthday ‘96
This is partly a Birthday & partly a
confirmation gift. We thought it would
be of interest & use to you not only
when reading the Bible, but also in
your Social Studies & if in your
playwritting you wish to make
allusions to the Bible
Love
Robert & Gay
I didn't take social studies in school, or really try my hand at playwriting, but I've heard that it's the thought that counts in these matters.
For those who really want to get down and dirty, there is always that last recourse of going to the public library to get your reading material and kicks in other people's marginalia. (Never mind that in Montreal, our Grande Bibliothèque seems to serve the public chiefly as a video store.) It was back in grade 8, when going through the stacks at the Ottawa Public Library, that I found my most candid glimpse into someone else's business. I was riffling through a copy of Timebends, Arthur Miller's autobiography (yes, searching for pictures of Marilyn Monroe) when a note fell out onto the floor as I waited at the checkout. It was torn from a spiral notebook, and had capital letters written in ballpoint pen:
JUDY
I WANTED TO SEE YOU AGAIN BEFORE I WENT
BUT THINGS GOT MESSED UP. KNOW THAT YOU
ARE A WONERFUL PERSON WHEN YOU GO IN
TOMORROW AND PLEASE DON'T BE HARD ON
YOURSELF.
I LOVE YOU!
He didn't sign his name, but Judy had kept this note with her, using it as a bookmark, keeping it as a buoy in her difficult life as she read about Arthur Miller's dramatic life.
I could've returned it with the book when I had finished. Just tucked it back in the pages for Judy to find, if it was dear enough to her to come looking. But I didn't. When you only see them in fragments, the lives of other people are too fascinating. And to have a relic from someone else's love story was reading simply too good to pass up.
