Got my dander up reading an interview with Elizabeth McCracken in Novel Voices.
She blithely describes how her many early years as a librarian taught her not a reverence for books, but a disregard for their physical state. She admits reading in the tub and getting lipstick on covers. What gets me pissed, though, is her casual comment that she never (HORRORS!) writes in books. “....there’s nothing worse than somebody who writes in books....,” she bleats.
My face got hot. I held my breath.
I hate you, Elizabeth McCracken. You’re probably a no-good writer anyway. So what, you read in the tub? Who doesn’t? I do, too, lady. So, what’s so bad about writers-in-books anyway, LADY? Tub water, pencil. What’s the DIFF?
Ann Patchett and ElCrack are buds--first readers for each other, even--I thinks to myself. I like Ann Patchett just fine. (I’d never call her lady.) So, I thinks to myself, I thinks, let’s just go grab some ElCrack and check her out.
I have read Elizabeth McCracken before. Lots, actually. I remember this as I grudgingly begin, then give over to, the first few paragraphs of The Giant’s House: A Romance. And, yeah, it’s great and she’s a pretty great writer who thinks there’s nothing worse in the world than a person like me.
I draw round brackets around a sentence of hers I particularly love on page six and jot in the margin in scratchy, pale, tiny, delicious, number three lead, “Hair on arms standing up; swallowing hard.”
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ReplyDeleteDear Atkins. Please don't hate me. I meant, There's nothing worse than people who write in library books. Oh, I spent hours erasing (when I could) notes in returned library books. Writing in a library book is the equivalent of talking in a movie theater, another thing I hate.
ReplyDeleteI don't write in books I own. Actually, that's not true: I have been known to write addresses on endpapers. Anyhow, I defend your right to scribble on your own books to my death.
(But not in library books.)
yours,
E-Mack
Dear Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI feel like an ass.
Firstly, because I really did get my feel-feel (Aunt Lana-ism) hurt when I thought you thought I was a terrible person. I imagined why it should be such an awful thing. Perhaps it's narcissistic to leave one's pencil mark everywhere on someone else's creation? Perhaps disrepectful, messing with the white of the page? The beauty of the sentences' physical arrangement --blighted somehow? Never landed on one that made sense. I felt hurt.
I'm possibly ill.
And, B. I forgot you exist in the universe and might read this blog.
Finally, III....Nah. That's all.
Anyhoo. O' course, I don't hate you. Just wallowing in hyperbole, self-consciousness and self-deprecation.
I miss libraries.
(But, not not being able to write in the books.)
Thanks for your comment. What a thrill.
Yours too,
AtAss.