James Ward recently wrote a blog post about tracking down the owner of a secondhand book in his possession. Its excellent, and worth giving your full attention. But the reason I mention it is that he quotes from Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road - which is the book we bought my sister and her husband as a wedding present, and is the starting point of the following semi-literate wankery. The quote goes:
“I wish you hadn’t been so over-courteous about putting the inscription on a card instead of on the flyleaf. It’s the bookseller coming out in you all, you were afraid you’d decrease its value. You would have increased it for the present owner. (And possibly for the future owner. I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.)”
And the reason I mention that is that only moments before I read James’ post, I was thinking about Emma C, my first proper girlfriend, and an inveterate margin-note-maker. Like Wooster’s Honoria Glossop, she was trying - I felt at the time - to mould me into something a little less like the adolescent mouth-breathing masturbator I was, and a little more like the rakish and sophisticated polymath that I could have been. (She was a whole school year my senior, and a rakish and sophisticated polymath to boot - which made me *very* happy, though presumably I was something of a worry to her.)
So she’d lend me books, and the books were all very improving and I suffered through all of them. But the remarkable thing is that they’d all have little hand written annotations and comments highlighting significant passages or bits that resonated with what we were doing at the time. Appallingly, horrifyingly, at the time, I hated this tendency of hers; A) Because I interpreted it as a form of passive-aggressive intellectual bullying and B) because she had the most amazing tits I’d ever seen and sitting around reading seemed to be the acme of wasted time.
Reminiscing on this (my wife has been in Shropshire all weekend and I have had nothing better to think about,) I wandered over to the old bookcase and pulled down the copy of Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote she gave me. (A book that, despite what I’ve written above, I loved on first reading and continue to love.)
What I’d interpreted as an invasion of my intellectual space; an attempt to drag me to a level of respectability that I was falling all too short of, I now realise was her way of making it seem like we were reading the book together. Akin to the gentle elbow in the cinema I’d give a friend if we were watching Ghostbusters and the bit where Bill Murray collects the mucus was coming up. “This”, she’s saying, “is awesome, and I’m glad that you’re here with me to enjoy it.”
The realisation of this made me feel first guilty, for what kind of person is so selfish as to not appreciate something like that, then it made me glad that at least after 18 years or so I finally got it. (Yes, another blog post wherein I realise I am a schmuck. Deal with it.)
Emma is now as lost to me as its possible to be in the digital world: Our relationship was short and pre-email, she married, I don’t know her second name and I’m no longer in touch with anyone who even knows her. (Except, I think, her younger sister who its possible will see this and pass on my sincerest of regards.)
On first deciding to write this blog, I’d intended just to quote the passage I liked and not tell the above story. Then reading James’ post made me think again. Now having completed it, I’m actually not going to quote it at all, just give you the photo and tell you its on page 49 of the Penguin edition. Truth be told, I can’t tell you why she liked it - or thought that I would - but that’s not the point.
The point, I guess, is that we should all be so lucky to have girlfriends with amazing tits who think enough of you that they’d annotate books just for you. Thanks Emma!
