Written on the Flyleaf
The passionate world of book inscriptions
July/August 1996
By Anne Fadiman, Civilization (www.civmag.com)
Long ago, when George and I were not yet lovers but seemed to be tottering in that general direction, we gave each other our first Christmas presents. Of course, they were books. Knowing that I liked bears, George gave me The Biography of a Grizzly, by Ernest Thompson Seton. Modestly sequestered on the third page was the following inscription: To a new true friend. No Talmudic scholar, no wartime cryptographer, no deconstructionist critic ever scrutinized a text more closely than I did those five words, hoping that if they were just construed with the right emphasis ("To a new true friend," "To a new true friend," "To a new true friend"), they would suddenly reveal themselves as a declaration of undying devotion.
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Knowing that George liked fish, I gave him Old Mr. Flood, by Joseph Mitchell, a slim volume of stories about the Fulton Fish Market. The author had autographed the book himself in 1948, but did I leave well enough alone? Of course not. I wrote To George, with love from Anne. Then I mistranscribed a quotation from Red Smith. And finally--on the principle that if you don't know what to say, say everything--I added 15 lines of my own reflections on the nature of intimacy. My cumulative verbiage, not to mention the patency of my sentiments, exceeded George's by a factor of approximately 20 to 1. It's a miracle that the book, its recipient, and the new true friendship weren't all crushed under the weight of the inscription.
Unfortunately--since George married me anyway and has retained his affection for both fish and Joseph Mitchell--my words were preserved for good. Unlike a card that accompanies, say, a sweater, from which it is soon likely to part company, a book and its inscription are permanently wedded. This can be either a boon or a blot. As Seumas Stewart, the proprietor of an antiquarian bookshop in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, has observed, "Imagine how delightful it would be to possess an edition of Thomson's The Seasons with this authenticated inscription: To my dear friend John Keats in admiration and gratitude, from P.B. Shelley, Florence, 1820. Imagine, too, how depressing to have an otherwise fine first of Milton's Paradise Lost with this ballpoint inscription scrawled on the title page: To Ada from Jess, with lots of love and candy floss, in memory of a happy holiday at Blackpool, 1968."
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