One of the joys of borrowing books from the library is encountering previous borrowers’ anonymous notes.  I have sometimes offered to lend a book to a friend, only to realize that I’ve scribbled my own (embarrassing) notes in the margins of the book in question.  In most cases, I’ve underlined nearly half the book, suggesting (I fear) that I can’t discern a thesis amid all a book’s elaboration.  

The previous borrower of The Partners (Louis Auchincloss) underlined each word not in his/her vocabulary and folded down a corner on each page where such a word was encountered.  Sometimes she (? it looks like a woman’s penmanship) writes a definition in the margins.  Othertimes, no.  

This has been useful to me, because I also did not know the word “adiposity” (fatty), and I’m glad not to have been alone in this.

95books:

Carolyn Steedman’s extension of Derrida’s Archive Fever (#18) is sharp and kind of funny (in a theory kind of way). Her literalization of Derrida’s fever as a real disease contracted from the dust of the archive is a highlight of my reading so far this year. Outside of a few writers, theory is rarely funny, so coming across an intelligent, well-constructed theoretical text that also has a sense of humour is a joy. So good.

-ryan

Agreed.  One of the best works of theory I came across in grad school.

It was said to me today, and I think it’s true (I paraphrase): “I get annoyed by people who want to save the world through human rights.  Tax is the real thing.”

“I could think of nothing more pleasing than a small business, under my own eye, under my own hand, in which no halfpenny would be able to stray.  A small business,  I reflected, would be like an instrument.  It would be entirely dependent on me for the music, for the volume, the pitch, the tone, the quality of the music.  I thought then, as I think now, that trade is like art.  Art is to the artist and trade is to the tradesman.  I think the greatest illusion I know is that trade has anything to do with customers.  It must have been so long ago, almost before history I should think, so very long ago quite plain that you must never, if you are to be a success in trade, in art, in politics, in life itself, you must never give people what they want.  Give them what you want them to want.  Then you are safe.  But it is a platitude, and I digress.”  

- William Plomer