boxes in their basements for twenty years and then one day think:
I will never again in my entire life open this book and there is no sense in its taking up valuable space in my basement
, and they throw them out. Right out by the garbage cans they put them, in cardboard boxes with the bottoms falling out.
Books should not ever be treated that way. It’s a sin to treat a book that way. That’s what I believe to be true.
The world of my childhood is behind me now. I am no longer a child and I have put away childish things. But childish things come back to haunt you. The destruction of books is something I would not have visited upon even my most hated enemy. Had you asked me, I would have termed myself incapable of such an act.
There it is, though: I was a book ripper.
It hurts me now to think about it. I can’t remember the actual ripping as I was only a baby. At most, a very small child.Tamar told me about it on a day when I came to her holding a library book that someone had written in in purple magic marker. Not only that, but the top corner of each page had been creased, folded over in a triangle as if every page was a bookmark. It had to be the same magic marker person. A maniac.
“How can someone do this?” I said to Tamar.
She was making split pea soup, the only item of food that she actually cooks from scratch. A soup I like to eat but hate the smell of while it’s cooking.
“Ma? Look.”
I showed her the book, each page corner worn and creased, purple magic marker underlining certain paragraphs.
“And the thing is, the paragraphs that this person underlined don’t even stand out,” I said. “There’s not one thing special about any of these underlined paragraphs.”
Tamar took a cursory look. How I love that word. There may not be anyone in the world who loves the word
cursory
as much as I do. That’s how I am about certain words.
“See what I mean?”
“Doesn’t look so bad to me,” she said. “Considering how you used to rip books to pieces when you were a baby.”
She dumped two cupfuls of tiny hard green peas into the giant pot she makes soup in. They sank to the bottom with a clattering sound. Immediately the boiling water in the pot stopped boiling. It settled down and became ferociously quiet, working hard to start boiling again. The quietness of the once-boiling water made it seem as if the water was too busy to make noise.
I mean business
is what is meant by that absence of sound.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You,” she said. “Clara Winter, defender of books. You used to rip them to shreds. Drove me crazy.”
The water in the pot began to hum in a sinister way. A low, gathering hum, bringing itself back to a boil as if getting ready to go off to war.
“Any kind of book,” she said. “Your baby books, my books, books belonging to other people. You’d rip the cover to pieces, then you’d start on the insides. You were possessed.”
She took a bite of honey toast, a big one right out of the folded-over middle. That’s something about Tamar. She greatly prefers the soft middle of bread, but she would not admit it, nor would she ever not eat her crusts. On her deathbed, Tamar will be finishing her crusts. That’s the kind of person she is.
“Little Clara rips books, I scream at little Clara, little Clara laughs,” Tamar said. “That’s the way it was.”
I had my roll of green note-taking adding-machine paper ready in its paper holder. The old man made the paper holder out of tin for me. He followed directions by looking at the pictures in his book
Metalworking Made Easy
. It holds my roll of adding-machine paper perfectly. It keeps it taut and tight, ready for me to take notes on.
“Yup,” Tamar said. “That’s all she wrote.”
That’s all
, I wrote.
Books? Books are sacred. Books are to me what the host is to the priest, the oasis to the desert wanderer, the arrival of winged seraphim to a dying man. That’s the main reason why I
I will never again in my entire life open this book and there is no sense in its taking up valuable space in my basement
, and they throw them out. Right out by the garbage cans they put them, in cardboard boxes with the bottoms falling out.
Books should not ever be treated that way. It’s a sin to treat a book that way. That’s what I believe to be true.
The world of my childhood is behind me now. I am no longer a child and I have put away childish things. But childish things come back to haunt you. The destruction of books is something I would not have visited upon even my most hated enemy. Had you asked me, I would have termed myself incapable of such an act.
There it is, though: I was a book ripper.
It hurts me now to think about it. I can’t remember the actual ripping as I was only a baby. At most, a very small child.Tamar told me about it on a day when I came to her holding a library book that someone had written in in purple magic marker. Not only that, but the top corner of each page had been creased, folded over in a triangle as if every page was a bookmark. It had to be the same magic marker person. A maniac.
“How can someone do this?” I said to Tamar.
She was making split pea soup, the only item of food that she actually cooks from scratch. A soup I like to eat but hate the smell of while it’s cooking.
“Ma? Look.”
I showed her the book, each page corner worn and creased, purple magic marker underlining certain paragraphs.
“And the thing is, the paragraphs that this person underlined don’t even stand out,” I said. “There’s not one thing special about any of these underlined paragraphs.”
Tamar took a cursory look. How I love that word. There may not be anyone in the world who loves the word
cursory
as much as I do. That’s how I am about certain words.
“See what I mean?”
“Doesn’t look so bad to me,” she said. “Considering how you used to rip books to pieces when you were a baby.”
She dumped two cupfuls of tiny hard green peas into the giant pot she makes soup in. They sank to the bottom with a clattering sound. Immediately the boiling water in the pot stopped boiling. It settled down and became ferociously quiet, working hard to start boiling again. The quietness of the once-boiling water made it seem as if the water was too busy to make noise.
I mean business
is what is meant by that absence of sound.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You,” she said. “Clara Winter, defender of books. You used to rip them to shreds. Drove me crazy.”
The water in the pot began to hum in a sinister way. A low, gathering hum, bringing itself back to a boil as if getting ready to go off to war.
“Any kind of book,” she said. “Your baby books, my books, books belonging to other people. You’d rip the cover to pieces, then you’d start on the insides. You were possessed.”
She took a bite of honey toast, a big one right out of the folded-over middle. That’s something about Tamar. She greatly prefers the soft middle of bread, but she would not admit it, nor would she ever not eat her crusts. On her deathbed, Tamar will be finishing her crusts. That’s the kind of person she is.
“Little Clara rips books, I scream at little Clara, little Clara laughs,” Tamar said. “That’s the way it was.”
I had my roll of green note-taking adding-machine paper ready in its paper holder. The old man made the paper holder out of tin for me. He followed directions by looking at the pictures in his book
Metalworking Made Easy
. It holds my roll of adding-machine paper perfectly. It keeps it taut and tight, ready for me to take notes on.
“Yup,” Tamar said. “That’s all she wrote.”
That’s all
, I wrote.
Books? Books are sacred. Books are to me what the host is to the priest, the oasis to the desert wanderer, the arrival of winged seraphim to a dying man. That’s the main reason why I
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