Letter to a future lover

By Ander Monson

Subjects: Inscriptions, Libraries, Marginalia, Printed ephemera, Books and reading, Library browsing, American essays, American prose literature, Miscellanea, Errata, Essays (single author)

Description: Readers of physical books leave traces: marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions. All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases but a medium of long-distance communication with other writers and readers. Letter to a Future Lover collects several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera--with "library" defined broadly, ranging from university institutions to friends' shelves, from a seed library to a KGB prison library--and addressed to readers past, present, and future.