I loathe crosswords. This no one expects, because I love words. But if you want to share a word with me why be oblique? I don’t want clues, I’d like to know what word and why you are bringing it to my attention. That it intersects with other words does not inspire. But I do love playing with words. So my new word game hobby is vandalising a book. Not any book, just one I found in the ‘3 for £1’ box at Launceston’s secondhand book store. It has no date in it, but the story is set at the end of the First World War, the binding looks suitably shabby-chic, the paper is impressively thick, it suggests something put together in the 1930s. (Wikipedia says this novel came out in 1923.) Scandalous to mess with it, as an object. But as I found the story objectionable, the ending depressing, the writing imbued with racism and anti-Semitism, I decided to change its history.
The game is to find in each page a set of words and/or phrases that form a pleasing flow, then cover over the rest.
It feels wrong, at first, because of a veneration instilled for all books, and the awareness of how much work there is represented here.
But once I start, it’s liberating.
The game is to find in each page a set of words and/or phrases that form a pleasing flow, then cover over the rest.
It feels wrong, at first, because of a veneration instilled for all books, and the awareness of how much work there is represented here.
But once I start, it’s liberating.
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