Sansom - Paper: an elegy

CONTENTS

Australia

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Canada

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New Zealand

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United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

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United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

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New York, NY 10022

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The hollow in the paper between the front and the back of a thin sheet of paper... To be studied!... it is a category which has occupied me a great deal over the last ten years. I believe that by means of the intra-slim one can pass from the second to the third dimension.

M ARCEL D UCHAMP , quoted by Denis de Rougement,

Marcel Duchamp, mine de rien (1968),

repr. in Marcel Duchamp, Notes , ed. Paul Matisse (1980)

For previous acknowledgments see The Truth About Babies (Granta Books, 2002), Ring Road (4th Estate, 2004), The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books (Harper Perennial, 2006), The Mobile Library: Mr. Dixon Disappears (Harper Perennial, 2006), The Mobile Library: The Delegates Choice (Harper Perennial, 2008), and The Mobile Library: The Bad Book Affair (Harper Perennial, 2010). These stand, with exceptions. In addition I would like to thank the following. (The previous terms and conditions apply: some of them are dead; most of them are strangers; the famous are not friends; none of them bears any responsibility.)

Jonathan Agnew, Foz Allan, Eric Ambler, Kristin Andreassen, Ards Comhaltas Ceoltir ireann, John Franklin Bardin, Catherine Bates, Maurice Blanchot, Peter Blegvad, Amy Blythe, Ian Bostridge, Alfred Brendel, Gerard Brennan, Vera Brice, Carla Bruni, David Burke, Victoria Button, Paul Caddell, Caines Arcade, Sophie Calle, Brian Caraher, Michel de Certeau, Kellie Chambers, Aislinn Clarke, Cheryl Cole, Ruby Colley, Seamus Collins, Stephanie Conn, Shimon Craimer, Martina Crawford, Martin Cromie, Laura Cunningham, Sean Curran, Guy Debord, Linda Drain, Joseph Duffin, David Dwan, Geoff Dyer, Will Eaves, Lisa Edelstein, Craig Edwards, Hiba El Mansouri, Omar Epps, Frantz Fanon, Patrick Fitzsymons, Maureen Freely, Brid Gallagher, General Fiasco, Craig Gibson, Chris Gingell, Gotye, Andrea Grossman, Moyra Haslett, Caroline Healy, Toni Hegarty, Ivan Herbison, Naftali Herstik, Ben Highmore, Peter Jacobson, Boyd Jamison, Stephen Kelly, Diarmuid Kennedy, Bernadette Kiernan, Nicola Killow, Kimbra, John Knowles, the staff of Krem, Gidon Kremer, Robert Lacey, Martin Lamb, Heather Larmour, Christopher Lasch, Hugh Laurie, Catherine Lavery, Gary Learmonth, Henri Lefebvre, Robert Sean Leonard, Sheila Llewellyn, Johanna Lyle, Shan McAnena, Michael McAteer, Nathaniel McAuley, Darran McCann, Denise McGeown, Michael McGlade, Philip McGowan, Niall McGuckian, Susannah McKenna, Ryan McNeilly, Patrick McOscar, Bernie McQuillan, Karen McQuinn, Sheila McWade, Fiona Mackie, Hugh Magennis, Ben Maier, Alison Marchant, Zeljka Marosevic, Marcel Mauss, Ruben Moi, Helen Molesworth, Martin Mooney, David Morley, Francis Morrison, Jennifer Morrison, Chris Moyles, Kevin Mulhern, Gerry Mulligan, Romano Mullin, Emma Must, Romily Must, Padraigin Ni Ullachain, Michael Nolan, Marcus Patton, Kal Penn, Tommy Potts, Janet Pywell, the staff of Queens University Library, Katy Radford, Joan Rahilly, Marcelo Rayel, Shaun Regan, Stefano Res, Daniel Roberts, John Roberts, Marco Rodrigues, Gil Scott-Heron, Stephen Sexton, Matthew Shelton, Chris Sherry, Shiftz, Jane Shilling, David Shore, Paul Simpson, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Jesse Spencer, Roberta Stabilini, Jonathan Stead, Mark Stevenson, Erin Stewart, Martin Strel, Tahan, Orla Travers, Two Door Cinema Club, Malte Urban, Dianne Vinson, Walk off the Earth, David Walliams, Tara West.

The Truth About Babies

Ring Road

The Mobile Library: Mr. Dixon Disappears

The Mobile Library: The Delegates Choice

The Enthusiast Almanack (with David Herd)

The Enthusiast Field Guide to Poetry (with David Herd)

The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books

The Mobile Library: The Bad Book Affair

A Note on the Paper Used in the Writing of This Book

All my books have really been counterproofs, or offsets, remarques, like cartoons, those drawings made to the same scale as the grand painting or fresco but which are in fact only preparatory, and which are applied to the wall, and pricked through or indented: a mere outline or image of some greater design.

This book I like to think of not as a cartoon but as like John F. Petos Old Scraps (1894), a miniature trompe loeil . Or a trompe lesprit .

I am typing this book on yellow paper, announces the narrator of Stevie Smiths Novel on Yellow Paper (1936). It is very yellow paper, and it is this very yellow paper because often sometimes I am typing it in my room at my office, and the paper I use for Sir Phoebuss letters is blue paper with his name across the corner. The yellow paper helps distinguish the novel from the work.

Alas, I have adopted no such sensible system.

I have typed on a laptop, and on a desktop. I have read many books: paper books, Kindle books, Google books. I have read articles online, in print journals, and in magazines. I have made copies; I have pressed Print. I have written notes in margins, and I have written notes, by hand, in notebooks, and on A4 narrow-feint paper. I have organized my notes into folders. I have disorganized my notes in the folders. I have typed sentences, then paragraphs, then chapters. I have printed out these chapters, marked up revisions and corrections in pencil, and then incorporated these changes, and printed out the chapters again. And again. And again. And again. And then finally, I sent the document by email to my editor, who suggested further changes. Some of which I ignored. Most of which I ignored. But some of which I incorporated. And all of which required yet more printing, and marking up and correcting, before sending it all off again. And then again. Proofs. More corrections. More proofs. Interminable? Inexplicable.

In total, this book is made from twenty reams of plain white 80 gsm copier paper, fifteen A4 lined, narrow-feint pads, four Moleskine pocket notebooks, six packs of A5 lined index cards, fifty manila folders (green), and three wrist-thick blocks of Post-it notes (assorted colors). Im sure there are easier ways of writing books.

This intensive way of reading, in contact with whats outside the book, as a flow meeting other flows, one machine among others, as a series of experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do with books, as tearing the book into pieces, getting it to interact with other things, absolutely anything... is reading with love.

G ILLES D ELEUZE , Letter to a Harsh Critic,

in Negotations, 19721990 , trans. Martin Joughin (1995)

Introduction: RESPECTING PAPER

Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

Conan Doyle, Arthur, The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Penguin, 2009).

de Saussure, Ferdinand, Course in General Linguistics (1916), trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

Derrida, Jacques, Paper Machine (2001), trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

Golding, William, Free Fall (London: Faber and Faber, 1959).

Malraux, Andr, Museum Without Walls (1965), trans. Stuart Gilbert and Francis Price (London: Secker & Warburg, 1967).